The Rise and Reign of the Corporate Persona: Deception, Power, and the Myth of Brand Identity

How popular media complicity turbo-charge the corporate persona, which systematically led to the devaluation of the human workforce and creative capital.

The way we talk about companies today is fascinating. We say things like, “Google thinks this,” or “Apple cares about that.” It’s a modern phenomenon for treating a vast, intangible corporation as if it were a single, living person with its own personality, values, and beliefs.
While companies have existed for centuries, this obsessive focus on the corporate entity, often sidelining the real human beings who created it, is indeed a relatively recent historical development.

The Brand Myth

The idea of a business having an identity didn’t happen overnight. It was a slow evolution driven by economic shifts and the rise of mass communication.

1. The Early Years: Ownership and Quality (1800s)

In the 19th century, during the Industrial Revolution, the initial purpose of a brand was purely practical: to indicate ownership and guarantee quality. A mark on a box of Kellogg’s cornflakes told the consumer who made it and that it would be consistent every time. The public focus was on the product itself, and often, the founder’s name was the brand (e.g., Ford, Cadbury). The founder was the personality.

2. The Mid-Century Shift: Image and Identity (1950s–1970s)

The real change began after World War II. Economies boomed, competition grew, and products became more similar. A new strategy was needed. This is when the concept of Corporate Identity solidified.

Companies realized they needed to be more than just their products; they needed a distinctive image to stand out in crowded markets. This era saw pioneering designers like Paul Rand creating timeless logos for giants like IBM and UPS. The focus shifted from what the product did to what the company stood for. It was about building trust and reputation across a whole range of business activities.

3. The Digital Age: Relationships and Personality (1990s–Present)

The internet and social media turbo-charged this personification trend. The web gave corporations a direct, continuous voice. Now, companies need to have a “tone” on Twitter, “engage” on Facebook, and display their “culture” on LinkedIn.
This required companies to develop a sophisticated, almost human-like persona on how they look, speak, and act. This allows us, the public, to form a relationship with a brand, just as we would with a person.

The Fallacy of the Imaginary Entity

This modern approach has led to a peculiar situation: the Corporate Entity is often seen as more important, more enduring, and even more ethically sound than the human founder or the employees who make it up. This can be seen as a fallacy of modern times.

A corporation is an abstract, legal, and intangible entity. It exists only on paper and in the minds of the public. It has no heartbeat, no moral compass, and no true memory outside of its documented policies. It cannot genuinely “care” about the environment or “believe” in diversity; only the people running it can.

The Founder vs. The Brand: In the early days, if you liked Ford cars, you respected Henry Ford. Today, people are often fiercely loyal to the Apple brand, even if they have no idea who the current CEO is, let alone the engineers who designed the latest product. The corporate entity has successfully outgrown its founder and all the employees.

The Illusion of Permanence: The corporate persona is designed to feel timeless and reliable. Humans are flawed, temporary, and make mistakes. By shifting the focus onto the abstract corporate myth, the brand avoids being tainted by the inevitable flaws of any single person. When a founder makes a mistake, the company can distance itself, often saying, “That doesn’t reflect our corporate values.”

The Complicit Media’s Role

The explosion of media—from radio and TV to the internet—is the engine that makes this corporate personification possible.
Mass Reach: Media allows a company to speak with one consistent, unified voice to millions of people instantly, reinforcing its singular personality (the “Nike voice” or the “Disney feel”).

Narrative Control: Companies use advertising and public relations to craft compelling stories about themselves. These stories, repeated endlessly through media channels, transform a legal entity into a mythical character that people feel they know personally.

Digital Interaction: Social media platforms encourage treating brands like peers.When you tweet at a brand, and it tweets back, the illusion of a conversation—a genuine human-to-human interaction—is created, even though the response is often managed by a team following strict corporate guidelines.

The corporate brand persona is not an identity; it is a cynical mask donned by self-serving corporations to satiate their insatiable gold hunger for ever-greater profit margins. This ideological cover enables executives and stakeholders to ritualistically cleanse their hands of accountability for operational blunders or ethical failures. Media outlets operate hand in glove with the corporations in preaching the creed of this mythical persona to ensure their shared financial gains.

Yet, brand evangelists and zealous entrepreneurs, dazzled by quarterly returns and digital hype, must recognize that the corporate personification they champion is nothing but a fleeting, overnight flicker. When compared to the centuries-old sweep of human civilization and its enduring creative capital, this ‘brand identity’ serves only as a cynical distraction from the profound value created by actual people. Ultimately, the human workforce and creative genius will remain the true measure of enduring history.