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How Connotations Can Change Over Time

 I'm continuously fascinated by the business world. Constantly looking at how the marketing and PR teams work, what strategies they use and how they present their company to the world. 

One of the main aspects I love is a business' branding. I watched a TED talk a few days ago about branding, it was about how brand logos have had different connotations in the past and how these have changed over time. 


The one that really caught my attention was the Nazi symbol swastika. The swastika is notoriously known as a bad thing, with negative connotations and a horrible history of genocide and fascism. However, many people (including myself until a few days ago) don't know that the swastika was actually a much loved symbol before World War II and Hitler "stole" it. "Swastika" comes from Sanskrit "svastika" meaning "conductive to well being" and in Hinduism the right facing symbol is seen as symbolising the sun, prosperity and good luck. 

The swastika was actually used by Coca Cola before. They made a "good luck" watch fob for example, as seen below.


There was also an American biscuit company, The Pacific Coast Biscuit Company who used the swastika in a lot of their products and branding, because it hadn't achieved the negative connotations as of yet.

I wanted to write today's blog post as a way of not only showing the new information that I've learnt and become fascinated by but also to highlight the importance and significance of branding for a business. You wouldn't dare use a swastika as your brand logo nowadays however before World War II this was a perfectly normal thing to do! Time changes everything... 

Thanks for reading 💖

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