I think the phenomenon of branding has become oppressive. As “brand” colonizes more and more experiences and places (and even some people who have achieved brand status) you get a zombie-like effect, a placelessness and over-determined experiences. I prefer the word “identity” to brand because it suggests something more mutable, more contextual. Branding is about a consistency of impression and experience, whereas identity can be about a sense of personality or a sensibility. I think people use the word brand for most things involving design for services and products, but often the things they are referring to are really individual instances of design: a package, a sign, a website, and yet they all get swept into a bigger abstraction called brand.