Social Myth and Brand: Communicative Intersections in Contemporary Sociocultural Context

Abstract

This article examines the interplay between myth and brand as constituent elements of the communicative landscape in contemporary society. As brands construct audience engagement, they frequently draw on mythological imagery. This produces an illusory reality embedded in tangible, perceptually immediate objects. The act of purchase is thereby transformed into a ritual through which consumers signal group belonging and project their values and aspirations outward. The study identifies three structural configurations of brand–myth interaction: retranslation of a social myth through brand; implementation of brand as a practical instrument of dissemination of a social myth; use of brand as a prism or a superstructure built on a social myth. In the first, an existing social myth is relayed through the brand as an instrument of pragmatic actualisation – bringing mythological elements into everyday practice. In the second, the brand assumes an active, instrumental role as a vehicle for deliberate social dissemination of a particular interpretive framework. In the third, rather than constructing or relaying the social myth, the brand advances a commercially motivated interpretation of an already-circulating myth. Each configuration implies a distinct degree of brand involvement, spanning a continuum from passive accompaniment of social myth to its active transformation and the discursive construction of social reality. Taken together, these configurations form an integrated and multidimensional account of the phenomenon under study. The contribution of this work lies in its cross-disciplinary synthesis, bringing the conceptual frameworks of social philosophy and communication studies into a unified analytical focus.

For citation: Konovalova A.D. Social Myth and Brand: Communicative Intersections in Contemporary Sociocultural Context. Vestnik Severnogo (Arkticheskogo) federal’nogo universiteta. Ser.: Gumanitarnye i sotsial’nye nauki, 2026, vol. 26, no. 4, pp. 116–126. https://doi.org/10.37482/2687-1505-V533