Could the most powerful signal a brand sends be the one it never planned?

Reader Alex from Cleveland wrote me after my Knorr post and asked something intriguing:

“You wrote about cooking being a green flag in a dating profile, but Knorr’s logo is literally a green flag. Coincidence, or are brands sometimes sitting on symbolism they don’t even realize?”

Short answer: yes, all the time.

Most brands think symbolism is something you add, and sometimes it is.

Like a color choice. A logo tweak. Or a campaign concept.

In reality, meaning accumulates whether you manage it or not.

Knorr didn’t need to explain the color green. The 188-year-old company has been using a green flag in its logo since 2019.

It cleanly aligned with freshness, competence, reliability, and care.

When culture suddenly reframed cooking as a dating “green flag”, the brand already fit the story. Not because it chased after it, but because it had been earning it all along.

This is the part product teams can underestimate.

Your product already sends signals about who it’s for, what it values, and what kind of person uses it. Some of those signals are deliberate.

Others are convenient accidents, like the one Knorr seized on.

But buyers don’t mentally separate the two.

The opportunity isn’t to invent symbolism. It’s to notice what’s already there, then stop fighting it. When a product aligns with a role someone wants to play, confidence follows.

Connection follows. Demand follows.

The green flag isn’t what you say. It’s what your product quietly lets people be.

Want to make your product irresistible? That’s what we do as product marketing consultants at Graphos Product, helping innovators turn need-driven ideas into market-ready successes.