Hey all. I'm back after a lengthy absence...desublimation anyone?

Anyhow, I am trying to find a word that would best fit this statement: 'to imbue with meaning'.

The context would be the meaning we give to commercial objects or material items rather than in a religious or mythological sense, although by giving them this meaning we do, to an extent, seek them as we might some kind of religious or mythological symbol.

In a sense, advertisers do it when they wish to attribute meaning to some object they are seeking to sell but which has no inherent meaning other than that it is a pair of shoes or a car or something. They seek to sell us on its meaning, we frequently buy into it and have thus imbued an object with meaning.

I thought of this when reading a book today. We have ceased explaining objects in a narrative sense but now find brand names used in books to describe objects and this often in an explanatory sense, i.e. that the mere brand name suggests what is meant by its use.