Semioticians classify signs or sign systems in relation to the way they are transmitted. This process of carrying meaning depends on the use of codes that may be the individual sounds or letters that humans use to form words, the body movements they make to show attitude or emotion, or even something as general as the clothes they wear.

Some say that images work via a second communicative system, one fully as expressive as natural language, but separate and structured independently of it. Others find visual and verbal meanings more dissimilar than similar, with the visual lacking a kind of determinacy for which verbal language seems better suited.

A recent example of this would be when Coca Cola changed their original recipe of their cola. The public did not embrace the new taste. Even though the new taste had proven to be successful in blind taste tests it caused change and it called attention to itself. Therefore, the general public strongly objected to this change because they could not associate this new "Coke" with the one they were used to.

Other example is using in advertising perfumes to signify the women and using her as an object that allows a women to control how she is perceived through how she smells. It has also increase the symbolism of women as elegant, boatful, and glamour’s.