Product Description: Once a poster boy for the new economy, Bill Gates has become a global whipping boy.The Nike swoosh is quickly losing its cachet, equated now with sweatshop labor. Teenage McDonald's workers are joining the Teamsters. What's going on? NO LOGO explains why some of the most revered brands in the world are finding themselves on the wrong end of a spray-can, a computer hack, or an international anti-corporate campaign. NO LOGO uncovers a betrayal of the central promises of the information age: choice, interactivity, and increased freedom.Instead, job security and consumer choice have been swallowed whole by companies who enlist us as their human billboards and spokesmen.Equal parts cultural analysis, political manifesto, mall-rat memoir, and journalistic expose, NO LOGO is the first book that both uncovers the sins of corporations run amok and explores and explains the new resistance that will change consumer culture in the 21st century.
Amazon.com Review: We live in an era where image is nearly everything, where the proliferation of brand-name culture has created, to take one hyperbolic example from Naomi Klein's No Logo, "walking, talking, life-sized Tommy [Hilfiger] dolls, mummified in fully branded Tommy worlds." Brand identities are even flourishing online, she notes--and for some retailers, perhaps best of all online: "Liberated from the real-world burdens of stores and product manufacturing, these brands are free to soar, less as the disseminators of goods or services than as collective hallucinations."
In No Logo, Klein patiently demonstrates, step by step, how brands have become ubiquitous, not just in media and on the street but increasingly in the schools as well. (The controversy over advertiser-sponsored Channel One may be old hat, but many readers will be surprised to learn about ads in school lavatories and exclusive concessions in school cafeterias.) The global companies claim to support diversity, but their version of "corporate multiculturalism" is merely intended to create more buying options for consumers. When Klein talks about how easy it is for retailers like Wal-Mart and Blockbuster to "censor" the contents of videotapes and albums, she also considers the role corporate conglomeration plays in the process. How much would one expect Paramount Pictures, for example, to protest against Blockbuster's policies, given that they're both divisions of Viacom?
Klein also looks at the workers who keep these companies running, most of whom never share in any of the great rewards. The president of Borders, when asked whether the bookstore chain could pay its clerks a "living wage," wrote that "while the concept is romantically appealing, it ignores the practicalities and realities of our business environment." Those clerks should probably just be grateful they're not stuck in an Asian sweatshop, making pennies an hour to produce Nike sneakers or other must-have fashion items. Klein also discusses at some length the tactic of hiring "permatemps" who can do most of the work and receive few, if any, benefits like health care, paid vacations, or stock options. While many workers are glad to be part of the "Free Agent Nation," observers note that, particularly in the high-tech industry, such policies make it increasingly difficult to organize workers and advocate for change.
But resistance is growing, and the backlash against the brands has set in. Street-level education programs have taught kids in the inner cities, for example, not only about Nike's abusive labor practices but about the astronomical markup in their prices. Boycotts have commenced: as one urban teen put it, "Nike, we made you. We can break you." But there's more to the revolution, as Klein optimistically recounts: "Ethical shareholders, culture jammers, street reclaimers, McUnion organizers, human-rights hacktivists, school-logo fighters and Internet corporate watchdogs are at the early stages of demanding a citizen-centered alternative to the international rule of the brands ... as global, and as capable of coordinated action, as the multinational corporations it seeks to subvert." No Logo is a comprehensive account of what the global economy has wrought and the actions taking place to thwart it. --Ron Hogan
Relativity in advertising Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek frequently uses as an explanatory topos the following reading of Einstein's theory of relativity: In the special theory of relativity (so the story goes) matter has the effect of curving the space around it, so the shortest distance between two points is not necessarily a straight line. However, with the shift to the general theory of relativity the story is reversed; the curvature of space is no longer the effect of matter's gravity, it is rather matter itself which is the side-effect of the curvature of space, the curvature of space is itself the primordial fact.
Whether or not this is an accurate summary of Einstein's contribution to twentieth century physics, it is a useful schema for understanding the transformation Naomi Klein charts in No Logo. If, in early capitalism, the commodity itself is the primary material fact of economic existence, then it would seem that marketing and advertising are the concomitant warping of the ideological/cultural space that is the natural by-product of material commodities' vigorous efforts to get themselves sold on the open market. However, as we transition eras into late capitalism, a profound shift occurs, as branding itself becomes increasingly important. With the success of the mega-brands of the nineties (Nike, Starbucks, Microsoft, etc.) what is ultimately for sale is no longer mere commodities but the brand itself, and the physical products (shoes, coffee, software, etc.) that advertising used to serve become mere vehicles for selling the increasingly ubiquitous brands.
This is the shift that Naomi Klein beautifully details in this book, with copious charts and graphs, endless footnotes and references, and engaging and readable writing. Klein is an impeccable researcher, and her marshaling of the data and statistics in the service of the story she has to tell are flawless. If anyone doubts that there still exist Dickensian nightmares of exploitation in the contemporary world of global capitalism (or if anyone has faith that the rising tide does indeed lift all boats) then this is the book you should read.
My one caveat is that while Klein is a masterful journalist and a capable storyteller, she is at best (at least in this book) a mediocre theoretician. While her descriptive powers of documenting the current realities are formidable, her analysis of the possibilities of resistance and her prescriptions for future movements leave something to be desired. In particular, the last section of the book, devoted to an exploration of various forms of resistance movements and Klein's own unwavering optimism, seem, from the vantage point of a decade after the book was published, a tad bit naive and underwhelming. I mean, has the Reclaim the Streets movement really thrown a monkey-wrench into the forces of gentrification and homogenization reshaping the faces of North American cities (as Klein breathlessly anticipates in one chapter)? Fortunately, Klein has since published The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, a far more sober accounting of the events and economic ideologies of the past decade.
However, despite the dated feel of the final chapters, No Logo remains relevant for anyone trying to get a picture of contemporary economic realities. It offers a treasure trove of data and documentation that continues to serve as reliable ammunition for anyone wishing to take the wind out of the sails of today's counter-revolutionary apologists of capital that continue to be so much in vogue and dominate global policy making at the dawn of the twenty-first century.
Well-researched, yet undermined by 2nd portion's lack of focus. No Logo is a surprisingly well-researched book, if you can get past the obvious contradiction on the front cover and binding of this major-label production. Whether the "All Rights Reserved" copyrighted logo is meant to be ironic or merely obligatory concessions to the publishing house, it still reflects Klein poorly: either as a powerless pawn or else having a bad sense of humor.
Purely on content, however, as all books should be judged, No Logo quickly shows you this is no left-wing, hippie diatribe of over-generalization, with facts shunted to the wayside. Instead, it reads like a well-planned documentary, meticulously annotated and researched. Klein masterfully identifies the root problem of laissez-faire economics, market-oriented policies, and capitalism in general. For those of us who are a bit slow to comprehend the dramatic shift that has taken place in the free-market business world, Klein neatly diagrams the subtle and not-so-subtle shifts the private, for-profit sector of mainstream business has taken in its quest to orient away from developing products and focus on the development of brands. This paradigmatic shift has launched a new era of capitalism, changing it drastically from our predecessors' definition.
Klein maps out the expansion of advertising into all aspects of human life, the lack of "unbranded space", the Borg-like assimilation process that marketing initiates, devouring all niches, reactions, backlashes and resistance. With this process of lifestyle branding and perpetual advertising adaption, Klein shows the effects of this system of separation of brands and products. She details the flood of franchising, corporate mergers, private-sectors profit-maker's censorship, outsourcing, the exploitation of third-world labor, the creation of "McJobs" inside service economies and the growth of temporary labor and permanent "freelancing".
Klein derails, however, in her attempts to document the anti-corporate activist movement. What has been so far a masterful critique of globalization and corporatism focuses instead on grassroots activism and culture jammers. She spends almost one hundred pages describing (without unqualified praise, to her credit) underground rings of vandals and lone "anti-brand" guerrillas who deface corporate advertising by some irrational belief that their actions will persuade mainstream, moderate Westerners to change their consumption habits to ones approved by vigilantes drawing skulls and rewriting logos. If her discussion of them is to document an overall noble and worthy cause (that is, anti-corporate resistance), then addressing culture jammers in anything but a negative light only serves to tarnish an up until now, very polished presentation. Along with eliminating this episode, Klein would do her cause service by eschewing her description of RTS's absurdities in favor of a more detailed assessment of collectives and people's movements, such as the Zapatistas: uprisings that are rooted firmly in the reality of economics and egalitarian living-- rather than the short-term frivolity of dangerous quasi-riots, or the childish response of throwing pies at CEOs.
Klein also fails to precisely pinpoint what exactly her target is. She explains that it is more than attacking branding; it is about citizenship, not consumerism. Neither is it about attacking corporations via purchasing power. She explains much about activists' activities, but by the time she concludes her narrative, she has done little to address what exactly is the goal-- besides her vague wish for "unbranded spaces". The afterword (written in 2002) perhaps provides a better insight into what she was getting at when she talks about egalitarian movements and non-homogenization.
No Logo is an excellent book if one is interested in learning the largely ignored facts about branding, advertising, and labor politics; it is not a very convincing polemic for those skeptical of non-privatized solutions. With the debilitating portrayal of culture jamming and RTS as equals to the more mature approaches of student and political organizations described, No Logo undoes itself in short order; easily dismissed by those of the conservative persuasion. Although Klein does cover the anti-globalization movement with a broad, documentary-style brush, the pages of No Logo lack cynosure towards social cooperative, collective solutions, feeling reactionary more than inspirational.
No Branding This is now the classic easily accessible text on corporate outsourcing and branding. Klein's analysis is grounded in a strong concern for ethics and social justice and informed by an acute understanding of how global businesses operate.
FANTASTIC I read this book a while back for a college course on media in the 21st century, and never before have I talked about a book in conversation so much. The topics Klein covers are applicable to so many facets of modern media. A must-read for anyone interested in corporate branding, advertising and/or media. You won't look at an ad the same way again.
You are what you eat It took me awhile to get around to reading No Logo, and I have to say I was amply rewarded for the effort. Klein packs a whallop in her narrative as she covers the 80s and 90's corporate world as it switched from a product oriented climate to that of corporate branding with devastating consequences both at home and abroad. She does a great job of covering the terrain, pointing out the greed that permeated the market and the biggest abusers in this high stakes game of branding society.
Probably the most disconcerting chapters are those where she illustrated how deeply these brand names permeated high schools and universities in the 90s, hoping to get to the "ground zero" of their youth market. She notes how schools basically sold their souls to the devil to make up for budget shortfalls brought upon by cuts in education budgets across the country. She also notes how students fought back, as they were sick of being forced to eat this branding in both their cafeterias and the single channel "educational" television programming they got in class.
The book is as much about fighting back as it is about the media onslaught of major corporations to shape the way we think about their brands. She notes various efforts in the US, Britain and Canada to take back the streets, and remaking billboards and Internet ads into trenchant commentaries on the nature of branding.
Perhaps her most searing chapters are those where she ventures into the sweat shops around the world, illustrating the widespread labor abuses of major brands, as they no longer take responsibility for their own products. Instead, a chain of suppliers provide these products at low costs so that the brands can spend more money on branding.
It was an advertiser's heyday in the 90s, especially among 20-somethings as they found themselves to be hot property, with these companies seeking younger markets for their products. She notes the way Nike essentially "branded" Harlem, and how companies like Adidas followed suit when Run DMC's hip hop song about their Adidases became a big hit.
There are holes in her narrative, but not so much that she trips over them as Michael Moore often does. Her research is broad and she tells a compelling story, which is why this book is as relavent today as it was when it was first published in 2000.
Anything Goes Trivia
Last Kiss
Megaton Man
Tony's Online Tips
Trevor
