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No Logo
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No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies is a book by Canadian journalist Naomi Klein. First published by Knopf Canada in January 2000, shortly after the 1999 WTO Ministerial Conference protests in Seattle had generated media attention around such issues, it became one of the most influential books about the anti-globalization movement and an international bestseller.
Focus
The book focuses on branding, and often makes connections with the anti-globalization movement.
Discussion
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Encyclopedia
No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies is a book by Canadian journalist Naomi Klein. First published by Knopf Canada in January 2000, shortly after the 1999 WTO Ministerial Conference protests in Seattle had generated media attention around such issues, it became one of the most influential books about the anti-globalization movement and an international bestseller.
Focus
The book focuses on branding, and often makes connections with the anti-globalization movement. Throughout the four parts (No Space, No Choice, No Jobs, and No Logo), Klein writes about issues such as sweatshops in the Americas and Asia, culture jamming, corporate censorship, and Reclaim the Streets. She pays special attention to the deeds and misdeeds of Nike, The Gap, McDonalds, Shell, and Microsoft and their lawyers, contractors, and advertising agencies. Many of the ideas in Klein's book derive from the influence of the Situationists, an art/political group founded in the late 1950s.
However, while globalization would appear to be a recurring theme, the topic itself is rarely addressed, and often indirectly. Klein would go on to discuss globalization in much greater detail in her next book, Fences and Windows.
Summary
The book is divided into four sections: No Space, No Choice, No Jobs, and No Logo. The first three deal with the negative effects of brand-oriented corporate activity, while the fourth discusses various methods people have taken in order to fight back.
No Space
The book begins by tracing the history of brands. Klein argues that there has been a shift in the usage of branding. Early examples of brands were often used to put a recognizable face on factory-produced products. These slowly gave way to the idea of selling lifestyles. According to Klein, in response to an economic crash in the 1980s, corporations began to seriously rethink their approach to marketing, and began to target the youth demographic, as opposed to the baby boomers, who had previously been considered a much more valuable segment.
The book discusses how brand names such as Nike or Pepsi expanded beyond the mere products which bore their names, and how these names and logos began to appear everywhere. As this happened, the brands' obsession with the youth market drove them to further associate themselves with whatever the youth considered "cool". Along the way, the brands attempted to have their names associated with everything from movie stars and athletes to grassroots social movements.
Klein argues that large multinational corporations consider the marketing of a brand name to be more important than the actual manufacture of products; this theme recurs in the book and Klein suggests that it helps explain the shift to production in Third World countries in such industries as clothing, footwear, and computer hardware.
This section also looks at ways in which brands have "muscled" their presence into the school system, and how in doing so, they have pipelined advertisements into the schools, and have used their position to gather information about the students. Klein argues that this is part of a trend toward targeting younger and younger consumers.
No Choice
In the second section, Klein discusses how brands use their size and clout to limit the number of choices available to the public. Whether it be through Wal-Mart's colossal status or Starbucks' aggressive invasion of a region, the goal is the same. Each of the major brands wishes to become the dominant force in its respective field. Meanwhile, other corporations, such as Sony or Disney simply open their own chains of stores, preventing the competition from even putting their products on the shelves.
This section also discusses the way that corporations merge with one another in order to add to their ubiquity. On a more sinister note, it allows greater control over their image. ABC News, for instance, is allegedly under pressure not to air any stories that are overly critical of Disney, its parent company. Other chains, such as Wal-Mart often threaten to pull various products off of their shelves, forcing manufacturers and publishers to comply with their demands. This might mean driving down manufacturing costs, or changing the artwork/content of things like magazines or albums, so they might better fit with Wal-Mart's image of family friendliness.
Also discussed is the way that corporations abuse copyright laws in order to silence anyone who might attempt to criticize their brand.
No Jobs
In this section, the book takes a darker tone, and looks at the way in which manufacturing jobs are being moved from local factories to foreign countries, and particularly to places known as export processing zones. Within these zones, working conditions are very dire, and labour laws are all but non-existent.
The book then shifts back to North America, where the lack of manufacturing jobs has led to an influx of work in the service sector, where most of the jobs are for minimum wage and offer no benefits. The term McJob is introduced, defined as a job with low wages that do not keep in line with inflation, poor hours, no benefits and high levels of stress. Meanwhile, the public is being sold the perception that these jobs are "temporary" employment for students and recent graduates, and therefore need not offer living wages or benefits.
All of this is set against a backdrop of massive profits and wealth being produced within the corporate sector. The result is a new generation of employees who have come to resent the success of the companies they work for. This resentment, along with rising unemployment, labour abuses abroad, disregard for the environment and the ever increasing presence of advertising breeds a new disdain for corporations.
No Logo
The final section of the book discusses various movements that have sprung up during the 90s. These include Adbusters magazine and the culture jamming movement, as well as reclaim the streets, and the McLibel trial. Less radical protests are also discussed, such as the various movements aimed at putting an end to sweatshop labour.
Klein concludes by contrasting consumerism and citizenship, appropriately opting for the latter. "When I started this book," she writes, "I honestly didn't know whether I was covering marginal atomized scenes of resistance or the birth of a potentially broad-based movement. But as time went on, what I clearly saw was a movement forming before my eyes." As the Seattle and Washington protests demonstrate, the movement has continued to form. What effect it will have, and whether for good or ill, remains to be seen.
Criticism
No Logo is copyrighted by Klein and was published by a multinational corporation. However, there are future plans to put the book under a copyleft license. Additionally, companies have produced goods with a No Logo logo on them (other than her publications, Klein does not endorse nor profit from these products).
After the book's release, Klein was heavily criticized by the pro-market newspaper The Economist, leading to a broadcast debate with Klein and the magazine's writers, dubbed "No Logo vs. Pro Logo".
The 2004 book The Rebel Sell (published as Nation of Rebels in the United States), was heavily critical of No Logo, arguing that turning the attempt to improve the quality of life of the working class into a fundamentally anti-market ideological and a social image is shallow and inherently exploitable by the corporations they claim to attack.
Some criticized the book for simplifying issues and conflating corporate malfeasance and systemic poverty in the third world with anarchism and identity politics in the first world. However others (and Klein herself) noted that the book, though hardly dispassionate about its subject, is a summary of a varied and diverse movement at one period early in its development, not a single manifesto for change.
Awards
The book won the following awards:
- The 2000 First Book Award from The Guardian
- The 2001 Canadian National Business Book Award
- The 2001 French Prix Médiations
Editions
Several imprints of No Logo exist, for example: ISBN 0-676-97130-X (hard cover first edition), ISBN 0-312-20343-8 (hardcover) and ISBN 0-312-27192-1 (paperback). Translations from the original English into several other languages have appeared. The subtitle, "Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies", was dropped in some later editions.
Video
Naomi Klein explains her ideas in the 2003 40-minute video No Logo - Brands, Globalization & Resistance, directed by Sut Jhally.
Influence in pop culture
- Members of the English rock group Radiohead have stated that the book was particularly influential to them during the making of their fourth and fifth albums, Kid A (2000) and Amnesiac (2001) respectively. (The albums were recorded over the same sessions.) The band recommended the book to fans on their website, and considered calling the album Kid A "No Logo" for a time.
- Canadian metal band Inner Surge have also listed Klein's book as an influence on selected tracks from their album Signals Screaming.
- The book was referenced in Ian Ferguson and Will Ferguson's How To Be A Canadian. The brothers mention that they think "the cover to Naomi Klein's book No Logo would make an excellent logo".
- The book was referred to in Warren Ellis's Doktor Sleepless, when during a speech about consumerism the Doktor mentions that "Even No Logo had a fucking logo on it".
See also
External links
Multimedia
- - CBC Television HotType N. Klein talking about her book.
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