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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
From Publishers Weekly
In the global economy, all the world's a marketing opportunity. From this elemental premise, freelance journalist and Toronto Star columnist Klein methodically builds an angry and funny case against branding in general and several large North American companies in particular, notably Gap, Microsoft and Starbucks. Looking around her, Klein finds that the breathless promise of the information ageAthat it would be a time of consumer choice and interactive communicationAhas not materialized. Instead, huge corporations that present themselves as lifestyle purveyors rather than mere product manufacturers dominate the airwaves, physical space and cyberspace. Worse, Klein argues, these companies have harmed not just the culture but also workersAand not just in the Third World but also in the U.S., where companies rely on temps because they'd rather invest in marketing than in labor. In the latter sections, Klein describes a growing backlash embodied by the guerrilla group Reclaim the Streets, which turns busy intersections into spaces for picnics and political protest. Her tour of the branded world is rife with many perverse examples of how corporate names penetrate all aspects of life (who knew there was a K-Mart Chair of Marketing at Wayne State University?). Mixing an activist's passion with sophisticated cultural commentary, Klein delivers some elegant formulations: "Free speech is meaningless if the commercial cacophony has risen to the point where no one can hear you." Charts and graphs not seen by PW. Agent, Westwood Creative Artists. (Jan.) Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From School Library Journal
YA-In this examination of the style and substance of "branded life," a young Canadian journalist presents her thesis in a highly entertaining style. In chapters such as "Alt.everything: The Youth Market and the Marketing of Cool," Klein shows how advertising exploits teens (17 is the optimum age) and points out marketing tactics and trends. As the advertising industry has evolved to become a major shaper of culture, a sea change in corporate climate has transformed companies from producers of products to purveyors of image and dreams. Brand names such as Gap, Nike, or Tommy Hilfiger have come to have "talismanic power" for many in the U.S., Canada, and Europe. However, the author reveals the disturbing economic realities underlying the production of these magic products-often through the stories of the young people who work to produce them. The final chapters describe individual and community activities in the arts, politics, and courts in the pursuit of human rights and other values. For readers who want to know more about what lies behind street demonstrations recently in the news, or for those who are ready to rise above being manipulated, this title provides an excellent model of how to think critically about contemporary culture.Christine C. Menefee, Fairfax County Public Library, VA Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
The New York Times Book Review, James Ledbetter
Klein is a gifted writer; her paragraphs can be as seductive as the ad campaigns she dissects.
Review
"No Logo has been a pedagogical godsend. I used it to illustrate contemporary applications of complex cultural theories in an introductory social science sequence. It worked so beautifully, word about the book spread across campus, and other students were begging to read it in their sections of the course."—Bruce Novak, Division of Social Sciences, The University of Chicago
"A complete, user-friendly handbook on the negative effects that 1990s überbrand marketing has had on culture, work, and consumer choice."—The Village Voice
"The Das Kapital of the growing anti-corporate movement."—The London Observer
“Klein is a sharp cultural critic and a flawless storyteller. Her analysis is thorough and thoroughly engaging.”—Newsweek.com
“No Logo is an attractive sprawl of a book describing a vast confederacy of activist groups with a common interest in reining in the power of lawyering, marketing, and advertising to manipulate our desires.”—The Boston Globe
Review
"No Logo has been a pedagogical godsend. I used it to illustrate contemporary applications of complex cultural theories in an introductory social science sequence. It worked so beautifully, word about the book spread across campus, and other students were begging to read it in their sections of the course."—Bruce Novak, Division of Social Sciences, The University of Chicago
"A complete, user-friendly handbook on the negative effects that 1990s überbrand marketing has had on culture, work, and consumer choice."—The Village Voice
"The Das Kapital of the growing anti-corporate movement."—The London Observer
“Klein is a sharp cultural critic and a flawless storyteller. Her analysis is thorough and thoroughly engaging.”—Newsweek.com
“No Logo is an attractive sprawl of a book describing a vast confederacy of activist groups with a common interest in reining in the power of lawyering, marketing, and advertising to manipulate our desires.”—The Boston Globe
Review
"No Logo has been a pedagogical godsend. I used it to illustrate contemporary applications of complex cultural theories in an introductory social science sequence. It worked so beautifully, word about the book spread across campus, and other students were begging to read it in their sections of the course."—Bruce Novak, Division of Social Sciences, The University of Chicago
"A complete, user-friendly handbook on the negative effects that 1990s überbrand marketing has had on culture, work, and consumer choice."—The Village Voice
"The Das Kapital of the growing anti-corporate movement."—The London Observer
“Klein is a sharp cultural critic and a flawless storyteller. Her analysis is thorough and thoroughly engaging.”—Newsweek.com
“No Logo is an attractive sprawl of a book describing a vast confederacy of activist groups with a common interest in reining in the power of lawyering, marketing, and advertising to manipulate our desires.”—The Boston Globe
Book Description
With a new Afterword to the 2002 edition. No Logo employs journalistic savvy and personal testament to detail the insidious practices and far-reaching effects of corporate marketing—and the powerful potential of a growing activist sect that will surely alter the course of the 21st century. First published before the World Trade Organization protests in Seattle, this is an infuriating, inspiring, and altogether pioneering work of cultural criticism that investigates money, marketing, and the anti-corporate movement.
As global corporations compete for the hearts and wallets of consumers who not only buy their products but willingly advertise them from head to toe—witness today’s schoolbooks, superstores, sporting arenas, and brand-name synergy—a new generation has begun to battle consumerism with its own best weapons. In this provocative, well-written study, a front-line report on that battle, we learn how the Nike swoosh has changed from an athletic status-symbol to a metaphor for sweatshop labor, how teenaged McDonald’s workers are risking their jobs to join the Teamsters, and how “culture jammers” utilize spray paint, computer-hacking acumen, and anti-propagandist wordplay to undercut the slogans and meanings of billboard ads (as in “Joe Chemo” for “Joe Camel”).
No Logo will challenge and enlighten students of sociology, economics, popular culture, international affairs, and marketing.
“This book is not another account of the power of the select group of corporate Goliaths that have gathered to form our de facto global government. Rather, it is an attempt to analyze and document the forces opposing corporate rule, and to lay out the particular set of cultural and economic conditions that made the emergence of that opposition inevitable.”—Naomi Klein, from her Introduction
Download 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.
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