No Logo Brands, Globalization & Resistance In the age of the brand, logos are everywhere. But why do some of the world’s best- known brands find themselves on the wrong end of the spray paint can the targets of anti-corporate campaigns by activists and protesters? Using hundreds of media examples, No Logo shows how the commercial takeover of public space, destruction of consumer choice, and replacement of real Jobs with temporary work – the dynamics of corporate globalization – impact everyone, everywhere. It also draws attention to the democratic resistance arising globally to halogen the hegemony of brands.
Free trade is a combined government/corporate construct that promotes an ideal environment for large multi-national companies to maximize profits. It is a system that allows a company that may or may not have begun as a manufacturer of a product to contract with factories, often in developing countries to make the product. This allows a company to move the manufacturing end of their business from factory to factory and country to country. Proponents of this model will proudly say that allowing unfettered free market capitalism works for everyone.
That ultimately, everyone is freer and the idea of hard work bringing the rewards of capitalism remains unchanged. But does a strictly profit motivated economy support this thesis? This video takes all of this a step further and identifies how companies are no longer marketing a product but a lifestyle. Naomi Klein explains the implications, the problems and the growing resistance to this economic model. It makes a complex issue entertaining to watch and understandable. Ms Klein is a visionary, making this definitely worth watching. The cost of materials generally are such that a company has a limited amount of control.
A shoe manufacturer for example, will have basically the same cost for materials regardless if the plant is located in Mexico, China or the United States. Not being tied to a geographic location gives them a good deal of control over only one thing: labor costs. So called industrialized nations have the highest labor costs. Even a non-union plant in the U. S. Paying minimum wage will have substantially higher labor costs than a plant in a developing country paying workers $4 per day. Often, a company with a contract which accommodates paying that $4 a day will sub-contract with a factory in another entry paying only $1 or $2 per day.
This has the effect of delegating workers to Jobs with the lowest possible wages, the least benefits, and the worst conditions. Anything else would put the workforce at risk of losing even the meager wages they have. Minimum wage in the Philippines is a little over $4 per day. The Philippines competes for manufacturing Jobs with Indonesia, Thailand, VietNam, China, Malaysia as well as Central American countries. Free Trade only works for the big corporations and in the long run maybe not even for them. They have effectively painted us all into a corner.
Cheap labor has locked us into an economy based on low prices and low wages. The family. The working poor rely on products from developing countries. Demand for cheap stuff perpetuates the need for expanding Free Trade areas. The South Korean government recently signed a Free Trade agreement. Major protests were happening all around their country, leading up to the signing and after it was a done deal. The workers know what’s up. They see how wages have dropped in every participating country. Resistance to government/corporate collusion is growing all around the world. Brief Introduction
When I picked up No Logo for the first time little did I know I was in possession of the bible of anti globalization. This book is ruthlessly researched with similarly unforgiving analyses. No Logo is about the impact super brands has on broader society. The separation of brand and product Klein explores the ideal that a brand is not created in the factory anymore; it’s created in the office. The brand is not a reflection of quality but a reflection of what the marketing department wants it to stand for. We’re not producing things, but images of things. The inconvenience of production is contracted out.
Klein uses Nikkei as an example of this. Nikkei uses third world labor to produce its products. They have used abusive sweatshops in Vietnam perhaps more interested in how much they can spend on branding than they need to on production. John Remainder, from Live Strauss, referred to this as greater flexibility to allocate resources and capital to its brands. It does seem odd that so many have favored a specific brand but for reasons that couldn’t be further removed from manufacturer quality. More alarmingly though is the conditions that a significant number of these contractors maintain in their factories.
To illustrate this point Klein provides an example of a actors in China called the Liana Shih Handbag Factory which produces Cathie Lee handbags for Wall-Mart. Wages per hour are $0. 13-$0. 23, 60-70 hours a week, 6 days a week with 10 hour shifts. Workers have no legal contract and the dorms are dirty and 10 per room. The marketing of cool to the young The source of marketing to youth, Klein reports is the identity crises brands suffered when the baby boomers fell off the consumer spectrum. As the baby boomers moved into old age and many passed away, brands had to find new markets.
Brills Cream took years to recover from this. In the sass’s brands that thrived included “ beers, soft rinks, fast food, chewing gum and sneakers”. “ Kids would still pay up to fit in”. “ Peer pressure became a powerful marketing tool”. Clothing retailing Elsie Decorate said of teenagers: “ they shop in packs… If you sell to one you sell to everyone in their school” Klein likens this to extreme keeping-up-with-the-Joneses. Klein astutely points out that cool is “ riddled with self doubt” therefore the brand has a stake in self doubt of teenagers.
The purpose of Marketing Cool, or Marketing cool to young adults is to perpetuate this ideal that through the right purchasing one can reach that Just out of each untapped well of cool. Klein discusses the morality of this type of marketing to insecure teenagers. Marketing is articulating what the ideal of beauty is with the motivation of profit; and this to a demographic which needs no encouragement to be insecure. Perhaps related to this is the “ peculiar cachet of working class kids skiing, golf or sailing”. The reaction Klein also addresses the reaction to the global brands’ questionable morals.
Local communities have campaigned against Wall-Mart’s presence and accused them of monopolistic practices. Also Klein discusses citizen art. Rodriguez De Gerard is a ultra Jammed who is skilled at the practice of parodying advertisements in order to drastically alter their message. De Gerard is particularly upset at billboards in poor areas promoting cigarettes and strong alcohol clearly targeting those who crave escapism. Recommendation If you study, or have any interest in, marketing, economics or even business ethics this book is a must.
It is very well researched and written informal enough to be a good read. Kelvin’s obvious intelligence is present from the first word to the last. Some other thoughts: “ An intelligently written and superbly reported account of a culture that has moved room selling products to hawking brands … A couple of chapters in, your mind is already reeling. Klein can write: favoring informality and crispness over jargon .. . Convincing and necessary, clear and fresh, calm but unsparing. “?? The Guardian “ A riveting conscientious piece of Journalism and a call to arms.
Packed with enlightening statistics and extraordinary anecdotal evidence, No Logo is fluent, undemocratically alive to the contradictions and omissions, and positively seethes with intelligent anger. “?? The Observer If you wanted to know what’s the deal with all the complaints about corporations and tit the way they create global economy, this is a good place to get your basics. Famous author Naomi Klein introduces the audience to various seductive ways corporations use to sell their products and various instructive ways they use to produce their goods as cheaply as possible.
Even if you already know all this, you’ll still probably learn something new during the 40 minutes of this interview. This documentary is not perfect, though. Some of her complaints are not really relevant and the solutions she’s suggesting seem like an afterthought (as if she put all of her effort solely in explaining the way the business works and problems it rates). Having said that, this explanation is excellent, understandable to a common man and the best part of the documentary.
If you want a quick course in big business economy, this film and Michael Moor’s excellent documentary Roger & Me (1989), where he shows an example of the damage to (his) local economy that a corporation can leave once it exports its factories (and Jobs) out of US, will do the Job nicely. In the social media age, branding has become Just a part of life. You can’t step out of your door for one day without seeing some type of logo out there. Seeing these company logos can be a bit annoying, and some of the world’s best-known brand find themselves being targets of anti-corporate campaigns by activists.
No Logo is a 40 minute documentary by based on the best-selling book by Canadian Journalist and activist Naomi Klein, explaining the reasons behind the backlash against the increasing economic and Nikkei, and Tommy Hillier has became revered symbols worldwide, and became symbols of globalization. Klein argues that globalization is a process whereby corporations discovered that profits lay not in making products, but in creating branded identities people adopt in their lifestyles. The documentary seem badly cheaply made and dated, with most of the camera work film Off television set. At less, my copy was.
I can barely see what is going on the screen because it was so blurry. Most of the film is Just commercials or vintage news reels that the film always eat up screen time, and then cut back to an badly green screen interview with Naomi Klein. While, I agree and disagree with some of the issues, Klein does bring up some really importation information. Using many media examples, the film shows how the commercial takeover of public space, destruction of consumer choice, and placement of real Jobs with temporary work, the dynamics of corporate globalization bearing everyone, everywhere.
It also draws attention to the democratic confrontation arising globally to encounter the power of brands. She brings up issues such as sweatshops in the Americas and Asia, culture Jamming, corporate censorship, and reclaim the streets. Like the book, it’s told in four parts, (“ No Space”, “ No Choice”, “ No Jobs”, and “ No Logo”). One thing, I wish the movie does more is explain globalization itself. She would discuss globalization in much greater detail in her 2002 book, Fences and Windows. She does tell the goods and bad things about branding, rather than a one sided complain.
I do like that she gives examples of how to reclaim democratic rights as well. Given examples of action, rather than ranting about it makes a good documentary message. Still, some of her solutions she’s suggesting seem like an afterthought. Having said that, this part is the best part of the film. Is anti-market ideology wrong? Does globalize lead to some new, tough issues for global labor markets? Yes, but on the other hand there is a reason that citizens of these 3rd world countries line up to get into these awful factories.
The alternative is an even lower standard of living. I do dislike WTFO and MIFF organizations who manipulate governments of third world countries into submission. When MIFF lends money to poor countries, they make it impossible for the borrowing country to pay back the debt. They want the poor countries to remain poor. So the governments in those countries are desperate to make money. They have little or no choice when it comes to enforcing good working conditions and human rights of its own working people. Either that or the governments and politicians are bought out by MIFF.
Look at China as the prime example. Labor conditions there are terrible by US standards and have been for a long time. But wages are increasing and there was recently a wave of worker protests that ultimately resulted in concessions and incremental improvement in conditions. Compare the life of the average Joe in China in 1970 to present. China is booming. The Chinese worker is still getting treated better than other workers. The rest of the world is going through what we did 50-125 years ago. For our grandparent’s working in crappy factory Jobs was the norm.
Eventually, they were able to improve the conditions of their workplace and raise the general tankard of living for the nation. Social prosperity without work (I. E. The economic production of goods of services of value to society) is a fairy tale. Our comfortable standard of living today is built on the sweat of our grandparent’s’ work. It could be just more pronounced now. The British Empire had it. The Roman Empire had it even the Egyptians. Globalization is an evolving process it is neither good nor is it evil, its effects which are a result of man’s greed which is evil. This is nothing new.
I agree with having fair trade but don’t blame advertising for ruining the quality of our products. This is Just so cynical. If you want to change the quality of products, buy fair trade goods. Yes fair trade sellers are corporations too! Even farmer’s markets are turning into corporations, and if you happen to be a small business, you might find yourself turning to a bigger company. It’s capitalism at its best and worst. The problem with docs like this is they paint the corporations as owning and manipulating us. We own them, and the fact that they do all this stuff Just shows how desperate they are for our approval.
Nobody is forcing you to buy off them. Yes, maybe they trying to manipulated subconsciously, but we still have brains. We’re not brainwash. I don’t even buy Nikkei, and I saw many commercials of it. I can care less about Nikkei. Yes, some people fall for the commercials and logos, but some people need to think before shopping. Get as much information about the product, then decide if it’s willing to buy. This film is a bit dated, and I found it to be a bit hypocrite. Everybody has recreated themselves as their own brand. A minimalists self-brand.
She’s making money off of this book with a ‘ logo’ and this film. Still, it’s worth watching and worth thinking about. This is a documentary film based on the best- ailing book by author Naomi Klein. In the age of the brand, logos are everywhere. But why do some of the world’s best-known brands find themselves on the wrong end of the spray paint can? Using hundreds of media examples, No Logo shows how the commercial takeover of public space, destruction of consumer choice, and replacement of real Jobs with temporary work the dynamics of corporate globalization impact everyone, everywhere.
It also draws attention to the democratic resistance arising globally to challenge the hegemony of brands. “ When you have a culture where ideas are not treated as being connected to belief or action but are Just commodity and Just to be used and attach – “ Oh, diversity, let’s use that to sell Benton sweaters, community, let’s use that for Struck” – the ideas themselves are devalued. ” -Naomi Klein In the age of the brand, logos are everywhere. But why do some of the world’s best-known brands find themselves on the wrong end of the spray paint can ?? the targets of anti-corporate campaigns by activists and protesters?
No Logo, based on the best-selling book by Canadian journalist and activist Naomi Klein, reveals the reasons behind the backlash against the increasing economic and cultural reach of multinational companies. Analyzing how brands like Nikkei, The Gap, and Tommy Hellfire became revered symbols worldwide, Klein argues that globalization is a process whereby corporations discovered that profits lay not in making products (outsourced to low- wage workers in developing countries), but in creating branded identities people adopt in their lifestyles.
Using hundreds of media examples, No Logo shows how the replacement of real Jobs with temporary work – the dynamics of corporate globalization – impact everyone, everywhere. It also draws attention to the Social and economic analyst, Naomi Klein discusses the effects of centralization ND the democratic resistance against corporate globalization With a new Afterward to the 2002 edition, No Logo employs Journalistic as’. N. Y 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 Nikkei 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 Simmers” utilize spray paint, computer-hacking acumen, ND 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 Goliath 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
The capsule review of the Naomi Klein “ No Logo” DVD (based on her groundbreaking book of the same name) by the Media Education Foundation, which made the film, says: “ Using hundreds of media examples, No Logo shows how the commercial takeover of public space, destruction of consumer choice, and replacement of real jobs with temporary work the dynamics of corporate globalization impact everyone, everywhere. It also draws attention to the democratic resistance arising globally to challenge the hegemony of brands. ” It also notes that “ Analyzing how brands like Nikkei, The Gap, and Tommy Hillier became revered symbols worldwide,
Klein argues that globalization is a process whereby corporations discovered that profits lay not in making products (outsourced to low-wage workers in developing countries), but in creating branded identities people adopt in their lifestyles. ” Backslash cannot emphasize how important Kelvin’s work has been in pinpointing the mass marketing strategy of modern consumerism and we might add politics. Klein connects the dots as to how we arrived at a point when global brands, actual product. The consumer is buying a desirable image of him or herself that the product enhances. The actual product is secondary.
It would be hard not to use this theory to understand how Bush is marketed as a brand by Karl Rove, with certain associations of piousness, humility and determination, which many consumers (voters) “ buy,” even though the brand resonance of Bush is divorced from the stark, destructive reality of the product delivered by him and his administration. Coca-Cola was the first American product to master the sale of a rather mundane item a carbonated beverage by selling associations with the product: friendship, good times, “ the pause that refreshes,” holiday cheer, patriotism, youthfulness.
This is nothing that a Coke will provide you with in and of itself; it is what advertising brings to your mental perception of the product. You become convinced that the product will fill a certain emotional need, even though it is Just a carbonated drink. Without the advertising, it would hardly be the worldwide phenomenon that it is. What’s more, Klein points out how the development of brand identities have created international product marketing that supersedes national boundaries and makes multi-national corporations so powerful that they are beholden to no one nation.
Furthermore, they often create images of products that are associated with positive global goals, while employing sweatshop practices to increase their profit margins. We live in an ironic world where the image of product has to deliver, but the product doesn’t. Although Klein concentrates on corporate branding, the parallel to how Rove crafts Bush is inescapable. What you see is not what you get, but what Rove is selling is a brand, not substance. We are being sold emotional associations and personally appealing images; that’s what we are buying.
What the delivery person brings us or he politician doesn’t matter to many consumers and voters if they wholeheartedly believe in the advertising associations created around the brand. Klein, in this conversational DVD enhanced with product and brand globalization footage is Just brilliant. She provides a Rosetta stone to how arrived at a time when branding to meet psychological needs and desires has surpassed product development as a sales tool. One need only look at politics in the United States to understand the impact of this shift in consumerism and voting patterns.
From Amazon 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 Kelvin’s No Logo, “ walking, talking, life-sized Tommy [Hellfire] 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 dissemination 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 Wall-Mart and 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 Fiasco? 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 Nikkei sneakers or other must-have fashion items. Klein also discusses at some length the tactic of hiring “ parameters” who can do most of the ark 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 Nine’s abusive labor practices but about the astronomical markup in their prices. Boycotts have commenced: as one urban teen put it, “ Nikkei, we made you. We can break you. But there’s more to the revolution, as Klein optimistically recounts: “ Ethical shareholders, culture Simmers, street reclaims, Monoclinic organizers, human-rights hastiest, 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 –This text refers to the Hardcover edition. 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 Struck. Looking around her, Klein finds that the breathless promise of the information gather it would be a time of consumer choice and interactive communications 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 workaround 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 Artists. Can. ) This is a powerful and exceptionally well researched book which documents the economics of globalization in frightening detail.
The globalization equation goes like this: first, sack as many of your US employees as possible, and retainer all of your employees which actually manufacture anything your company sells. Second, contract out your manufacturing to developing countries while putting political and economic pressure on the governments of those countries to keep the wages at below what anyone could possible live on. Your goods will be made in sweatshops under dangerous and sub-human conditions and each worker will cost you only cents an hour.
Contracting out the manufacturing also conveniently distances you from the human rights violations involved. Third, import your goods back to the US and sell them for the same price or higher than you used to when they ere made by Americans, but now cream in the sass of percent higher profit margins. Fourth, pay yourself an annual bonus for increasing profits which is so large that it could support all, or most, of your sweatshop workers (in good conditions) for a decade or more of their lives.
Fifth, couch your company’s globalization strategies in terms of increased efficiency and Job provision in poor countries – perpetuate the myth that assibilation is good for everyone. For an example of this equation: that “ family values” company Disney pays its CEO $9, 783 an hour, while their Haitian manufacturing workers get ICC a hour – at such a rate it would take a worker 16. 8 years to earn the Coos hourly income. In addition the CEO exercised $181 million of his stock options in 1996, which is enough to take care of his 19, 000 Haitian workers and their families for 14 years!
Welcome to the world of economic feudalism. This book changed the way I think about my environment. I notice every single billboards, and advertisements now. It even gave me the urge to deface some big chain conglomerates that put my favorite bookstores and record stores out of business. This book is quite insightful, especially with the way the chapters are laid out. It walks the reader through the process of advertisements, buying, as well as the day in the life of garment/shoe workers. It made me aware about the impact of every single purchases I make, and the ripple effect it creates.
This ranks among the most important books I’ve ever read. This film takes all of this a step further and identifies how companies are no longer marketing a product but marketing a lifestyle. Naomi explains the recapitulation, the problems and the development resistance to this economic model, and it makes a implicated question interesting to watch and understand. There are a handful of brands that understood that marketing could play a larger role than simply branding their product as a mark of quality.
They understood that they could sell ideas, that they could sell lifestyles. For example, Coca-Cola, Disney, McDonald’s – these core American brands became powerful precisely because they understood that they were selling ideas instead of products, that they were selling an idea about family. For instant, Coca-Cola was selling the youth lifestyle in the sixties, they started selling ace and love, they were selling something way more profound than their fairly generic product, which was this black fizzy liquid.
More and more of what people have is a stratosphere of the super-brand where everyone is everything and these and saying: “ no, we are not Just a clothing company, we can be a music company and we are not Just a music company, we can have our own planes”. So people have this stratosphere of warring mega-brands that want to be everywhere and be everything. Are kind of imperial powers that are constantly pushing against their own boundaries
