No Logo
Encyclopedia
No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies is a book by Canadian
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

 author Naomi Klein
Naomi Klein
Naomi Klein is a Canadian author and social activist known for her political analyses and criticism of corporate globalization.-Family:...

. First published by Knopf Canada in January 2000, shortly after the 1999 WTO
World Trade Organization
The World Trade Organization is an organization that intends to supervise and liberalize international trade. The organization officially commenced on January 1, 1995 under the Marrakech Agreement, replacing the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade , which commenced in 1948...

 Ministerial Conference protests
WTO Ministerial Conference of 1999 protest activity
Protest activity surrounding the WTO Ministerial Conference of 1999, which was to be the launch of a new millennial round of trade negotiations, occurred on November 30, 1999 , when the World Trade Organization convened at the Washington State Convention and Trade Center in Seattle, Washington,...

 in Seattle had generated media attention around such issues, it became one of the most influential books about the alter-globalization
Alter-globalization
Alter-globalization is the name of a social movement that supports global cooperation and interaction, but which opposes the negative effects of economic globalization, feeling that it often works to the detriment of, or does not...

 movement and an international bestseller.

Focus

The book focuses on brand
Brand
The American Marketing Association defines a brand as a "Name, term, design, symbol, or any other feature that identifies one seller's good or service as distinct from those of other sellers."...

ing, 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 sweatshop
Sweatshop
Sweatshop is a negatively connoted term for any working environment considered to be unacceptably difficult or dangerous. Sweatshop workers often work long hours for very low pay, regardless of laws mandating overtime pay or a minimum wage. Child labour laws may be violated. Sweatshops may have...

s in the Americas
Americas
The Americas, or America , are lands in the Western hemisphere, also known as the New World. In English, the plural form the Americas is often used to refer to the landmasses of North America and South America with their associated islands and regions, while the singular form America is primarily...

 and Asia
Asia
Asia is the world's largest and most populous continent, located primarily in the eastern and northern hemispheres. It covers 8.7% of the Earth's total surface area and with approximately 3.879 billion people, it hosts 60% of the world's current human population...

, culture jamming
Culture jamming
Culture jamming, coined in 1984, denotes a tactic used by many anti-consumerist social movements to disrupt or subvert mainstream cultural institutions, including corporate advertising. Guerrilla semiotics and night discourse are sometimes used synonymously with the term culture jamming.Culture...

, corporate censorship
Corporate censorship
Corporate censorship is censorship by corporations, the sanctioning of speech by spokespersons, employees, and business associates by threat of monetary loss, loss of employment, or loss of access to the marketplace.- TV Guide debate :...

, and Reclaim the Streets
Reclaim the Streets
Reclaim The Streets is a collective with a shared ideal of community ownership of public spaces. Participants characterize the collective as a resistance movement opposed to the dominance of corporate forces in globalization, and to the car as the dominant mode of transport.-Protests:Reclaim The...

. She pays special attention to the deeds and misdeeds of Nike
Nike, Inc.
Nike, Inc. is a major publicly traded sportswear and equipment supplier based in the United States. The company is headquartered near Beaverton, Oregon, which is part of the Portland metropolitan area...

, The Gap, McDonald's, Shell
Royal Dutch Shell
Royal Dutch Shell plc , commonly known as Shell, is a global oil and gas company headquartered in The Hague, Netherlands and with its registered office in London, United Kingdom. It is the fifth-largest company in the world according to a composite measure by Forbes magazine and one of the six...

, and Microsoft
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...

 - and of their lawyers, contractors, and advertising agencies
Advertising agency
An advertising agency or ad agency is a service business dedicated to creating, planning and handling advertising for its clients. An ad agency is independent from the client and provides an outside point of view to the effort of selling the client's products or services...

. 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 appears frequently as a recurring theme, Klein rarely addresses the topic of globalization itself, and usually indirectly. (She would go on to discuss globalization in much greater detail in her 2002 book, Fences and Windows
Fences and Windows
Fences and Windows: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the Globalization Debate is a 2002 book by Canadian journalist Naomi Klein and editor Debra Ann Levy. The book is a collection of newspaper articles, mostly from The Globe and Mail, with a few magazine articles from The Nation and speech...

.)

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 (Latin American debt crisis
Latin American debt crisis
The Latin American debt crisis was a financial crisis that occurred in the early 1980s , often known as the "lost decade", when Latin American countries reached a point where their foreign debt exceeded their earning power and they were not able to repay it.-Origins:In the 1960s and 1970s many...

, Black Monday (1987)
Black Monday (1987)
In finance, Black Monday refers to Monday October 19, 1987, when stock markets around the world crashed, shedding a huge value in a very short time. The crash began in Hong Kong and spread west to Europe, hitting the United States after other markets had already declined by a significant margin...

, Savings and loan crisis
Savings and Loan crisis
The savings and loan crisis of the 1980s and 1990s was the failure of about 747 out of the 3,234 savings and loan associations in the United States...

 Japanese asset price bubble
Japanese asset price bubble
The was an economic bubble in Japan from 1986 to 1991, in which real estate and stock prices were greatly inflated. The bubble's collapse lasted for more than a decade with stock prices initially bottoming in 2003, although they would descend even further amidst the global crisis in 2008. The...

), 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
Nike, Inc.
Nike, Inc. is a major publicly traded sportswear and equipment supplier based in the United States. The company is headquartered near Beaverton, Oregon, which is part of the Portland metropolitan area...

 or Pepsi
Pepsi
Pepsi is a carbonated soft drink that is produced and manufactured by PepsiCo...

 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 through market dominance (Wal-Mart
Wal-Mart
Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. , branded as Walmart since 2008 and Wal-Mart before then, is an American public multinational corporation that runs chains of large discount department stores and warehouse stores. The company is the world's 18th largest public corporation, according to the Forbes Global 2000...

) or through aggressive invasion of a region (Starbucks
Starbucks
Starbucks Corporation is an international coffee and coffeehouse chain based in Seattle, Washington. Starbucks is the largest coffeehouse company in the world, with 17,009 stores in 55 countries, including over 11,000 in the United States, over 1,000 in Canada, over 700 in the United Kingdom, and...

). Klein argues that the goal of each company is to become the dominant force in its respective field. Meanwhile, other corporations, such as Sony
Sony
, commonly referred to as Sony, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan and the world's fifth largest media conglomerate measured by revenues....

 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 and provide greater control over their image. ABC News
ABC News
ABC News is the news gathering and broadcasting division of American broadcast television network ABC, a subsidiary of The Walt Disney Company...

, 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
Wal-Mart
Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. , branded as Walmart since 2008 and Wal-Mart before then, is an American public multinational corporation that runs chains of large discount department stores and warehouse stores. The company is the world's 18th largest public corporation, according to the Forbes Global 2000...

, 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 or content of products like magazines or albums so they 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 there are no labor laws, leading to dire working conditions.

The book then shifts back to North America
North America
North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...

, 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
McJob
McJob is slang for a low-paying, low-prestige dead end job that requires few skills and offers very little chance of intracompany advancement...

 is introduced, defined as a job with poor compensation that does not keep pace with inflation, inflexible or undesirable hours, little chance of advancement, 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 1990s
1990s
File:1990s decade montage.png|From left, clockwise: The Hubble Space Telescope floats in space after it was taken up in 1990; American F-16s and F-15s fly over burning oil fields and the USA Lexie in Operation Desert Storm, also known as the 1991 Gulf War; The signing of the Oslo Accords on...

. These include Adbusters
AdBusters
The Adbusters Media Foundation is a Canadian-based not-for-profit, anti-consumerist, pro-environment organization founded in 1989 by Kalle Lasn and Bill Schmalz in Vancouver, British Columbia...

 magazine and the culture jamming
Culture jamming
Culture jamming, coined in 1984, denotes a tactic used by many anti-consumerist social movements to disrupt or subvert mainstream cultural institutions, including corporate advertising. Guerrilla semiotics and night discourse are sometimes used synonymously with the term culture jamming.Culture...

 movement, as well as Reclaim the Streets
Reclaim the Streets
Reclaim The Streets is a collective with a shared ideal of community ownership of public spaces. Participants characterize the collective as a resistance movement opposed to the dominance of corporate forces in globalization, and to the car as the dominant mode of transport.-Protests:Reclaim The...

 and the McLibel trial. Less radical protests are also discussed, such as the various movements aimed at putting an end to sweatshop
Sweatshop
Sweatshop is a negatively connoted term for any working environment considered to be unacceptably difficult or dangerous. Sweatshop workers often work long hours for very low pay, regardless of laws mandating overtime pay or a minimum wage. Child labour laws may be violated. Sweatshops may have...

 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."

Criticism

Klein has copyrighted No Logo, and a multinational corporation
Multinational corporation
A multi national corporation or enterprise , is a corporation or an enterprise that manages production or delivers services in more than one country. It can also be referred to as an international corporation...

 published it (a fact that Klein explicitly points out in the book).

After the book's release, Klein was heavily criticized by the news magazine The Economist
The Economist
The Economist is an English-language weekly news and international affairs publication owned by The Economist Newspaper Ltd. and edited in offices in the City of Westminster, London, England. Continuous publication began under founder James Wilson in September 1843...

, leading to a broadcast debate with Klein and the magazine's writers, dubbed "No Logo vs. Pro Logo".

The 2004 book The Rebel Sell
The Rebel Sell
The Rebel Sell: Why the culture can't be jammed is a non-fiction book written by Canadian authors Joseph Heath and Andrew Potter in 2004...

(published as Nation of Rebels in the United States) specifically criticised 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.

Awards

The book won the following awards:
  • The 2001 National Business Book Award
    National Business Book Award
    The National Business Book Award is an award presented to Canadian business authors. The award, presented every year since 1985, is sponsored by PricewaterhouseCoopers, the Bank of Montreal, and the Globe and Mail....

  • The 2001 French Prix Médiations

No Logo was also short-listed for the Guardian First Book Award
Guardian First Book Award
Guardian First Book Award, issued before 1999 as Guardian Fiction Prize or Guardian Fiction Award, is awarded to new writing in fiction and non-fiction.-History:...

 in 2000.

Editions

Several imprint
Imprint
In the publishing industry, an imprint can mean several different things:* As a piece of bibliographic information about a book, it refers to the name and address of the book's publisher and its date of publication as given at the foot or on the verso of its title page.* It can mean a trade name...

s of No Logo exist, including ISBN 0-676-97130-X (hardcover first edition), ISBN 0-312-20343-8 (hardcover), and ISBN 0-312-27192-1 (paperback). A 10th anniversary edition was published by Fourth Estate, ISBN 978-0-00-734077-4, that includes a new introduction by the author. 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
Sut Jhally
Satvinder "Sut" Jhally , is a professor of Communication at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and is one of the world’s leading experts on cultural studies, advertising, media, and consumption. He is the producer of 40+ documentaries on media literacy topics and the founder and executive...

.

Influence in pop culture

  • Members of the English rock group Radiohead
    Radiohead
    Radiohead are an English rock band from Abingdon, Oxfordshire, formed in 1985. The band consists of Thom Yorke , Jonny Greenwood , Ed O'Brien , Colin Greenwood and Phil Selway .Radiohead released their debut single "Creep" in 1992...

     have stated that the book influenced them particularly during the making of their fourth and fifth albums, Kid A
    Kid A
    Kid A is the fourth studio album by the English rock band Radiohead, released in October 2000 by the Parlophone label. A commercial success worldwide, Kid A went platinum in its first week of release in the United Kingdom. Despite the lack of an official single or music video as publicity, Kid A...

    (2000) and Amnesiac
    Amnesiac
    Amnesiac was generally well-received by critics. It was also ranked as one of the best albums of the year by several publications. The Village Voice Pazz and Jop poll ranked it number 6 on their top 10 albums of the year. Alternative Press declared it the #1 album of the year...

    (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.
  • Argentine-American rock singer Kevin Johansen
    Kevin Johansen
    Kevin Johansen is an Argentine-American rock musician. Born to an Argentine mother, Marta Calvet, and an American father, he lived most of his childhood in the San Francisco Bay Area, but moved with his family to Buenos Aires at the age of 12...

     wrote a song inspired by Klein's book. A copy of No Logo is even used in the official video for the song "Logo".
  • Canadian metal band Inner Surge have listed Klein's book as an influence on selected tracks from their album Signals Screaming.
  • The book was referenced in Robert Muchamore
    Robert Muchamore
    Robert Kilgore Muchamore is an English author, most notable for writing the CHERUB and Henderson's Boys novels.-Prior to writing:...

    's CHERUB: The Recruit
    CHERUB: The Recruit
    The Recruit is the first novel in the CHERUB series, written by Robert Muchamore. It introduces most of the main characters, such as James Adams , Lauren Adams , Kyle Blueman and Kerry Chang...

    . It was recommended to James Adams by Brian 'Bungle' Evans, and later by Ewart Asker.
  • The book is referenced in Ian Ferguson
    Ian Ferguson (writer)
    Ian Ferguson is a Canadian author and playwright.He is the brother of journalist and author Will Ferguson, with whom he co-wrote the 2001 book How To Be A Canadian ....

     and Will Ferguson
    Will Ferguson
    William Stener "Will" Ferguson is a Canadian writer and novelist best known for his humorous observations on Canadian history and culture....

    '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 is referred to in Warren Ellis
    Warren Ellis
    Warren Girard Ellis is an English author of comics, novels, and television, who is well-known for sociocultural commentary, both through his online presence and through his writing, which covers transhumanist themes...

    's Doktor Sleepless
    Doktor Sleepless
    Doktor Sleepless is a monthly comic book series written by Warren Ellis with art by Ivan Rodriguez that is published by Avatar Press, launched in July 2007...

    , when during a speech about consumerism the Doktor mentions that "Even No Logo had a fucking logo on it".
  • Rapper MC Lars
    MC Lars
    Andrew Robert MacFarlane Nielsen is an American rapper, known by his stage name MC Lars. He is the self-proclaimed originator of "post-punk laptop rap". He was one of the first underground rappers to sample and reference post-punk and emo bands...

    's album This Gigantic Robot Kills
    This Gigantic Robot Kills
    This Gigantic Robot Kills is the sixth album by nerdcore musician MC Lars.Lars has stated that he worked with "Weird Al" Yankovic, the Rondo Brothers, Nick Rowe and Mike Kennedy of Bloodsimple, James Bourne of Busted, Daniel Dart of Time Again, Donal Finn of Flash Bastard, Pierre Bouvier of Simple...

    contains a track entitled "No Logo", a satirical analysis of anti-government youth, partially inspired by the book.
  • Argentinian soloist Indio Solari referred to the book in the song "Nike is the Culture" (Nike es la cultura), singing, "You shout no logo, or don't you shout no logo, or you shout no logo no".
  • Dhani Harrison
    Dhani Harrison
    Dhani Harrison is an English musician and the son of George Harrison of The Beatles and Olivia Harrison. Harrison debuted as a professional musician when completing his father's final album Brainwashed after George Harrison's death in November 2001...

    , son of George Harrison
    George Harrison
    George Harrison, MBE was an English musician, guitarist, singer-songwriter, actor and film producer who achieved international fame as lead guitarist of The Beatles. Often referred to as "the quiet Beatle", Harrison became over time an admirer of Indian mysticism, and introduced it to the other...

     and front-man of English electronic/alternative rock group Thenewno2
    Thenewno2
    Thenewno2 are an alternative rock band from London, originally composed of Dhani Harrison and Oliver Hecks, with Harrison playing lead guitar and singing lead vocals, and Hecks playing drums and synthesizer. As of mid 2009, the live band features Harrison, Jon Sadoff, Jeremy Faccone, Nick Fyffe,...

    , has stated that No Logo had a large influence on their 2008 release, You Are Here
    You Are Here (thenewno2 album)
    You Are Here is the debut album by Thenewno2. It was released online on 1 August 2008, and in stores on 31 March 2009. The album was written, produced and performed by Dhani Harrison and Oliver Hecks. The album was recorded and mixed by Paul Hicks....

    .

See also

  • Adbusters
    AdBusters
    The Adbusters Media Foundation is a Canadian-based not-for-profit, anti-consumerist, pro-environment organization founded in 1989 by Kalle Lasn and Bill Schmalz in Vancouver, British Columbia...

  • Brand
    Brand
    The American Marketing Association defines a brand as a "Name, term, design, symbol, or any other feature that identifies one seller's good or service as distinct from those of other sellers."...

  • Consumerism
    Consumerism
    Consumerism is a social and economic order that is based on the systematic creation and fostering of a desire to purchase goods and services in ever greater amounts. The term is often associated with criticisms of consumption starting with Thorstein Veblen...

  • Export processing zone
  • Free trade
    Free trade
    Under a free trade policy, prices emerge from supply and demand, and are the sole determinant of resource allocation. 'Free' trade differs from other forms of trade policy where the allocation of goods and services among trading countries are determined by price strategies that may differ from...

  • Generation X
    Generation X
    Generation X, commonly abbreviated to Gen X, is the generation born after the Western post–World War II baby boom ended. While there is no universally agreed upon time frame, the term generally includes people born from the early 1960's through the early 1980's, usually no later than 1981 or...

  • Marketing
    Marketing
    Marketing is the process used to determine what products or services may be of interest to customers, and the strategy to use in sales, communications and business development. It generates the strategy that underlies sales techniques, business communication, and business developments...

  • McJob
    McJob
    McJob is slang for a low-paying, low-prestige dead end job that requires few skills and offers very little chance of intracompany advancement...

  • Occupy movement
    Occupy movement
    The Occupy movement is an international protest movement which is primarily directed against economic and social inequality. The first Occupy protest to be widely covered was Occupy Wall Street in New York City, taking place on September 17, 2011...

  • Reclaim the Streets
    Reclaim the Streets
    Reclaim The Streets is a collective with a shared ideal of community ownership of public spaces. Participants characterize the collective as a resistance movement opposed to the dominance of corporate forces in globalization, and to the car as the dominant mode of transport.-Protests:Reclaim The...

  • Sweatshop
    Sweatshop
    Sweatshop is a negatively connoted term for any working environment considered to be unacceptably difficult or dangerous. Sweatshop workers often work long hours for very low pay, regardless of laws mandating overtime pay or a minimum wage. Child labour laws may be violated. Sweatshops may have...

  • World Trade Organization
    World Trade Organization
    The World Trade Organization is an organization that intends to supervise and liberalize international trade. The organization officially commenced on January 1, 1995 under the Marrakech Agreement, replacing the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade , which commenced in 1948...



External links


Multimedia

  • CBC Archives - CBC Television HotType N. Klein talking about her book.
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