Introduction
Naomi Klein’s book is the face of contemporary material culture. She highlights the dangers of consumerism by looking at how mass-produced items are altering the social, political and economic landscape of the world.
Analysis of the book
In the volume, the author looks at the effect of a brand on any product. She posits that production is no longer a central part of business; it is the marketing of these items that matters.
Klein (95) believes marketing analysts concoct the perceived value of their products in their offices and sell them to the masses. Therefore, when people purchase branded products, they are buying the name rather than the quality of the product. Klein further explains how businesses have pushed production to the periphery of the production process.
Firms sell these items in countries that do not produce them. Overseas destinations like China and Vietnam make most Nike products. These countries have poor labor laws that utilize sweatshop labor and infringe on workers’ rights. It is thus astounding that many westerners are loyal to a brand even when loyalty has little to do with quality. One such example was the production of shopping bags for Wal-Mart in China.
Klein (45) explains that many workers in a remote Chinese location called Liang Shi have to pull ten-hours shifts for 6 days a week, yet they only earn and average wage rate of between $0.13 and $0.23. Furthermore, these employees live in a crammed, unkempt dormitory. The company could dismiss any one of them without notice as they sign no contracts.
“No Logo” thus enlightens how branding leads to the ripple-wave effect of job losses. Not only do persons in the west lose potential positions of employment, in their own country, but the people who get those jobs in the East can only access temporary ones. The importance of this state of affairs in export processing zones like China is indicative of the challenges of consumerism.
The people who work for these factories have military-like supervisors; some of them abuse and overwork them. Others are too young to fight for their rights or too desperate to quit. In this regard, Klein (199) dispels the notion that outsourcing jobs to developing nations leads to sustainable development. What these exporting countries have to contend with is an unstable job system that devalues their worth as human beings.
Matters are even grimmer in the west, from where manufacturing jobs emanate. Currently, the country is in a state of disillusionment because people have to compete for service sector jobs or minimum-wage jobs in franchises. Several large corporations justify their job models by claiming that they give opportunities to fresh graduates or persons who are still in school.
However, the bleak reality is that those minimum-wage jobs have minimal opportunities for advancement. Furthermore, they give remarkably little and demand too much from American employees. Therefore, branding has not just created problems for exporting countries; it has also led to the demise of jobs in the West.
Klein (140) explains the origin of branding as an aspect of America’s material culture. It began during the late eighties when the country’s economy was plummeting. Some firms responded to these challenges by utilizing short-term measures like price decreases; a case in point was the Marlboro brand.
Alternatively, some organizations like Apple invested heavily in their advertising budget so that they could expand their reach. Organizations like Disney and The Body Shop did relatively well by choosing such a strategy. Most firms had been marketing their products to baby boomers, but since this group has started aging, it was necessary to explore new market segments.
The youth became a lucrative marketing segment for mass producers. They utilized concepts of peer pressure to coerce them into purchasing soft drinks, sneakers, fast food and several others.
The 1990s were the decade when marketers realized that self doubt among teenagers was a powerful tool. They could offer their products as solutions to self doubt by flaunting them as ‘cool’ items. Marketers would sell the ideal of beauty to individuals and thus fuel that insecurity to them.
The public has not been immune to the tactics and strategists of marketers who resort to unethical means to sell their brands. Several communities have spoken out against large scale corporations like Wal-Mart.
Some of them have lobbied against their monopolistic tendencies as well as their unfair trading practices. In this regard, even the same youths, who were the target of these brand campaigns, have spoken out against them. For instance, some streets have graffiti and other forms of art designed to criticize mass branding.
Additionally, artists like Rodriguez Gerada have established themselves in their industries by mocking advertisements. He often parodies them in order to provoke criticism about their messages. Many consumer advocates have also spoken out against the marketing of alcoholic products in poor neighbors as this preys on their need for escapism. The backlash against large corporate brands may thus be credited to activists who have realized the evils of mass consumption.
Some anti-branding activists have opposed large companies like Pepsi and Shell, and thus illustrated that they have power over such influential groups. A case in point was the opposition of the sale of Pepsi in Myanmar, where plenty of human rights abuses were on-going.
Additionally, advocates opposed the entry of Shell into Nigeria, whose government had oppressed it’s people. Such actions are indicative of a revolution against the corporation. The author to the book believed that people had the capacity to overthrow these companies if they continued to propagate their evils against the people.
The last part of the book talks about aspects of the anti-corporate campaign that will begin with street mobilization. Klein (371) predicts an Armageddon in which street movements will come together and fight off these business maniacs. She believes that a series of bikers and other seemingly marginalized members of the community will coalesce on a day of reckoning for large companies.
The latter aspect is rather myopic because such a prediction assumes that several anti-branding activists already exist. These predictions did not come to pass thus putting into question the strategy advocated for by Naomi Klein in her book.
Ledbetter (5) makes a good critic of the book by asserting that it is useful in placing the aspect of consumer advocacy in its context. It proves that when people mobilize each other in order to meet a certain object, they are likely to create an enormous effect on the corporation.
Pepsi pulled out of Burma because the country had an oppressive regime that people in America vehemently opposed. They refrained from the Pepsi brand until the company decided that it had to bend to it’s consumers’ demands. The activist network is a complex thing to develop, but it often yields results that are difficult to ignore.
In this review, the critic highlights Klein’s thesis as ‘the dangers of image-building among large corporations’. “No Logo’s” author believes that branding was a strategy designed to ensure the survival of large corporations during periods of relative success as well as during periods of financial strain.
However, this strategy has backfired on the same companies because they contradict some of the values that they have tried to sell. Nike and Benetton often sell their brands as tolerant and equitable. They usually engage in corporate social responsible, and affirm that they are ethical companies. As a result, consumers have come to expect a lot from large firms. Several of them now use those social ideals to hold corporations accountable.
Consumer advocates often oppose the distortions and contradictions of these values through the people who are responsible over them. Whenever a company sponsors a lunch in a university, then it is supporting certain values. If these corporations had refrained from participating in people’s lives, then chances are that there would be no backlash against them through anti-branding sentiments.
Ledbetter (10) criticizes the selectivity employed by Klein in the creation of her books as she does not talk about the effect of branding in the most controversial industries like oil, cigarettes and finance. Furthermore, he criticizes her inclination towards large corporations alone, even though small businesses have affected jobs, as well.
This book is a critical discourse on the effects of consumerism as perpetuated by large-scale corporations. It is indicative of a new approach to materiality as current methods are triggering a backlash amongst the masses.
Works Cited
Klein, Naomi. No Logo. Knopf, Canada: Picador, 1999. Print,
Ledbetter, James. “Brand Names.”. The New York Times 23 Apr. 2000: A7. Print.