Naomi Klein has a great article in the Guardian about the repercussions of her anti-branding book No Logo, which came out ten years ago:

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The aversion extended even to the brand that I had accidentally created: No Logo. From studying Nike and Starbucks, I was well acquainted with the basic tenet of brand management: find your message, trademark and protect it and repeat yourself ad nauseam through as many synergised platforms as possible. I set out to break these rules whenever the opportunity arose. The offers for No Logo spin-off projects (feature film, TV series, clothing line . . .) were rejected. So were the ones from the megabrands and cutting-edge advertising agencies that wanted me to give them seminars on why they were so hated (there was a career to be made, I was learning, in being a kind of anti-corporate dominatrix, making overpaid executives feel good by telling them what bad, bad brands they were). And against all sensible advice, I stuck by the decision not to trademark the title (that means no royalties from a line of Italian No Logo food products, though they did send me some lovely olive oil).

The article, which touches on the Bush administration, 15th Ave Coffee & Tea, and the branding of the Obama campaign, is very good and you should read it.

12 replies on “No Logo, Ten Years Later”

  1. A friend and I were discussing the ridiculous degree of “product placement” in Hollywood films today. Even in The Book of Eli, which takes place in a post-apocalyptic world, there was clear product placement for GMC and KFC. It is inescapable.

  3. Oh yea…the book that rails against multinational corporations and copyrights. Only to copyright the hell out of the book and use a multinational corporation to publish it. That book?

  5. There are many acts of destruction for which the Bush years are rightly reviled – the illegal invasions, the defiant defences of torture, the tanking of the global economy. But the administration’s most lasting legacy may well be the way it systematically did to the US government what branding-mad CEOs did to their companies a decade earlier: it hollowed it out, handing over to the private sector many of the most essential functions of government, from protecting borders to responding to disasters to collecting intelligence. This hollowing out was not a side project of the Bush years, it was a central mission, reaching into every field of governance. And though the Bush clan was often ridiculed for its incompetence, the process of auctioning off the state, leaving behind only a shell – or a brand – was approached with tremendous focus and precision.

    Ms. Klein is a perceptive woman. This is exactly what the MBA-in-Chief did.

  6. @3 &4: You’re not honestly dismissing this book because she published it, are you? What would be the more correct way for her to communicate the information? Rant it from a street corner?

  8. @6, I’m assuming that Fnarf was commenting on the obviousness that this book was printed by a large publisher and therefore mrbombit’s comment is a moot point.

  9. Not to be a whiner, but although I generally agree with Naomi Klein’s findings, her writing is the most opaque, boring, long-winded soporific bilge-goo. Covered with a heavy frosting of narcissism.

  11. Totally agree with #9. She might be railing against all the corporate offers she’s been getting, but all her speaking tours were filled with crowds wearing “No Logo” tee shirts, etc. Many of her fans certainly worship her like a brand.

  12. @9/11: She wasn’t necessarily writing for everyone. The book verges on being critical theory/academia — There’s not necessarily anything wrong with it not being accessible since it spawned a number of more approachable successors.

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