No Logo 10th Anniversary Edition

530 Pages·2009·6.33 MB·English

by  Naomi Klein

You might not see things yet
on the surface, but underground,
it’s already on fire.
– Indonesian writer Y.B. Mangunwijaya, July 16, 1998

For Avi
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
The four-year process of taking No Logo from an idea to a finished book
has been exhilarating. It has not, however, been painless and I have
relied heavily on the support, understanding and expertise of those
around me.
It has been my great honor to have as my editor Louise Dennys, whose
intellectual rigor and personal commitment to freedom of expression and
human rights have sharpened the arguments in this book and smoothed
my rough edges as a writer. She transformed this book in magical ways.
My research assistant, Paula Thiessen, has tracked down many of the
most obscure facts and sources. For more than two years she worked
tirelessly collecting the statistics that make up this book’s many original
charts, extracting facts from cagey retail chains and cajoling government
agencies around the world to send unpublished reports. She also
conducted the book’s photo research and has been a calming influence
and supportive colleague during what is often lonely work.
My agents at the Westwood Creative Artists, Bruce Westwood and
Jennifer Barclay, took on what many would have seen as a risky project,
with boundless enthusiasm and determination. They searched the
international book world for kindred spirits who would not just publish
No Logo, but would champion it: Reagan Arthur and Philip Gwyn Jones.
The exceptional team at Knopf Canada has been warm-hearted and
cool-headed no matter what the crisis. I am grateful to Michael Mouland,
Nikki Barrett, Noelle Zitzer and Susan Burns, as well as to the talented
and dedicated team of editors who have strengthened, polished, trimmed
and checked this text: Doris Cowan, Alison Reid and Deborah Viets.
I am deeply indebted to John Honderich, publisher of The Toronto
Star, who gave me a regular column in his newspaper when I was far too
young; a space that for almost five years allowed me to develop both the
ideas and the contacts that form the foundation of this book. My editors
at The Star —Carol Goar, Haroon Siddiqui and Mark Richardson —have
been enormously supportive through leaves of absence and even wished
me well when I left the column to focus my full attention on this project.
The writing for No Logo began in earnest as a piece for The Village Voice
on culture jamming and I am indebted to Miles Seligman for his editorial
insights. My editor at Saturday Night, Paul Tough, has supported me with
extended deadlines, research leads, and No Logo—themed assignments,
including a trip to the Roots Lodge, which helped deepen my
understanding of the utopian aspirations of branding.
I received valuable research assistance from Idella Sturino, Stefan
Philipa and Maya Roy. Mark Johnston hooked me up in London, Bern
Jugunos did the same in Manila and Jeff Ballinger did it in Jakarta.
Hundreds of individuals and organizations also cooperated with the
research, but a few individuals went far out of their way to ply me with
stats and facts: Andrew Jackson, Janice Newson, Carly Stasko, Leah
Rumack, Mark Hosler, Dan Mills, Bob Jeffcott, Lynda Yanz, Trim Bissell,
Laird Brown, and most of all, Gerard Greenfield. Unsolicited juicy tidbits
arrived by post and E-mail from Doug Saunders, Jesse Hirsh, Joey
Slinger, Paul Webster and countless other electronic angels. The Toronto
Reference Library, the International Labour Organization, the Corporate
Watch Web site, the Maquila Solidarity Network, The Baffler, SchNEWS,
Adbusters and the Tao Collective listserves were all invaluable to my
research.
I am also grateful to Leo Panitch and Mel Watkins for inviting me to
speak at conferences that helped me to workshop the thesis early on, and
to my colleagues on the This Magazine editorial board for their
generosity and encouragement.
Several friends and family members have read the manuscript and
offered advice and input: Michele Landsberg, Stephen Lewis, Kyo
Maclear, Cathie James, as well as Bonnie, Michael, Anne and Seth Klein.
Mark Kingwell has been a dear friend and intellectual mentor. Sara
Borins was my first and most enthusiastic reader —of both the proposal
and the first draft —and it was the ever-fabulous Sara who insisted that
No Logo must have a design that matched the spirit of its content. Nancy
Friedland, John Montesano, Anne Baines and Rachel Giese stood by me
when I was nowhere to be found. My late grand father, Philip Klein, who
worked as an animator for Walt Disney, taught me a valuable lesson
early in life: always look for the dirt behind the shine.
My greatest debt is to my husband, Avi Lewis, who for years greeted
me every morning with a cup of coffee and a stack of clippings from the
business section. Avi has been a partner in this project in every possible
way: he stayed up late into the night helping to evolve the ideas in this
book; accompanied me on numerous research escapades, from suburban
monster malls to Indonesia’s export factory zones; and edited the
manuscript with centurion attention at multiple stages. For the sake of
No Logo he allowed our lives to be totally branded by this book, giving
me the great freedom and luxury to be fully consumed.
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
No Logo at Ten
A Web of Brands
INTRODUCTION
NO SPACE
New Branded World
ONE
The Brand Expands: How the Logo Grabbed
TWO
Center Stage
Alt.Everything: The Youth Market and the
THREE
Marketing of Cool
The Branding of Learning: Ads in Schools
FOUR
and Universities
Patriarchy Gets Funky: The Triumph
FIVE
of Identity Marketing
NO CHOICE
Brand Bombing: Franchises in the Age of
SIX
the Superbrand
Mergers and Synergy: The Creation of
SEVEN
Commercial Utopias
Corporate Censorship: Barricading the
EIGHT
Branded Village
NO JOBS
The Discarded Factory: Degraded
NINE
Production in the Age of the Superbrand
Threats and Temps: From Working
TEN
for Nothing to “Free Agent Nation”
Breeding Disloyalty: What Goes
ELEVEN
Around, Comes Around
NO LOGO
Culture Jamming: Ads Under Attack
TWELVE
Reclaim the Streets
THIRTEEN
Bad Mood Rising: The New
FOURTEEN
Anticorporate Activism
The Brand Boomerang: The Tactics of
FIFTEEN
Brand-Based Campaigns
A Tale of Three Logos: The Swoosh, the
SIXTEEN
Shell and the Arches
Local Foreign Policy: Students
SEVENTEEN
and Communities Join the Fray
Beyond the Brand: The Limits of
EIGHTEEN
Brand-Based Politics
Consumerism Versus Citizenship: The
CONCLUSION
Fight for the Global Commons
Notes
Appendix
Reading List
Photo Credits
NO LOGO AT TEN
As I write this introduction, thinking about how much branding has
changed in ten years, a couple of developments seem worth mentioning
off the top. In May of 2009, Absolut Vodka launched a limited-edition
line called “Absolut No Label.” The company’s global public relations
manager Kristina Hagbard explains that, “for the first time we dare to
face the world completely naked. We launch a bottle with no label and
no logo, to manifest the idea, that no matter what’s on the outside, it’s
the inside that really matters…. We encourage people to think twice
about their prejudice, because in an Absolut world, there are no labels.”
A few months later, Starbucks tried to avoid being judged by its own
label by opening its first unbranded coffee shop in Seattle, called 15th
Avenue E Coffee and Tea. This “stealth Starbucks” (as the anomalous
outlet immediately became known) was decorated with “one-of-a-kind”
fixtures and customers were invited to bring in their own music for the
stereo system as well as their own pet social causes —all to help develop
what the company called “a community personality.” Customers had to
look hard to find the small print on the menus: “inspired by Starbucks.”
Tim Pfeiffer, a Starbucks senior vice president, explained that unlike the
ordinary Starbucks outlet that used to occupy the very same piece of
retail space, “This one is definitely a little neighborhood coffee shop.”
After spending two decades blasting its logo onto 16,000 stores
worldwide, Starbucks was now trying to escape its own brand.
Clearly the techniques of branding have both thrived and adapted
since I published No Logo. But in the past ten years I have written very
little about developments like these. I realized why while reading
William Gibson’s 2003 novel Pattern Recognition. The book’s protagonist,
Cayce Pollard, is allergic to brands, particularly Tommy Hilfiger and the
Michelin Man. So strong is this “morbid and sometimes violent reactivity
to the semiotics of the marketplace” that she has the buttons on her
Levi’s jeans ground smooth so that there are no corporate markings.