No Logo: No Space, No Choice, No Jobs

Rating:
Summary: ARE WE A SOCIETY MANIPULATED BY BRAND NAME LOGOS?
Review: I credit the author immensely for the research that has gone into this eye-opening book. We truly are a society that has been manipulated by the brand name logos. If you do not believe this, ask your teenager what clothing they will and will not wear. The popular "big-name" brand names, also have big price tags, and that much we definitely know. All you need to do is buy your son or daughter a "generic, department store" pair of jeans, versus a trendy brand name pair, and watch how long the generic ones will hang, unworn, in the closet! You bet, the companies with the hot, popular labels, manipulate us. The sad part is, we as a society, allow it to happen by continuing to buy these products. What those expensive price tags essentially say is, "If you can't afford to wear us, you won't fit in," and particularly with teens and peer pressure, that is sad but often true. Now, what about the financial pressure that creates on parents, especially if you are in a low income bracket and, moreso, if you are a single parent?

If you read where the products are manufactured, you will find that "brand name or no brand name," they virutally all come from the same foreign countries. Are brand name of better quality - generally speaking - no, it is that cute little logo on the product or the name itself, that jacks up the price into oblivion. Then, there are child labour issues in some countries, and that in itself is such an enormous issue, I will not even attempt to go there in a book review.

If you really want to know the inside story, and what you, as a consumer are truly paying for, read this terrific book. It is a real eye-opener and a lesson in reality (and vanity)that will reveal just how manipulated we consumers really are by brand name logos... whether we realize it or not. Do I, personally, buy brand names? Not if I can help it; with age comes wisedom, and I have now buried my vanity in the closet along with my thirty year old prom dress and worn out XXXX brand name track shoes!

Rating:
Summary: Very important
Review: Klein may have written this book with an ideological chip on her shoulder, but "No Logo" is nonetheless very important and informative. At one level it is a critical analysis of the consumer culture of developed countries like the US, Canada or the UK, and the 'ideology' of mass consumerism as personified by fetishized brand-names. In this vein, Klein explores the origins of the very concept of branding, providing a number of interesting examples from recent and more distant history. She also looks at the implications of the increased focus on brands and the accompanying emphasis on marketing rather than production (which means "outsourcing" manufacturing jobs to third world countries with exploitatively low income levels). At another level, "No Logo" also serves as something of a history of the resistance movement to brands and the corporations that stand behind them. Even here the various NGOs, student movements, etc. are not completely free from criticism. Perhaps some of the strongest sections of the book are those dealing with conditions in the various free trade or export processing zones in places like Mexico or the Philippines - Klein visited many of these areas and held extensive interviews, and her observations and descriptions are often very moving. All in all, "No Logo" is definitely a very worthwhile read.

Rating:
Summary: We Love To See You Smile! [Indeed]
Review: Every day we are bombarded by the enormo-corp "buy, buy, buy" mantra. Think about it - we have organic billboards for Tommy & Nike in our schools, a clown selling us heart attacks and a perpetually retiring athlete shilling for whoever's offering. It is difficult for us to admit that such relentless marketing practices have burrowed into our psyche - but they have.

In lesser hands, 'No Logo' could have been an endless rant against 'the man'. But it isn't. Klein has fashioned a sane, often humorous book that looks at the extremely innocuous and down right scary marketing/social engineering experiments being conducted in the United States and beyond.

'No Logo' has plenty of spicy little mcnuggets that will get your blood boiling. For example, there is the deal that certain U.S. schools have made with McDonald's and Burger King [every participating school CANNOT have a generic burger available in the school canteen - effectively censoring those kids who can't afford a big Mac or Whopper!] Nice eh?

I can guarantee that once you have read 'No Logo' - you will not be able to pass one of those disturbingly omnipresent Gap billboards without smirking knowingly at the utter vapidity of it all. Take a stand against "the Brand" and read this book!

Rating:
Summary: Intelligent and compelling
Review: Klein describes the evolution and consequences of what she rightly calls "brands on steroids". The sections of the book-- 'No Space', 'No Choice', 'No Jobs' and 'No Logo'-- walk the reader through the history of these superbrands, through the efforts of corporations to create brand lifestyles, through the consequences of companies' shift from production to branding, and finally brings us to the inevitable consumer backlash. Ironically, this book is probably as equally useful to a student of marketing as it is to a culture jammer-- her insight into branding is penetrating and most likely valuable regardless what side of the fence you're standing on.

Klein writes with passion and a clearly visible anger which is refreshing because she never descends into hectoring or rhetoric. The book is apparently well-researched and meticulously supported with graphs and figures. I liked it well enough that I've already ordered copies for friends and family. A must-read.

Rating:
Summary: One of the best books I've read in a long time
Review: It never really occured to me how much the world had been changing over the past decade or so. "Suddenly", everybody was crazy about Ralph-Lauren shirts and Nike shoes. I never really liked that but I didn't care. I also didn't really care much about all the sweatshop issues people were bringing up because I thought I wasn't buying into the whole thing anyway. Over the past couple of years I got more interested in the changes, though. Starbucks coffee shops are growing faster than mushrooms and neighbourhoods are Gap-ified. I find that pretty disgusting but I didn't know anything about what was going on behind the scenes. Therefore, when I picked up Naomi Klein's "No Logo" I was pleasantly surprised to get a plethora of information about all that stuff. I can't praise Mrs. Klein enough for the work she must have put into the book. It is highly informative, fun to read, and it is nice to discover the writer herself behind many of the stories in there. So in the end, I got the information I was looking for and much more. I learned how Starbucks pushes little coffee shops out of neighbourhoods by offering to pay more rent for the very places the coffee shops are in, I learned about Nike and its now infamous sweatshop system etc. etc. The other day, I went to "Macy's" and I couldn't resist to look at the tags of the sweaters there. Made in Indonesia, Honduras, ... you name it. I was disgusted and I left. Reading the book might disgust you. But you'll get an excellent idea of what's going on and what you can actually do to counter Starbucks and all the other brand predators.

Rating:
Summary: A Systems Point of View
Review: This book is well written and filled with lots of examples to prove Naomi's main point which is simply this: since the mid 80's the world's corporations realized that the logo/brand was the most important component of the corporate body. Everything else was a cost to be ruthlessly rendered efficient by downsizing, outsourcing, etc. She describes the Corporate growth strategies and their execution as if they were battle campaigns. I like books like this that help separate stimulus from the response, the symptoms from the disease.

To some extent this book explains: -the mind games in play as ad campaigns -the move to global scale business processes and some of the unforeseen effects of the move to global scales of operation. -the incredible increase in size and value of endorsements -She also describes how logo/market development strategies can backfire and gives plenty of examples.

Rating:
Summary: An important book, make your teenagers read it, too!
Review: With a 16 year old son in our house, I've not only been fighting the "brand name bullies" outside our home but the teenaged one INSIDE our home as well. So it was a no-brainer for me to buy and read this book. I won't say it was an easy read. But the information contained within it was worth the time spent. More importantly, I left the book lying in a spot where my son was sure to see it and was gratified when he picked it up and read parts of it. Now he has loosened his rigid stance on having only the "coolest" clothes with the "best" logos on them and started to realize that his individuality was being manipulated to some degree by advertisers. He's started talking to his friend about the book too. Having said that, I don't want ANYONE to think this book doesn't have its flaws. There is repetition of some subjects that have already been discussed ad nauseum in the media already - advertising in the public schools via educational channels and other subjects. But there is also plenty of new information and Klein makes her case with solid, clear arguments.

Rating:
Summary: "Look for the dirt behind the shine"
Review: No Logo - Apart from a great content, the front cover is so good that you just want to stroke it....well thats part of its popularity at Goldsmiths College, London anyway.

This book stated what I knew. Poor countries get rice money for making greedy Western companies products. But why did I like it so much? Because it really brought it home how branding dominates our lives and how people live around the world. People who make IBM computers in poor countries, its just a formula, they don't know how to even operate them! That I found shocking! But then very real. We just needed to read it in print to stick in our minds!

It was a real eye-opener how it isn't about the product, but the brand! For example with Tommy' buying in the products then branding it.

So it is definately true that behind the shine you should look for the dirt as she quotes in her book.

This is a must have book for all media and cultural communications students. It gave me fantastic ideas about cultural economy/industries, and it almost seemed like a secret cult in the greasy cafe opposite college, where people confessed to be buying the book and praising it for reading like a novel, but being brilliantly informatively.

I must agree though that a sense of balance was lacking. Where were the counter arguments to what she was saying.

cheers anyway Naomi!

Rating:
Summary: Don't Believe the Hype: Pretentious Guilt-ridden Polemic
Review: Disappointing, over-hyped book by Naomi Klein which has become the de rigueur fashion accessory of every person concerned about human rights and the spread of "globalization" while obsessing about showing off their vacation photographs taken in MacDonald’s in Beijing without their friends finding out.

There’s nothing new in this book. It begs more questions about the author’s methodology than it provides answers about its supposed subject matter. To quote the brilliant Irish writer Brendan Behan (when he spoke about Canada) in this instance: “it’ll be great when it’s finished”.

Written in a "San Francisco Gay Buardian" polemic style, analytically, the book is very poor, assembled with flawed intellectual rigor. Some facts don’t add up. Some are just wrong. Some oversights are unbelievable. How can a 1987 table of corporate tax take as percentage of the total US federal revenue provide a measure for 1998 (see her table # 2.1)? Klein ignores how branding was essentially a monopolistic activity from the 19th Century (read the “Political Economy of Innovation” by Bill Kingston) and not the product of the Reagan/Thatcher/Mulrooney free market enterprise conspiracy. Her claim that the demand for tech workers in the US has led to tech investment in rich schools at the expense of poor ones is false. Why all the H1B visas issued for foreign workers by the U.S. if that is the case? Furthermore, Microsoft does not use temps to shield core workers as she claims. Temps are used in areas that are not core competencies (catering, documentation production, graphic design, etc.); Microsoft, according to Bill Gates, is a Development Organization with a Marketing Front End. And what is unusual about specialization and division of labor in this day and age, anyway? Tony Blair’s “Cool Britannia” is now a post-dinner party discussion nightmare of cronyism, back-handers, and ineptitude, like an embarrassing menopausal uncle trying to appear hip by talking about Ecstasy.

Finally, If branding is that powerful, how about the demise of the dot com culture based which was entirely on image? Could it be that these dot coms had no products and services, and really that’s what people like about MSN, McD’s, Starbucks and Nike â€" they want their stuff?

These points are all conveniently ignored.

Klein’s solution to the brand bullies based on culture “jamming”, without mentioning that these saviors are themselves little more that PC bullies in their own right who suffer badly from guilt and who have ideological agendas to peddle of their own. There is not a single Billboard Liberation Front “jamming” of Noah’s Bagels billboards at a time when the Intifada rages in the Middle East for example. Why not?

Susan Sontag in her 1964 essay “Notes on Camp” really gives a clue to this book’s essential character defect â€" basically if you have to talk about a subject this much, then you don’t really relate to it. “The real guilt of Political Correctness is not its imposed intolerance or rigidity, but that it is not political enough â€" that it is impersonating political struggle” wrote Tim Brennan of S.U.N.Y. in 1971. Klein’s “No Logo” suffers from a worse malady â€" impersonating intellectualism.

Rating:
Summary: A GOOD EXAMPLE OF SMEAR & MISREPRESENTATION
Review: If Naomi Klein genuinely cared so much about the welfare of the "exploited" masses of the world, which she claims to champion in this book, why hasn't she started up a profitable, multi national corporation of her own, that creates huge amounts of wealth and thousands of jobs world wide rather than misrepresent and attempt to destroy those that do currently create the world's wealth?

Ms Klein, should take note that Governments do not have money of their own. All wealth must be CREATED before it can be seized and redistributed by academics like herself... We only need to look at tyrannical dictatorships and the anti free market state controlled economies of Africa, Cuba and former Eastern block nations to see what kind of results her own brand of economics have brought about.

Contrary to Ms Klein's view, it is in an employers own rational self interest to treat his workers well if he wants a successful, profitable, company. Just because there may be a minority of dishonest business men who see it as morally acceptable to live off the efforts of others by force or deception,( which incidentally is Ms Klien's economic philosophy in practice), that does not mean that the capitalist system is corrupt. Far from it. The more the "unearned" is desired, the HARDER it is for those who create the honest profit and wealth in this world!

I can only conclude that the welfare of the "exploited" worker or consumer is not Ms Klein's motive for writing this book, if it were, she would be in business herself , implementing her "values" and creating wealth, rather than attacking and craving control over the successful corporations which, in addition to improving the quality of lives of millions of people, also finance the very institutions that Ms Klein and her political allies have studied and taught in.

D S A Murray