Rating: 
Summary: So politisised it hurts.
Review: Who's going to read this and be convinced of anything? It is such a polemicised, politisised, totally biased work it wont convince anyone who's not already convicted Starbucks and The Gap in there own head. I especially enjoyed her treatment of the Chinese labour market. How high of wages can you expect when you have a population of 1.2 billion people?
Rating: 
Summary: A COncise, Revealing Look At The Branded World We Live In.
Review: I work in the advertising/marketing industry, and, as such, began NO LOGO with a degree of salt: after all...I make my living writing and producing commercials for these so-called "evil" brands...the branding of America has reformed Times Square, promoted sports, and has been a part of our (formerly) strong economy. What NO LOGO does (and does it with genius) is to reveal the truth beneath the logos...both the obvious truths (that corporations spend more money on image development than product development...overseas sweatshops have replaced American manufacturing) and those truths that are hard to find beneath the surface (that corporations are no longer responsible for their production AT ALL...everything is outsourced...that by eliminating the blue collar US jobs and replacing them with "permatemp" positions at retail outlets, brands/corporations have increased that proverbial gap between the haves and the have nots.) Most importantly, NO LOGO discusses what is a serious issue affecting nearly every major metropolis in the United States today: the loss of non-branded public space. For example: if Yankee Stadium became Nissan Stadium, New York would be outraged...and yet, across the US, that branding of space is going on in droves...from the American Airlines Arena and the National Car Rental Center in South Florida...to "Busch Boulevard" in Virginia. In short, NO LOGO changed my life. It certainly changed my career and where I choose to work. And what I choose to buy (although nearly EVERYTHING is made in a sweatshop.) Read it today.
Rating:
Summary: No Logo has no basis in reality
Review: Ms. Klein is so wrong it hurts. She would have you believe that corporations and their brands are the scurge that is destroying world cultures, keeping 3rd world nations poor, robbing the consumer of choices, and corrupting the values of humanity. She is wrong in everyway possible. Brands were created originally in the early party of the 20th century as a guarantee to consumers of quality. The brands that have been created today make it harder for corporations to cheat or mislead consumers out of the fear that, if found out, the image of their brand will be hurt, they will be labeled a bad corporate neighbor and be run out of business. Don't believe it. Well, ask Coca-Cola - one story about discriminitory practices in the company has brought the company to its knees begging minority consumers to trust it once again. The brand keeps them honest becasue the brand can be attacked. As for her other criticisms, corporations bring jobs to the 3rd world and increase choices to consumers. Do you think a brand like Shell Oil can do whatever it wants in Nigeria. No. One spill and protesters the world round stop going to their gas stations. Brands are tools for consumers. A brand that does not offer a consistent product or service is damaged. A brand that does wrong against public opinion is damaged. A bad brand is a business on the bring of going out of business. Brands put the consumer in the driver seat. If you agree with Ms. Klein you must accept the idea that all consumers are absolute fools and that grassroots opinion has no power whatsoever. Please - someone give me a logo.
Rating: 
Summary: Good point, bad argument
Review: Pro-globalization or anti-globalization? Do we have to choose? This seems to be the central question, & this question is being discussed & looked at from all sorts of different angles, the last couple of years. I have a good friend who is an anti-globalization activist. He also happens to be a communist, & has been going to all the big protests: his last one was in Genoa. I, on the other hand, haven't joined him in these protests, so far. It's not that I don't agree with much of what he's saying. It's just that I disagree with many of the means used to achieve the goal. I also disagree with the "them: bad, us: good" mentality. I find it very simplistic. My friend & I have been having long, heated discussions, & we always seem to find common ground on some things...we also always disagree on other things. The important thing is that we always DISCUSS these things & try to see the other's point of view. This is one thing that made me skeptical about Naomi Klein's book. Where is the discussion? Where are the arguments that others use? It's a well known fact that to properly fight an opinion differing from your own, you have to really know a lot about this other opinion. You have to respect it, listen to it, & THEN fight it. There are two ways to argue a point: you either start from a basic axiom which you want to defend, & find everything you can, in order to defend it. This, in my opinion, is a lot like religion: you either believe or you don't. Naomi Klein deeply, passionately believes in anti-globalization: so she gathers all arguments that support her view. These arguments are persuasive, & some of them are definitely fair ones. But I think this way of arguing is wrong, it's deeply flawed. There is another way, which is to take the opposite point of view, present it, & describe, using logic & persuasion, why it's wrong. I also am a little bit sceptical about Naomi Klein's research. I'm not an economist, but there are some points that seem glaringly wrong: for example, inflation & different standards of living are not taken into account, at all. Wages in indonesia are compared to wages in the US, which seems to me a totally distorted way of looking at the issue. Naomi's argument would be far more persuasive if her research was more meticulous. It's a shame really, because what's she's trying to say is basically right: marketing & logos have intruded in every little part of our lives, & it's starting to feel suffocating. Also, the conditions under which people work in sweatshop factories are terrible, & this has been widely documented by various journalists. But I can't help thinking that there are 2 (or more) sides to this story, & that Naomi Klein has failed to present them fairly. This, in the end, makes "No logo" seem like a book saying "I have to convert you because I'm right" and not "I'm right because of this & that argument". This book seems more like preaching than anything else. It also reminded me of an argument that I've always distrusted: it goes something like this--either you're with us, or you're not. I happen to agree with some of the points that Naomi Klein is making, but I disagree with other points, & I strongly disagree with the research she's used to reach all her arguments. There is not always black or white: there are also shades of gray, & usually most of the truth can be found there.
Rating:
Summary: I may disagree, but this is a fun and valuable book
Review: WHile I worried that this was a simple ideological diatribe, I was very happily surprized at the intelligence and substance of Klein's book. It is a tough, well-reasoned manifesto for the anti-consumerism left of "Gen X." If you are wondering what was driving many of those protesters at the WTO and other summit meetings - most notoriously Seattle in late 1999 - then this book is the best place I know. It is part cultural critique, part economics and social policy, and partly a call to arms. Reading it has helped me to make sense of so much that I thought was simple, nihilistic anarchism. I was humbled to learn that there is far far more behind the movement than I had granted it. In a nutshell, Klein argues that the "superbrands" - the huge corporations such as Disney and Nike - are progressively taking over virtually all "public spaces," including school curricula, neighborhoods, and all-encompassing infotainment malls like Virgin Megastores. THey are doing this in an attempt enter our minds as consumers in the most intimate ways, which Klein and others find unbearably intrusive. Moreover, she argues, as they subcontract overseas, the superbrands are leaving first-world workers behind while they exploit those in the developing world under horible conditions. It all adds up, she asserts, into a kind of emerging global worker solidarity that is developing new means (via internet exposes, protest campaigns, etc.) to push the superbrands to adopt more just policies and practices. What was so amazing and useful for me, as a business writer looking at the same issues, is that Klein so often hones in on the underside of what I think are good and effective business practices: the development of brand values, globalisation of the production/value chain to lower prices, and the like. Often I may disagree with her take on things, but she makes too many insightful points to dismiss her and those whom she speaks for. I came to genuinely respect her as a thinker and writer. Nonetheless, there were numerous omissions, some of which I must point out. First, while condemning exploitive labor practices in third-world sweat shops (which I do not deny exist), Klein fails to explore what the available alternatives are for these workers. Well, I went to Pakistan to examine one of the cases she addresses - children soccerball sewers - and I can say that their alternatives were all too often brick kilns or leather tanneries, both of which were far more dangerous and beyond the reach of international activists because the superbrands have nothing to do with them. Second, Klein tended to dismiss the efforts of MNCs out of hand, as weak sops designed more for PR purposes than to effect change. This is true for some groups, but again, while in Vietnam, I witnessed what I regarded as real social progress that came from the actions of a superbrand: upon hearing the demands and suggestions of a worker-safety inspector paid by adidas, Taiwanese sewing-machine manufacturers were approaching him for detailed design specifications to enhance their safety (driver-belt covers to protect against hand and hair injuries) and he had lots more ideas. However modest, that is real and concrete progress in my opinion. Moreover, I believe that many of Klein's assertions are inaccurate or unproven. Is there really a mass movement growing out there? Is the clever defacing of huge advertisement boards really impacting pubic consciousness? Does everyone perceive the thrust of the brands as intrusive and poisonous? Is the World Trade Organization set up in a way that works in favor of the first world and against the third world? These are complex and very difficult questions. Finally, as a passionate activist, Klein rhetoric can get a bit overheated. At one point she says that IBM "otherwise impaled itself"; at another that Milton Friedman is a "architect of the global corporate takeover." What do these things mean? I may regard Friedman as a laughable free-market fundamentalist, but he is only a cloistered academic idoelogue, not a doer of any kind. Does throwing a cream pie in his face do anything more than shock adults? In spite of these reservations, I can only applaud Klein for stirring up the pot of these issues, which provoke thought and encourage exploration, even by conservatives like me.
Rating:
Summary: No Logo - Wake Up America!
Review: I have seen several books that attempt to pick apart the advertising campaigns of Corporate America. "No Logo" is truly one of the best books I have read. As a book that dissects information to the most basic level, Naomi Klein does it like no other has done before. If you don't believe everything you see on television, hear on the radio or printed in the newspapers, then this book will fit in perfectly with your mindset. As corporations turn the public into mindless buying machines, this book fights to expose all that is wrong with advertising today. Being a business owner myself, I found the book to be a great handbook on ethical advertising techniques. While advertising in and of itself is a necessary evil, there are proper ways to do it. Naomi Klein has done a magician's job in displaying the do's and dont's of advertising. America needs a wakeup call, and has needed one for some time. "No Logo" delivers just that, a firm, swift kick in the buttocks, and boy does Klein pack a killer punch. I found this book to be an exhilarating read from cover to cover. If you would like a glimpse of what really goes in the boardrooms of Corporate America, this book should not only be on your 'to-read' list, it should be at the top...
Rating:
Summary: Propaganda Exposed
Review: It's not often that you get such a huge book that is written so clearly and so well that it reads like it's only a few hundred pages instead of over 500. As a progressive journalist, Ms. Klien is critically insightful in the way she helps readers understand the role branding, advertising, labor, politics, and oppression in the context of a global/imperialist economy. Not only does she help us connect with what we already should know about companies like Nkie, McDonalds, and the Gap, but she also provides the context for their global exploitation of workers and consumers. I would strongly suggest that her work be followed up with a reading of Stewart Ewen's PR!: A History of Spin and Jane Kilbournes's Deadly Persuasions. These works, amongst others, expose well just how powerful but sadly how unacknowledged the propaganda industry of advertising and consumer culture is. This consumer culture help shapes values, desires, prejudices, and apathy toward non-consumer areas of society. In other words, these works help us understand how the American/Western society is centered around the buying and selling of goods and labor. They describe how advertising works to influence consumption in a country like America where there are endless amounts of goods and services that must be bought in order to feed the profit machine of growing numbers of millionaires and billionaires. Finally, these works provide an analysis of the economic, political, environmental and social consequences of such high levels of consumption and production. No Logo has many lessons to teach us, but it's up to us to head those lessons.
Rating:
Summary: Once I visited a place where there were no logos ..
Review: ... it was Burma in 1985. The Burmese I met there were desperate for Timex watches, Johnny Walker scotch, and so on. Not that they were especially greedy people - rather they fully realized the ability to buy these things was part of the freedom and material comforts their government denied them. If Ms. Klein and her admirers don't want such things, well, don't buy them. But be grateful that you can get them if you choose.
Rating:
Summary: Laissez-faire won't do it
Review: When I shop I deliberatly look for clothes that do not have logos on them. I don't like to feel as if I am part of a club or a walking ad for a company. So I don't mind that Klein wrote a book that lets me know many other people are like me, delving into some of the reasons why brands and logos are out there. I wonder if many people buy things because they are cool brands, made cool by good persuasive branding and advertising, or because they can tell they are good clothes? I wonder if people buy stuff with logos on it because the companies are so dead set on plastering everything that the shopper is given little choice. The true (or a truer) definition of choice is one of the issues at the root of this whole discussion, I think. Some reviewers here say we choose stuff from companies we like, and that makes everything okay--the morality of the market, laissez-faire or whatever. But you don't have to look too hard at the stores or your wardrobe to see how limited the choices really are and how boringly repetitive the whole thing is, season to season. And then you might successfully extrapolate that state of affairs to many other things in modern American life. Then, on a more philosophical level, yes, we have the world's best consumer choice, but that choice is ultimately incredibly limited--limited to what to buy. The other argument against letting the brands be is that our consumer society is friggin' ugly, it doesn't just mess up nature and ozone, but also the way our country looks, riddled as it is with ugly strip malls and shopping centers and other shoddy looking buildings thrown up as quickly as possible to cash in on growth, and readily abandoned once that growth moves on. We are nation of nomads, but we are a hell of a lot messier than our counterparts in other parts of the world, who are smart enough to use tents. The argument that consumers choose what they want and a "divine hand" within the system itself makes everything come out alright is incredibly irrational but unfortunately very effective on the street. Common sense says that people buy what they like and that is okay. Common sense also makes us feel the fool when we see hours of wasted labor and tons on needlessly used materials as integral to our system, which is ridiculously full of redundancy in production. Corporations spout off about synergies, downsizing and efficiencies while competing for my tennis shoe dollar, and in so doing make a gazillion more tennis shoes than any of us needs. Check your closets. Common sense, and bald naked vision tell us what is happening on a systemic level when we see new land fills ballooning near affluent areas of development and growth. America would be better served if Americans thought about the ramifications of their behavior beyond the limited "purchase event" mentality of some of the reviewers here. The status quo is crumbling. There's nothing wrong with looking to other ways of organizing the world. Klein at least is on the old bandwagon
Rating: 
Summary: Oh, come on.
Review: 2 stars for the discussion.
Look, companies become successful because people like their products. Sure, a logo or style can suggest wealth or association with some group. So what? If they want to be defined by logos and such that's their decision as a person. Using sweat shops for clothes or charging insane prices for coffee may be a sign of stupidity, but if you think it's stupid, don't buy those items. Trying to make people feel guilty or stupid or, even worse, using force to change people's minds instead of just letting them decide on their own is more than stupid. It's cruel and pretentious. We all think we're right. In reality, it's just an opinion.
Just tell folks the facts and honor their freedom to make their own decisions.
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