No Logo - Naomi Klein - ***

I would've given this book four stars if I was into this kind of thing, but as you can probably tell from my sparse notes, I'm not.

No Logo - Naomi Klein

In the early 90's, generic products started increasing in market share - to counter this, ad agencies turned to branding
Parents may have gone bargain basement, but kids, it turned out, were still willing to pay up to fit in. "They run in packs. If you sell to one, you sell to everyone in their class and everyone in their school."
Branding replaces value-added content.

MTV's genius was that consumers didn't watch shows: they watched MTV.

Designers refused to crack down on the pirating of their logos for T-shirts and baseball hats in the inner cities and several of them have clearly backed away from serious attempts to curb rampant shoplifting.

Adidas executives were skeptical about being associated with rap music until Russell Simmons took them to a Run-DMC show where the rap group was performing the song My Adidas. One of the members yelled out, "Okay, everybody in the house, rock your Adidas!", and three thousand pairs of sneakers shot in the air. The Adidas executives couldn't reach for their checkbooks fast enough.
Bro-ing: a Nike marketing practice where a person wears an item to the inner city and says "Hey, bro, check this out..."

The mantra of retro entertainment seems to be "Once more with synergy!"

-- Advertising in schools makes me angry. The only way to avoid exposure is not to frequent the institution, which is not a choice children are legally allowed to make. I don't relish the upcoming clash between the morality I'll attempt to teach my children and the insidious branding of the future's White Clowns, because if I lose, I will feel that I have failed as a parent.

According to Rocking the Ages, Diversity was the defining idea for Gen-Xers, as opposed to Individuality for baby boomers and Duty for their parents.

The real question is not "Where do you want to go today?" but "How can I best steer you into my synergized maze of choices?"

Starbucks saturates areas with Starbucks stores until the sales begin to fall and poaches leases from existing coffee shops.
-- These guys are geniuses. They're also referencing the concept of a "brand canopy" - one you can live your whole life under.
-- Disney is the true expert in the brand canopy field. They have Disney for children, Pixar for young adults, and hey - more Disney for adults.

Celebration, Disney's town, is almost Disney-free. Its calm, understated aesthetics are the antithesis of the cartoon world for sale down the freeway at Disney World.

Mergers between companies serving different functions allow one hand to wash the other.

The underlying message that intellectual property laws send is that culture is something that happens to you. It is not something you participate in or have the right to respond to. You can be branded, but you are not allowed to scuff the brand.

Mattel suing Aqua over their Barbie Girl song: "This is a business issue, not a freedom of speech issue. This is a two billion dollar company, and we don't want it messed with, and situations like these gradually lead to brand erosion."
-- Asking the courts to subvert freedom of speech to protect against a possible drop in a $2 billion company's profits? Nice.

Production is now viewed as unimportant, something easily outsourced.
Developing countries create EPZs and compete with each other for investors' favor, which the corporations take full advantage of through tricks like closing and reopening factories under new names.

Making yesterday's casualties tomorrow's wardens is genius.


The "temporary job" mindset employers encourage, allowing them to pay employees less than a living wage, is a product of cost-cutting and wishful thinking.
The fear that the poor will storm the barricades is as old as the castle moat.

The smart jargon now talks of guaranteeing "employability", not "employment", which basically translates into "don't count on us, but we'll help you if we can."

"I get weary and worn down from it all. I'm forced to face the fact that I make my money from poor people. The kid wants a hundred-twenty-buck pair of shoes and that stupid mother buys them for him. I can feel that kid's inner need - the desire to own these things and have the feelings that go with them - but it hurts me that this is the way things are."
For Nike, its $150 Air Jordans are not a shoe but a kind of talisman with which poor kids can run out of the ghetto and better their lives. One can't help thinking that one of the main reasons black urban youth can get only get out of the ghetto by rapping or shooting hoops is that Nike and other multinationals are reinforcing stereotypical images of black youth and simultaneously taking all the jobs away.

A firebomb exploded at a Shell station in Hamburg. "Don't sink the Brent Spar Oil Platform" was the message left behind.
-- bahaha

David Green, senior vice president of marketing at McDonalds, expressed his opinion that Coca-Cola is nutritious because it is "providing water, and I think that is part of a balanced diet."
Ed Oakley, another McDonalds executive, explained that McDonalds garbage stuffed into landfills is "a benefit, otherwise you will end up with lots of vast empty gravel pits all over the country."

You can label clothing "Made in the U.S.A." if it comes from any of the U.S.' territories, not just the 50 states.

There's been historical precedent of organizations, cities, and even states leveraging pressure on corporations to behave ethically through blanket boycotting of those companies' services.
The corporations fight these, however. Shell successfully sued for discrimination based on its not being awarded a gas contract in Vancouver based on its actions in South Africa. The judges' ruling stated that the procurement officials only had the jurisdiction to make procurements based on the concerns of Vancouver residents - not the concerns of people in South Africa.

Resource corporations have no brand associated with their products and are therefore nearly unaffected by detractions from their public image.