Failure™ Magazine

Naomi Klein, No Logo

“No Logo” was meant to eradicate “brand bullies.” Instead, it inadvertently became the most influential marketing manual of our time.

Written by Andrew Potter   Filed under Business, Life

Recently, the 10th anniversary edition of Naomi Klein’s “No Logo” (Picador) appeared in bookstores, with a new introduction by the author. Originally released in early 2000, “No Logo” coincided with a wave of anti-globalization protests that swept the planet, beginning with the massive and violent protest at the World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle in November 1999. Wherever and whenever world leaders gathered, they were met with street protests and (parallel) meetings of the planet’s angry marginalia, including environmentalists, socialists and human rights activists. “No Logo” was the bible for the movement, and along with Nalgene water bottles and khaki cargo pants, became an essential part of the battle kit for campus lefties of the time.

What are we to make of “No Logo” a decade on? It remains a stunningly passionate and ambitious snapshot of the newly-globalized youth and consumer culture at the end of the twentieth century. It’s also an often infuriating work of agitprop that marries old Marxist prejudices about the market economy to a paranoid and conspiratorial account of the business of advertising.

If that was all there was to the book, it would be enough to dismiss it as a period piece, the journalistic equivalent of a box of old Polaroid’s. But in its quest to undermine the branded economy and expose the capitalist-consumer propaganda that motivates all advertising, “No Logo” inadvertently became the most influential marketing manual of the decade.

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