Mi profesor en la universidad de la asignatura de Comunicación Corporativa me recomendó en más de dos y tres ocasiones que leyera 'NO LOGO' de Naomi Klein, que seguro que me iba a gustar, decía. No le hice caso hasta ahora. El libro es un fiel reflejo de las causas y consecuencias de la liberalización de los mercados y del enorme poder de las multinacionales: paro, precariedad laboral, violencia, explotación infantil, hipocresía y conquista de los espacios públicos por las marcas.

Fiel al estilo investigador de Naomi Klein, con cientos de citas y datos, el libro es una buena base de información sobre cómo las multinacionales ocupan todos los espacios públicos con sus logos y se apropian de todos los movimientos; un ejemplo de cómo sus modelos empresariales de marca-si-productos-no ha ocasionado que las grandes marcas sean sólo eso, marcas, destinadas a las ideas y el marketing relegando la producción a subcontratistas del Tercer Mundo. De esta manera, las multinacionales se han enriquecido cerrando empresas en origen y generando paro, substituyéndolos por empleos precarios en el sector servicios donde reina la temporalidad y los trabajos a tiempo parcial. En el otro lado, reina inmune la explotación infantil, la violencia permanente y la pobreza extrema en los países productores ahogados por la deuda, por no hablar de las consecuencias en la destrucción del medio ambiente y de los recursos naturales por las multinacionales extractivas. Son temas tan ricos en información y hechos que el libro resulta en ocasiones muy pesado e incluso repetitivo debido al estilo fiel y preciso de N.Klein en la narración de los ejemplos (539 páginas).

'NO LOGO' fue escrito alrededor del año 2000, y han pasado 17 años desde entonces. A pesar de las esperanzas de los últimos capítulos de la escritora en movimientos antisistema y combativos contra las multinacionales de la década de los años 90, mi percepción es que estamos mucho peor. Las multinacionales tienen más poder cada año convirtiendo nuestras sociedades en claras plutocracias oligárquicas. Las situaciones se han agravado y lo que es peor, la gente lo ha aceptado. Solo hace falta fijarse en todos los que adoran a Amancio Ortega y su modelo de negocio, que no difiere en mucho del de Phil Knight y Nike.

La sociedad se ha vuelto inmune a los desagravios contra los derechos de las personas, se ha vuelto insensible al dolor ajeno y la situación que vivimos es la tendencia comúnmente aceptada a despreciar los derechos humanos en favor del desarrollo de la economía mundial.

”I wake up every morning, jump in the shower, look down at the symbol [the Nike swoosh], and that pumps me up for the day. It's to remind me every day what I have to do, which is, 'Just Do It'.” (Internet entrepreneur Carmine Collettion, on a near-navel tattoo, 1997)

(further reading ideas towards the end)
This is the first time in years that I've been reminded of the 'Battle Of Seattle', the protest that was in 1999. I guess this shows one of the flaws that this kind of book might have when read years after it's writing point (2001, written in 4 years). This was the first time I heard about this author, before her other books. Still, most of the stuff in here is readable, though the last part, 'No Logo', was hard to get through, not because of what was being talked about, but perhaps because it wasn't quite so gripping as the other parts.

These are the parts:
Part 1 – the surrender of culture and education to marketing
Part 2 – mergers, franchising, synergies, corruption, censorship
Part 3 – employment issues (temporary and part-time jobs, movement of work to third world countries and what happens there)
Part 4 – anticorporate activism (in the late 1990s)

The cost of brand domination:
* ruling through sponsoring (incl. what the sponsored can say about the sponsor): music, sports, places of education and so on.
* selling things to kids/youth (false promises, getting killed for your clothes, invading your spaces with ads, snatching your cool-nows, having a say in what the school gives you at mealtimes…)
* anti-diversity (local brands, shops, tastes pushed out), anti-protest (in their 'spaces')
* censorship ('family values', bowing to China, lawsuits, removal of articles from papers)
* moving jobs to third world countries, keeping others part-time/temporary with a few hours here and there etc. work issues. CEOs moving around, getting paid big.
* the third world labor problem (working conditions, very low pay, short-term jobs, tax-free for the labels...)
* enviromental damage (incl. oil companies), some of them on lands of native people. Food sources spoiling.

”Struggle General's Warning: Blacks and Latinos are the prime scapegoats for illegal drugs, and the prime targets for legal ones.” (culture-jammed (changed) cigarette ad)

Some label examples are written about more widely, including Nike, Wal-Mart, Starbucks, Pepsi, and Shell. This book gave me further reasons to dislike Ronald Reagan (some of his law-changes have caused some of the issues above). With brands one shouldn't forget things like less-visible brands (container makers, university brands). The brands were in general American, but some Canadian, British, and other non-American brands appeared also.

The dated:
In general, the Internet has become more important (though how free it is now can be pondered). The only online 'brands' mentioned (yes, I made a list) are Amazon, AOL, and Yahoo! And this rise of Internet meaning the emptying of a lot of malls.
Spice Girls are sort of around (though with less bang). There seems to be less city- or country-based music scenes being popular (like grunge, Britpop…)
What's happened to: Netscape. CD-Roms. Sears (shrunk). Borders (its WTC store is mentioned in the book). Blockbuster. HMV & Virgin Megastores. Discovery stores. Body Shop (takeover from L'Oreal in 2006). The Ogoni people (still no justice). Portable CD players.
There's no Facebook (founded 2004); Livejournal is still quite new. No hipsters mentioned. No Netfrix, Viaplay, Hulu. No sight of Napster, Pirate Bay.
Guerrilla Girls, Critical Mass, and Reclaim the Streets are still around. Adbusters still has some questionable issues, but is active.

We meet some familiar people: Daniel H. Pink, whose ”When” book I've read. Bernie Sanders doing the anti-Nike thing. And Aung San Suu Kyi, whose still declared as activist-saint – she's not such a person these days. Not so charitable here, Bill Gates!

I wonder if activism etc. changes to the situation that was at the time of this book came out have changed also because of fake news, the rise of far right, misdirected anger when jobs were taken out to the poorer countries, and anti-brand thing not necessarily being the 'fashionable' thing of right now? (I may be wrong with some guesses.) And then there's the current 'trade war' stuff with China, Mexico…
The author certainly feel (still) optimistic here, with some of a revolution.

[Further reading ideas here:
Schlosser – Fast Food Nation (less dated; talking more about issues in this corner, incl. Human costs)
Mitchell – Cloud Atlas (the Sonmi-451 parts)
Boorman – Bonfire Of The Brands (choosing a more brand-free life
L.Chang – Factory Girls (factory life in China)]

This book is about brands, and the issues that rise over their spreading, ruling, and domination. Although this book is clearly US-centric (and some of the problems are stronger there than elsewhere), it's still relevant. I made a list of brands mentioned. I have been checking my 'made in [country]' labels, and weighing my use of brand products, my choices of buying, and my label loyalities. How much your purchases 'uniform' you? What sort of actions I might make because of what I know from here (like use brands from my own country)? Time to ask yourself and change if you want to change, keep what you keep.
This book may have its dated bits, but the important bits stay important.

Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek frequently uses as an explanatory topos the following reading of Einstein's theory of relativity: In the special theory of relativity (so the story goes) matter has the effect of curving the space around it, so the shortest distance between two points is not necessarily a straight line. However, with the shift to the general theory of relativity the story is reversed; the curvature of space is no longer the effect of matter's gravity, it is rather matter itself which is the side-effect of the curvature of space, the curvature of space is itself the primordial fact.

Whether or not this is an accurate summary of Einstein's contribution to twentieth century physics, it is a useful schema for understanding the transformation Naomi Klein charts in No Logo. If, in early capitalism, the commodity itself is the primary material fact of economic existence, then it would seem that marketing and advertising are the concomitant warping of the ideological/cultural space that is the natural by-product of material commodities' vigorous efforts to get themselves sold on the open market. However, as we transition eras into late capitalism, a profound shift occurs, as branding itself becomes increasingly important. With the success of the mega-brands of the nineties (Nike, Starbucks, Microsoft, etc.) what is ultimately for sale is no longer mere commodities but the brand itself, and the physical products (shoes, coffee, software, etc.) that advertising used to serve become mere vehicles for selling the increasingly ubiquitous brands.

This is the shift that Naomi Klein beautifully details in this book, with copious charts and graphs, endless footnotes and references, and engaging and readable writing. Klein is an impeccable researcher, and her marshaling of the data and statistics in the service of the story she has to tell are flawless. If anyone doubts that there still exist Dickensian nightmares of exploitation in the contemporary world of global capitalism (or if anyone has faith that the rising tide does indeed lift all boats) then this is the book you should read.

My one caveat is that while Klein is a masterful journalist and a capable storyteller, she is at best (at least in this book) a mediocre theoretician. While her descriptive powers of documenting the current realities are formidable, her analysis of the possibilities of resistance and her prescriptions for future movements leave something to be desired. In particular, the last section of the book, devoted to an exploration of various forms of resistance movements and Klein's own unwavering optimism, seem, from the vantage point of a decade after the book was published, a tad bit naive and underwhelming. I mean, has the Reclaim the Streets movement really thrown a monkey-wrench into the forces of gentrification and homogenization reshaping the faces of North American cities (as Klein breathlessly anticipates in one chapter)? Fortunately, Klein has since published The Shock Doctrine, a far more sober accounting of the events and economic ideologies of the past decade.

However, despite the dated feel of the final chapters, No Logo remains relevant for anyone trying to get a picture of contemporary economic realities. It offers a treasure trove of data and documentation that continues to serve as reliable ammunition for anyone wishing to take the wind out of the sails of today's counter-revolutionary apologists of capital that continue to be so much in vogue and dominate global policy making at the dawn of the twenty-first century.

I read Klein's No Logo at a perfect time. I was studying for my uni finals and I didn't feel like fiction since this was a buzz book, I decided to read it and see what the hype was about.

Klein's treatise of the branding of culture is still apt for our consumer obsessed times. Today we still see subliminal ads in films, experience numerous sponsor related events and children are still being exploited in sweatshops. Klein's anger at the way logos brainwash us comes through.

Although I have given this book five stars, it does have a weak point. Klein builds her arguments well but then in the last chapter, which consists of solutions she loses it. Her ways of remedying logo brainwashing consists of defacing ads. So reverting to childish antics is a way to make people aware of how logos poison us? It's quite dodgy but if ignore this silly chapter you have a powerful book on contemporary culture.