Some Thoughts on "No Logo"

Klein’s thesis is that a massive cultural shift began in the 1980’s and 90’s, when successful companies learned to “brand” rather than advertise. The late eighties saw a sea-change in the way that products were sold, because the most effective brands sold “experiences” rather than products. Companies that understood this thrived and still dominate- these include Apple, Disney, Nike and Starbucks. Companies that did not understand this sold less and were weaken in the economic downturn of 2000.

Klein makes her argument primarily to call attention to a state of affairs. Her audience would also have observed at least part of what she describes. She never urges her reader to take a course of action – which might be a bitter pill when one considers that brand choice often has to do with self-identity.

In “No Logo” Naomi Klein argues that products are most effectively sold not through advertising, but through branding.

Kleins’s audience is young, and perceives itself and hip and sophisticated.
Klein establishes her credibility through her knowledge of historic developments, and establishes reader sympathy by discussing events with an ironic tone. Klein pitches her argument to the same people to whom many of the “brands” pitch. She calls Wal-mart “deeply unhip” and later makes a hipster joke by calling Nike and Adidas “sneaker pimps” – a reference to a band from the early nineties that her readers would likely have been familiar. She makes allusive jokes that both further her argument and encourage the reader to identify with her. In fact, in the last paragraph she writes, “Never again would the corporate world stoop to praying at the altar of the commodity market. From now on they would worship only graven media images.” implying that just like “the chosen people” in the desert, corporations would now worship the true G-d of branding.