Naomi Kleins Work No Logo - Essay Example

Critique of Media Introduction (Thesis) This essay will explore the way in which Naomi Klein criticises media channels and particularly advertising in her seminal work No Logo. This highly influential book1 has been received with great critical acclaim, winning the Canadian National Business Book award in 2001 and The First Book Award from the British newspaper The Guardian in 2000. Klein’s critique bases itself around an exploration of why brands which have been dominant both in the US and internationally until the late 1990s, such as Nike and McDonalds, are coming under attack from environmentalists and human rights activists. She demonstrates how consumers and corporations have more contact than ever and how this has allowed the consumer to make their angry voices heard. In spite of lavish advertising campaigns, big business is finding it more and more difficult to keep issues such as exploitation and environmental damage under wraps. The brand, which for so long has inspired trust and loyalty, is becoming undermined by the increasing ability of the consumer to rebel against its one-size-fits-all approach and exercise self-determination, argues Klein. Klein’s argument bases itself around the idea that companies now produce brands rather than products. They rely on their name, rather than the quality of their goods, to shift stock and make profits. This is not a new concept in media criticism. Companies now regularly invest in brand management as part of their overall advertising budget2. Media channels reflect this through advertising which focuses on selling the name and developing a certain image to accompany the brand. She then goes on to explain that companies exploit both producers and consumers, paying a less than fair wage for good produced in the third world which are then sold in the west for designer prices. The originality in her critique comes when she does not focus on the exploited third-world worker, but rather explores western culture and its suffocation by branding. Everything is branded, she states, and this leaves no space free from advertising and marketing. Schools, youth culture and sexual identity are all targets for the brands and this leads to the situation in which we now find ourselves – with no unbranded public spaces left. Klein then moves beyond this, passing from media critic, to her secondary role as activist. In order to get away from the branding machine, she suggests ‘culture jamming.’ This subversion of advertising allows the consumer to take back control and free themselves from marketing’s suffocating effects. Review of Literature Many of the critical responses to Klein’s work have regarded it as a well argued and coherent piece of criticism, focusing particularly her activism. As media theorists Mark Brennan et al, (2002: 52), for example, comment, Klein’s work as ‘about doing, rather than theorising media’. They regard her as a particularly active member of the anti – brand protesters, outlining not just the theoretical basis for the development of branding and commercialism but also how the man in the street can resist and even oppose these forces. Cultural studies theorist Thomas Reed has a similar take on Klein, focusing on her activism during the Battle of Seattle. The effect of this is to make Klein’s theories seem very dynamic and relevant because they are immediately put into practice and this is exactly what John Hartley, a cultural studies critic (2003: 119) picks up on. He describes Klein as the ‘theoretical counterpart’ to the activist branch of the movement. Clearly Hartley does not regard the two things as such an organic whole, but rather recognises a separation into cultural observer and activist implementer of ideas. However he makes the interesting point that, once Amazon.com started stocking No Logo, she had herself been commercialised and been made into a valuable commodity already complete with brand image. Klein may criticise, but capitalism makes her into part of that which she shuns. Margaret Scammell, lecturer in media and communication, attempts to theorise this phenomenon of consumer media criticism which Klein espouses. She (2000:354) comments that ‘the consumer-style critique...is indeed characteristic of our times [late 1990s and early part of this century]’. However she then goes on to argue for the importance of this style of criticism and the idea that it is born not out of apathy but out of deliberate engagement. In the face of negativity Scammell comments that ‘consumer critique is fundamental to citizenship in the age of globalization. It brings into the daylight the...issue of the political power of corporations. In this sense, today’s activism [here Scammell intends consumer-style critique] goes significantly beyond the consumer boycotts or the identity politics of the 1970s and 1980s.’ (2000: 354) For Scammell, the movement is active and significant. However not all critical voices have been so favourable. The cultural studies critic M. McQuillan, in fact, expresses series misgivings in the face of Klein’s ideas. He argues that Klein’s anti-branding stance is riddled with contradictions. Although Klein is seeking a space free from branding or marketing, McQuillan argues that her examples and concessions actually demonstrate that ‘there is no pure space – outside or anterior to the logos – that will ever be free from, or presuppose, an event of injustice or violence as its own condition of possibility.’ (McQuillan, 2003: 118). She rejects branding that claims to have a place in culture, while at the same time demonstrating that the two things have always been inextricably linked, argues McQuillan. Many of the greatest pieces of classical music or works of art were produced to order and sold on the strength of the artist brand. Klein’s tone may be bombastic, therefore, but her basic premise is flawed, he argues. This is a compelling argument and it is clear that not all of Klein’s arguments are rigorously free from contradiction. Support of Thesis In Practices of Looking, Sturken & Cartwright explore various ways in which the messages which bombard consumers on a daily basis can be interpreted. Using Stuart Hall’s model, they divide them into three categories; dominant-hegemony reading, negotiated reading and oppositional reading. Companies hope that their brand messages will be met with dominant-hegemony reading. In this case the message sent to the consumer is received unquestioned. Coca-cola tells the consumers that their soft drink is great. The consumer believes this and buys their product. This is the most effective way for companies to persuade consumers to invest in their produce. Negotiated reading is what happens when a consumer finds their own meaning within an advertisement. Since consumers have become more cynical, this is what companies now attempt to do most of the time. They allow the reader to infer meanings into the image, making it seem more personalised and less aggressive. This is what marketing is tapping into in order to target what consumers most value in a product according to their age, race, sex, sexual orientation and many other factors. However, it is the final type of interpretation which most interests this study. Oppositional reading is a rejection of the messages within the text or advertisement. This can take the form of appropriation where the image is taken and subverted in opposition to its original use. This is effectively what Klein does when she entitles her book ‘No Logo’. Although it is subtitled, the book’s initial claim is not to have a logo or a strong brand identity. She rejects the very notion of brand names or representative symbols and thereby rejects advertising wholesale. She also encourages consumers to do the same. The main thing which she yearns for throughout her book is a branding free space where man can exist without advertising. No billboards, no tag lines, no product placement - just space. Klein has been involved in this kind of anti-commercialism not just through No Logo but also through Adbusters and their culture jamming campaigns. Adbusters create anti-ads, spoof ads or what they describe as subvertisments which are designed to poke fun at major brand campaigns. Culture jamming goes even further, discouraging the idea of the homogenous group of the consumer which advertising can therefore target, but instead encouraging individuality and independent thought. As Klein (2003: 285) puts it ‘the most sophisticated culture jams are not stand-alone ad parodies but interceptions – counter-messages that hack into a corporation’s own method of communication to send a message starkly at odds with the one that was intended’. She gives the example of pasting Charles Bronson’s head onto a Levi-Strauss advertisement. The public imagination would forever connect these jeans with a serial killer. These are the values which Klein therefore espouses in No Logo. Although this might seem a radical standpoint, Klein in fact gives a popular voice to what has long been considered a modern cultural phenomenon – the homogenisation of society by mass media. Raymond Williams is one of the best established voices in this field, commenting on the uniformity which mass media has brought about since the 1960s. In ‘Advertising: The Magic System’, cultural theorist Raymond Williams discusses advertising in similar, if not so critical, terms to Klein. He comments (184) that ‘the spectacular growth of advertising, and then its extension to apparently independent reporting, has behind it not a mere pressure-group, as in the days of the quacks, but the whole impetus of a society...what we have to look at is an organized extending system, at the centre of our national life.’ Williams’s argument is that advertising has moved beyond merely attempting to make us buy things but is rather has infiltrated into our daily lives on a mass scale. This is essentially the same argument that Klein makes. Williams states that advertising is ‘at the centre of our national life’ while Klein puts it more negatively, stating (31) that advertising has now appeared on ‘benches in national parks as well as on library cards in public libraries, and in December 1998 Nasa announced plans to solicit ads on its space stations. Pepsi’s ongoing threat to project it’s logo on the moon [fortunately] hasn’t materialized yet.’ Klein’s argument is essential the same as Williams’, with the difference that Klein longs for this to change. Indeed, the opening chapter of her work is dedicated to the ‘New Branded World’. (25) In this section, Klein develops the crux of her argument and focuses on the fact that the reason that there is advertising to be found in any available space is that companies now revolve not around their products, but their brands. Before the 1980s, argues Klein, companies focused on production, on creating products for the market place. She states (25) that ‘for the longest time, the making of things remained, at least in principle, the heart of all industrialized economies’. It was the physical object which was the focus and its quality and necessity for the consumer. With the over-spending of the 1980s, coupled with the global recession, companies were forced to cut back, and production costs were the obvious place to save money. At the same time new labor laws meant that production could be shipped over-seas and so began the production of designer-priced goods in developing countries. Step forward Nike, Microsoft and Tommy Hilfiger, all ready to make ‘the bold claim that producing goods was only an incidental part of their operations’. (26) Suddenly the focus had shifted from the product to the brand. This shift led to more intense advertising in order to make a brand stand out in a sea of rival names. This reached a head in the 1990s when advertising looked for new and innovative ways to persuade the consumer to buy. Direct advertising was no longer enough since ‘consumers are like roaches [and] marketers must forever be dreaming up new concoctions for industrial strength Raid’. (31) Consumers were becoming immune to the advertising industry and so it was time to raise the stakes. Examples which Klein mentions include ‘Gordon’s gin experimenting with filling British movie theatres with the smell of juniper berries’ and ‘sticker ads on pieces of fruit promoting ABC sitcoms.’ (31) Advertising was moving away from traditional media such as television and radio and into the most unexpected areas of every day life. Consumers are barraged with a whole series of messages, both subliminal and direct, which advertisers hope will convince them to part with their money. Turning this situation around might seem impossible. However Klein is out to prove that it can be done and her first line of attack is to recall comments around the early 1990s announcing the death of branding. Klein refers to Marlboro Friday (in 1993) - the ‘sudden announcement from Philip Morris that it would slash the price of Marlboro cigarettes by twenty percent in an attempt to compete with bargain brands’. (31) She goes on to explain that ‘if a prestige brand like Marlboro, whose image had been carefully groomed, preened and enhanced with more the a billion advertising dollars, was desperate enough to compete with no-names, then clearly the whole concept of branding had lost its currency’. Although this has clearly not been the case and the brands have recovered from this shock, it is worth noticing that history has shown that they are not infallible. There is hope, therefore, for Klein’s campaign. On the flip side, as Klein does point out, The Body Shop and Starbucks expanded rapidly in this period with very limited advertising. Clearly, the brands were still in control. As Klein herself declares ‘there were never really was a brand crisis – only brands that had crises of confidence’. She concludes that the internet has given branding even more importance, since many, such as Amazon.com, exist on in cyber space. How, then, to overcome these seemingly insurmountable odds? The answer to this lies in her message of subversion. Rather than encouraging consumer boycotts which rely on encouraging the consumer to put effort into campaigning, her approach relies on undermining that which she sees the reason why every area of life has been invaded by advertising – the brand. Pasting Charles Bronson’s face on to a Levi-Strauss ad does not involve motivating thousands of people to attend a demonstration. It is much more direct and effective because it subverts what Klein believes most companies are built on. It does not criticise Levis as jeans, it does not even attack the working conditions in their factories. It simply interrupts the transmission of the brand message from Levis to its public. As Klein puts it ‘culture jamming of this kind ‘meshes with [its] targets [and borrows] visual legitimacy from advertising itself.’ (290) This borrowing of visual legitimacy is central to its success. There is no need to convince people that Levi-Strauss has done something wrong. The seed can be sown much more effectively by reversing the positive message the advertisement is designed to carry. Klein wants to play big business at its own game, using exactly the same channels as it does to undermine brand images. If enough of this kind of culture jamming takes place, advertising will no longer be an effective way to reach consumers and some brand free space will be regained. Conclusion Klein, therefore, puts across a powerful and largely coherent message. She argues that companies now trade on brands, rather than products. In order to promote their brands they must advertise and this has led to the invasion of advertising into ever more obscure areas of public space. The way to remove this advertising, she argues, is to hit companies where it hurts by reversing their advertising campaigns. In this way advertising is no longer a viable channel to communicate with customers and the battle is won. This is very logical in theory, but in practice it relies on a huge momentum to disrupt a nig enough proportion of advertisements to really get the message across. This is where most criticism of Klein lies. Many suggest that she is not as much an activist as she would like her readers to believe, but rather represents the theoretical face of the anti-brand campaign. This necessarily implies that her ideas may not be able to be implemented on a wide enough scale to have a real impact. Further, there is also debate over whether reclaiming space from the brands is even possible, given that throughout history branding has appeared repeatedly and that some of the greatest art works that we have, such as the books of Dickens or the art works of Michelangelo were created through a belief in the brand. Klein attempts to condense into the last century a process which has, on and off, been happening for hundreds of years. It may have accelerated in the last century, but perhaps branding is much more deeply embedded in the human psyche than Klein cares to admit. Works Cited Brennan, Mark, Hartley, John, Montgomery, Martin & Rennie, Elinor, Communication, Culture and Media Studies: The Key Concepts. London: Routledge, 2002 Hartley, John, A Short History of Cultural Studies. London: Sage, 2003 Klein, Naomi (2003) No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies. London: Macmillan McQuillan, M. ‘Spectres of Poujade: Naomi Klein and the New International’ Parallax 3 (2003): 114-130 Reed, Thomas, Vernon, The Art of Protest: Culture and Activism from the Civil Rights Movement to the Streets of Seattle. Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 2005 Scammell, M., ‘The Internet and Civic Engagement: The Age of the Citizen-Consumer’ Political Communication 17.1 (2000):.351-355 Williams, Raymond, ‘Advertising: The Magic System’ Problems in Materialism and Culture (1980):170-195 Read More