No Logo
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Naomi Klein in her book No Logo outlines her thoughts as to how marketing and advertising by a company has made a dramatic shift from showcasing a product, to the branding of the company name. Companies have now shifted their focus to creating an association between the company and an idea. The company then uses this idea to sell their products.
In her book she also addresses the growing massive globalization of corporations into global Goliaths. She makes the claim that such large corporations may even be considered form of multinational government. Klein states that these huge corporations are squeezing out the competition and creating less competition to compete with within the markets, and less of a fight to attract consumers.
“The astronomical growth in the wealth and cultural influence of multi-national corporations over the last fifteen years can arguably be traced back to a single, seemingly innocuous idea developed by management theorists in the mid-1980s: that successful corporations must primarily produce brands, as opposed to products.” (Klein 4)
Klein’s feature argument in the early chapters of the book are that brands are now not so much selling a product but rather selling an idea to there consumers. Here argument is also saying that the company is selling the consuming of their product to their consumer.
“The effect, if not always the original intent, of advanced branding is to nudge the hosting culture into the background and make the brand the star. It is not to sponsor culture but to be culture.If brands are not products but ideas, attitudes, values and experiences, why cant they be culture too?” (30)
For example car companies no longer focus on the details and technical specifics of their cars, but instead show young people having fun inside the car jamming out to music, with friends, just driving. So instead of selling the car, they are selling the experience of the car.
Apple expanded on their company catch-phrase of “think different” by using people that have been recognized as forward thinkers of their times in their marketing campaigns to associate the apple product with thinking different. They used speeches by Martin Luther King Jr. and images of Albert Einstein and Gandhi in their commercials, which contributed towards branding their computers and other products as being different. Apple’s most recent push has been to brand their company as a younger more hip brand. Their commercials quite literally portray their computers as a young college student, while representing a PC as an older bland man.
“Nike, for example, is leveraging the deep emotional connection that people have with sports and fitness. With Starbucks, we see how coffee has woven itself into the fabric of peoples live, and thats our opportunity for emotional leverage….A great brand raises the bar–it adds a greater sense of purpose to the experience, whether its the challenge to do your best in sports and fitness or the affirmation that the cup of coffee youre drinking really matters.” (21)
Klein uses the example of Nike as how to create a “super-brand.” In her book she outlines that Nike did this by creating demi-gods out of athletes and sports stars. By making Michael Jordan into a person all aspiring basketball players strived to be like. They associated Jordan as the face of Nike, and they became the company behind the athlete.
Companies have taken to sponsoring everything from musical events and sporting events, to charity drives and speaking tours. In the past decade, global corporate sponsorship has increased from a $7 billion a year industry in 1991 to a 19.2 billion one in 1999. (34) The company becomes part of the event, and gains exposure from being the corporate sponsor. People will buy tickets to the Vans Warped Tour concert series, or the EA Sports Maui Classic basketball tournament.
Klein shows that while advertising is about passing of a product to the consumer, branding is about corporate transcendence, and emotional attachment. If you can create a branding popular with the consumers you seek you will often create a “brand loyalty” to your products, a loyalty