by Naomi Klein
In Geneva, the message was clear as day: rather than throwing rocks through windows, activists arrived with sponges, soap and squeegees to wash the façades of the big downtown banks. The organizers explained to the press that they only wanted to help these fine institutions clean up the stains left behind by crippling Third World debt and Nazi gold. In Port Harcourt, Nigeria, the mood at the “Carnival of the Oppressed” was militant but celebratory. A crowd of 10,000 welcomed Ken Saro-Wiwa’s brother back to his homeland after years in exile. After listening to a speech by Owens Wiwa, the crowd proceeded to the gates of the city’s Shell Oil headquarters and blocked entry for several hours. The next stop was a street named after the late Nigerian dictator, General Sani Abacha, where members of the crowd lowered the street sign and temporarily renamed the road after one of the men whose lives he stole: Ken Saro-Wiwa. According to the organizers, “There was dancing and singing in the streets, bringing Port Harcourt, Nigeria’s petroleum capital, to a standstill.”
And all of this happened on a single day.
When this resistance began taking shape in the mid-nineties, it seemed to be a collection of protectionists getting together out of necessity to fight everything and anything global. But as connections have formed across national lines, a different agenda has taken hold, one that embraces globalization but seeks to wrest it from the grasp of the multinationals. Ethical share holders, culture jammers, street reclaimers, McUnion organizers, human-rights hacktivists, school-logo fighters and Internet corporate watchdogs are at the early stages of demanding a citizen-centered alternative to the international rule of the brands. That demand, still sometimes in some areas of the world whispered for fear of a jinx, is to build a resistance —both high-tech and grassroots, both focused and fragmented —that is as global, and as capable of coordinated action, as the multinational corporations it seeks to subvert.
NOTES
INTRODUCTION: A WEB OF BRANDS
1. Industry Canada, “Canadian Imports —Top 25 Products. Origin: Indonesia.”
2. Levi Strauss Web site, 1996.
CHAPTER ONE: NEW BRANDED WORLD
1. “Government Spending Is No Substitute for the Exercise of Capitalist Imagination,” Fortune, September 1938, 63–64.
2. Ellen Lupton and J. Abbott Miller, Design Writing Research: Writing on Graphic Design (New York: Kiosk, 1996), 177.
3. Roland Marchand, “The Corporation Nobody Knew: Bruce Barton, Alfred Sloan, and the Founding of the General Motors ‘Family,’” Business History Review, 22 December 1991, 825.
4. Randall Rothberg, Where the Suckers Moon (New York: Vintage, 1995), 137.
5. Stats are from McCann-Erikson’s ad spending forecast appearing in Advertising Age and the United Nations Human Development Report 1998. Most industry watchers estimate that U.S. spending from the global brands represents 40 percent of the total ad spending in the rest of the world. Canadian ad spending, which is less rigorously tracked by the industry, follows the same rate of growth, but with smaller figures. Between 1978 and 1994, for instance, it grew from a $2.7 billion industry to a $9.2 billion industry (source: “A Report Card on Advertising Revenues in Canada,” 1995).
6. Yumiko Ono, “Marketers Seek the ‘Naked’ Truth in Consumer Psyches,” Wall Street Journal, 30 May 1997, B1.
7. Daily Mail (London), 17 November 1997.
8. Wall Street Journal, 14 April 1998.
9. Boston Globe, 21 July 1993.
10. Marketing Management, Spring 1994.
11. Economist, 10 April 1993.
12. U.S. stats from “100 Leading National Advertisers,” Advertising Age, 29 September 1993. In Canada, overall ad spending also dropped in 1991 by 2.95% and dipped again 0.3% in 1993. (Source: “A Report Card on Advertising Revenues in Canada,” 1995.)
13. Jack Myers, Adbashing: Surviving the Attacks on Advertising (Parsippany, N.J.: American Media Council, 1993), 277.
14. Guardian, 12 June 1993.
15. Shelly Reese, “Nibbling at Brand Loyalty,” Cincinnati Enquirer, 11 July 1993, G1.
16. Scott Bedbury (as vice president of marketing with Starbucks, speaking to the Association of National Advertisers) as quoted in The New York Times, 20 October 1997.
17. Howard Shultz, Pour Your Heart into It (New York: Hyperion, 1997), 5.
18. Tom Peters, “What Great Brands Do,” Fast Company, August/September 1997, 96.
19. Geraldine E. Willigan, “High-Performance Marketing: An Interview with Nike’s Phil Knight,” Harvard Business Review, July 1992, 92.
20. Tom Peters, The Circle of Innovation (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1997), 16.
21. Jennifer Steinhauer, “That’s Not a Skim Latte, It’s a Way of Life,” New York Times, 21 March 1999.
22. Association of National Advertisers.
23. Wall Street Journal, 1 April 1998, from “Trends in Corporate Advertising, a joint project of the Association of National Advertisers and Corporate Branding Partnership, in association with the Wall Street Journal.”
24. Donald Katz, Just Do It: The Nike Spirit in the Corporate World (Holbrook: Adams Media Corporation, 1994), 25.
25. “In the Super Bowl of Sport Stuff, the Winning Score is $2 Billion,” New York Times, February 11, 1996, Section 8, 9.
26. John Heilemann, “All Europeans Are Not Alike,” New Yorker, 28 April & 5 May 1997, 175.
27. “Variations: A Cover Story,” New York Times Magazine, 13 December 1998, 124.
28. Report on Business Magazine, World in 1997.
29. Business Week, 22 December 1997.
30. Sam I. Hill, Jack McGrath and Sandeep Dayal, “How to Brand Sand,” Strategy & Business, Second Quarter 1998.
31. Peters, The Circle of Innovation, 337.
CHAPTER TWO: THE BRAND EXPANDS
1. Business Week, 24 May 1999, and Wall Street Journal, 12 February 1999.
2. Matthew P. McAllister, The Commercialization of American Culture (Thousand Oaks: Sage, 1996), 177.
3. Ibid., 221.
4. Wall Street Journal, 12 February 1999.
5. Lesa Ukman, “Assertions,” IEG Sponsorship Report, 22 December 1997, 2.
6. Advertising Age, 28 September 1998.
7. “Old-fashioned Town Sours on Candymaker’s New Pitch,” Wall Street Journal, 6 October 1997, A1.
8. Gloria Steinem, “Sex, Lies & Advertising,” Ms., July/August 1990.
9. “Chrysler Drops Its Demand for Early Look at Magazines,” Wall Street Journal, 15 October 1997.
10. Independent, 5 January 1996, 1, and Evening Standard, 5 January 1996, 12; and Andrew Blake, “Listen to Britain,” in Buy This Book, edited by Mica Nava, Andrew Blake, Iain MacRury and Barry Richards (London: Routledge, 1997), 224.
11. Saturday Night, July/August 1997, 43–51.
12. “MTV Man Warns about Branding,” Globe and Mail, 19 June 1998, B21.
13. “Sing a Song of Selling,” Business Week, 24 May 1999.
14. Michael J. Wolf, The Entertainment Economy (New York: Times Books, 1999), 66.
15. Interview aired on Citytv’s New Music “Smokes and Booze” special on 22 February 1997.
16. Interview aired on Citytv’s New Music on 9 September 1995.
17. Kyle Stone, “Promotion Commotion,” Report on Business Magazine, December 1997, 102.
18. Ann Powers, “Everything and the Girl,” Spin, November 1997, 74.
19. Wolf, The Entertainment Economy, 29.
20. “And the Brand Played On,” Elm Street, April 1999.
21. “Star Power, Star Brands,” Forbes, 22 March 1999.
22. Willigan, “High-Performance Marketing,” 94.
23. Katz, Just Do It, 8.
24. New York Times, 20 December 1997, A1.
25. Katz, Just Do It, 284.
26. Ibid., 34, 231.
27. Ibid., 30–31.
28. Ibid., 36, 119.
29. Ibid., 233.
30. Ibid., 24.
31. Ibid., 24.
32. “Michael Jordan�
�s Full Corporate Press,” Business Week, 7 April 1997, 44.
33. Katz, Just Do It, 35.
34. “Space Jam Turning Point for Warner Bros., Jordan,” Advertising Age, 28 October 1996, 16.
35. “Merchandise Upstages Box Office,” Wall Street Journal, 24 September 1996.
36. “Armchair Adventures,” Globe and Mail, 11 January 1999, C12.
37. Katz, Just Do It, 82.
38. Roy F. Fox, “Manipulated Kids: Teens Tell How Ads Influence Them,” Educational Leadership, September 1995, 77.
CHAPTER THREE: ALT. EVERYTHING
1. Mean Fiddler promotional material obtained by author.
2. “Woodstock at 25” (editorial), San Francisco Chronicle, 14 August 1994, 1.
3. “Hits replace jingles on TV Commercials,” Globe and Mail, 29 November 1997.
4. Robert Goldman and Stephen Papson, Sign Wars: The Cluttered Landscape of Advertising (New York: Guilford Press, 1996), 43.
5. Greater Baton Rouge Business Report, 28 June 1994, 30. Decoteau is co-owner of the store Serape in Baton Rouge.
6. Eric Ransell, “IBM’s Grassroots Revival,” Fast Company, October/November 1997, 184.
7. Campaign, 30 May 1997.
8. USA Today, 4 September 1996.
9. “Levi’s Blues,” New York Times Magazine, 21 March 1998.
10. “Job Titles of the Future,” Fast Company, October/November 1997, 54.
11. Marc Gunther, “This Gang Controls Your Kids’ Brains,” Fortune, 27 October 1997.
12. Ibid.
13. Robert Sullivan, “Style Stalker,” Vogue, November 1997, 182, 187–88.
14. Janine Lopiano-Misdom and Joanne De Luca, Street Trends: How Today’s Alternative Youth Cultures are Creating Tomorrow’s Mainstream Markets (New York: HarperCollins Business, 1997), 11.
15. Norman Mailer, “The Faith of Graffiti,” Esquire, May 1974, 77.
16. “Off the Street …,” Vogue, April 1994, 337.
17. Lopiano-Misdom and De Luca, Street Trends, 37.
18. Erica Lowe, “Good Rap? Bad Rap? Run-DMC Pushes Rhyme, Not Crime,” San Diego Union-Tribune, 18 June 1987, E-13.
19. Christopher Vaughn, “Simmons’ Rush for Profits,” Black Enterprise, December 1992, 67.
20. Lisa Williams, “Smaller Athletic Firms Pleased at Super Show; Shoe Industry Trade Show,” Footwear News, 16 February 1987, 2.
21. Advertising Age, 28 October 1996.
22. Josh Feit, “The Nike Psyche,” Willamette Week, 28 May 1997.
23. Tommy Hilfiger 1997 Annual Report.
24. Paul Smith, “Tommy Hilfiger in the Age of Mass Customization,” in No Sweat: Fashion, Free Trade, and the Rights of Garment Workers, edited by Andrew Ross (New York: Verso, 1997), 253.
25. Nina Munk, “Girl Power,” Fortune, 8 December 1997, 137.
26. “Old Navy Anchors Micro-Radio Billboard,” Chicago Sun-Times, 28 July 1998.
27. Editorial, Hermenaut #10: Popular Culture, 1995.
28. Nick Compton, “Who Are the Plastic Palace People?” Face, June 1996, 114–15.
29. Lopiano-Misdom and De Luca, Street Trends, 8–9.
30. Ibid., 110.
31. James Hibberd, “Bar Hopping with the Bud Girls,” Salon, 1 February 1999.
32. Business Week, 12 April 1996.
33. Hype!, Doug Pray, 1996.
34. Susan Sontag, “Notes on Camp,” in Against Interpretation, edited by Susan Sontag (New York: Anchor Books, 1986), 275.
35. Ibid., 283.
36. Ibid., 288.
37. Globe and Mail, 22 November 1997.
38. Women’s Wear Daily, 7 November 1997.
CHAPTER FOUR: THE BRANDING OF LEARNING
1. Myers, Adbashing, 151.
2. Wall Street Journal, 24 November 1998.
3. “A La Carte Service in the School Lunch Program,” fact sheet prepared for Subway by Giuffrida Associates, Washington, D.C.
4. Wall Street Journal, 15 September 1997.
5. The Center for Commercial-Free Public Education, Oakland, California, 9 October 1997 release.
6. Extra! The magazine of Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, May/June 1997 10, no. 3.
7. Wall Street Journal, 24 November 1997, B1.
8. “Captive Kids: Commercial Pressures on Kids at School,” Consumers Union paper, 1995.
9. Josh Feit, “Nike in the Classroom: Nike’s effort to teach kids about treading lightly on Mother Nature meet with skepticism from educators and consumer watchdogs,” Willamette Week, 15 April 1998.
10. “ZapMe! Sparks Battle Over Ads,” Associated Press, 6 December 1998.
11. “Schools Profit from Offering Pupils for Market Research,” New York Times, 5 April 1999.
12. Advertising Age, 14 August 1995.
13. Kim Bolan, Vancouver Sun, 20 June 1998, B5.
14. Ibid.
15. Associated Press, 25 March 1998.
16. Stuart Ewen, Captains of Consciousness (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1976), 90.
17. Wisconsin State Journal, 21 May 1996.
18. Kentucky Gazette, 17 June 1997.
19. Associated Press, 13 April 1996.
20. Both quotations come from personal interviews with participants in the Kent State incident.
21. Mark Edmundson, Harper’s, September 1997.
22. Science, vol. 273, 26 July 1996, and Science, vol. 276, 25 April 1997.
23. “A Cautionary Tale,” Science, vol. 273.
24. Michael Valpy, “Science Friction,” Elm Street, December 1998.
25. Science, vol. 276, 25 April 1997.
26. W. Cohen, R. Florida, W.R. Goe, “University-Industry Research Centers in the United States” (Pittsburgh: Carnegie Mellon University Press, 1994).
27. Business Week, 22 December 1997.
28. Julianne Basinger, “Increase in Number of Chairs Endowed by Corporations Prompt New Concerns,” Chronicle of Higher Education, 24 April 1998, A51.
29. “ZapMe! Invites Ralph Nader Back to School,” PR Newswire, 10 December 1998.
30. Janice Newson, “Technical Fixes and Other Priorities of the Corporate-Linked University: The Humanists’ Challenge,” paper presented to the Humanities Research Group of the University of Windsor, October 1995.
CHAPTER FIVE: PATRIARCHY GETS FUNKY
1. Jeanie Russell Kasindorf, “Lesbian Chic,” New York, 10 May 1993, 35.
2. Dinesh D’Souza, “Illiberal Education,” Atlantic Monthly, March 1991, 51.
3. John Taylor, “Are You Politically Correct?” New York, 21 January 1991.
4. J. Walker Smith and Ann Clurman, Rocking the Ages (New York: HarperCollins, 1997), 88.
5. Vogue, November 1997.
6. “Starbucks Is Ground Zero in Today’s Coffee Culture,” Advertising Age, 9 December 1996.
7. Jared Mitchell, “Out and About,” Report on Business Magazine, December 1996, 90.
8. Powers, “Everything and the Girl,” 74.
9. Gary Remafedi, Simone French, Mary Story, Michael D. Resnick and Robert Blum, “The Relationship between Suicide Risk and Sexual Orientation: Results of a Population-Based Study,” American Journal of Public Health, January 1998, 88, no. 1, 57–60.
10. Goldman and Papson, Sign Wars, v.
11. Richard Goldstein, “The Culture War Is Over! We Won! (For Now),” Village Voice, 19 November 1996.
12. Theodore Levitt, “The Globalization of Markets,” Harvard Business Review, May—June 1983.
13. Sumner Redstone made the remark at the Drexel Burnham Lambert annual media conference in January 1990. He made a similar comment in an October 1994 interview with Forbes: “MTV is associated with the forces of freedom and democracy around the world. When the Berlin Wall came down, there were East German guards holding MTV umbrellas. MTV is on the cutting-edge. It’s irreverent. It’s antiestablishment.”
14. Scripps Howard News Service, 19 July 1997.
15. Times (London), 2 September 1993, A5, an edited version of a speech Rupert Murdoch delivered on 1 Sep
tember 1993.
16. From a speech made by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan on 17 October 1997.
17. The 1997 United Nations Human Development Report, Table 2.1.
18. Ibid., Figure 2. 2b.
19. “Western Companies Compete to Win Business of Chinese Babies,” Wall Street Journal, May 15, 1998. The quotation comes from Robert Lipson, president of U.S.-China Industrial Exchange Inc., which is opening joint-venture pediatric hospitals in China.
20. Bernard Wysocki, “In Developing Nations Many Youths Splurge, Mainly on U.S. Goods,” Wall Street Journal, June 26, 1997.
21. Chip Walker, “Can TV Save the Planet?” American Demographics, May 1996, 42.
22. Cyndee Miller, “Teens Seen as the First Truly Global Consumers,” Marketing News, 27 March 1995.
23. Renzo Rosso, FoRty, self-published.
24. Wall Street Journal, 26 June 1997.
25. Dirk Smillie, “Tuning in First Global TV Generation,” Christian Science Monitor, 4 June 1997.
26. Walker, “Can TV Save the Planet?,” 42.
27. Tim Brennan, “‘PC’ and the Decline of the American Empire,” Social Policy, Summer 1991, 16.
28. Ibid.
29. New York Times, 8 December 1997, D12.
30. Sarah Eisenstein, Give Us Bread But Give Us Roses (New York: Routledge, 1983), 32.
31. Dorothy Inglis, Bread and Roses (New York: Killick Press, 1996), 1.
CHAPTER SIX: BRAND BOMBING
1. James Howard Kunstler, The Geography of Nowhere (New York: Touchstone, 1993).
2. Bob Ortega, In Sam We Trust (New York: Times Books, 1998), 75.
3. Sam Walton with John Huey, Sam Walton, Made in America: My Story (New York: Doubleday, 1992), 110.
4. Globe and Mail, 9 February 1998, B1.
5. Ortega, In Sam We Trust, 293. According to Ortega, in New England, “Six of the first 30 stores Wal-Mart proposed in the region had sparked heated fights.”
6. “Judge Rules That Toys ‘R’ Us Illegally Limited Supplier Sales,” Wall Street Journal, 30 September 1997 (on-line).