So Logo

Just an observation. I spent much of Canada Day week rereading Naomi Klein’s No Logo and came away with the sense that I had personally failed in building on its message that had so captured me 20 years ago when it was published.

At the time of its writing, the book became a deeply-researched revelation of how corporate culture had so completely taken over our modern way of thinking.  She wrote the book to remind us that we had options, that we could live lives that weren’t all about branding or being cool by possessing the same things everyone that was cool did.  I took it to heart then as the well-stated challenge that it was and then I failed in living out its lessons.

The book emerged in 1999, following the World Trade Organization’s conference in Seattle and the protests that surrounded the sessions.  It was also just prior to the manifestation of social media into every aspect of our lives.  The demonstrations were all about fighting back against a globalization movement that not only branded us as nothing but consumers, but also economically abused developing world labour in the process.  No Logolaid it all out in damning detail and became an international bestseller in the process.

I recall examining my possessions at the time, looking around the house and realizing how much I had bought into the very culture Klein had wisely warned about.  When I met her at an event while I was working in Ottawa a few years later, I came away humbled by her logic and commitment.  I hadn’t purposely got myself into the corporate rut – it was just happening to me as it was to everyone else.  Somehow, I had permitted myself to become a part of a branded world, not just in what I purchased but in what I tolerated.  

Klein’s observations about how brands were “colonizing” our public spaces and our kids energized me. As Wikipedia puts it:  “Klein’s core argument is fairly simple: Since the mid-1980s, as more and more companies have shifted from being about products to being about ideas — Starbucks isn’t selling coffee; it’s selling community! — those companies have poured more and more resources into marketing campaigns.”

That’s important, but Klein put it even better:

“The problem with sponsored culture is that it indoctrinates everybody into the idea that you can’t do anything without the largesse of corporations,” Klein says. “You start to think that collectively as citizens you can’t even do basic things like have a music festival or a block party — or educate your kids — without some sort of sponsorship.”

In rather insipid ways, the culture of brands had become the branding of modern culture  … and we never looked back, despite Klein’s warnings. In cases too numerous to mention, we even compromised our privacy to get into the game of branding.  We’ve taken to attempts at branding ourselves in the process.  We are what we wear, who we follow, where we go, what we drive.  That has always been true, naturally, but the reality is that we are now just like millions of others – buying the same products, looking and choosing more or less the same.

I realize the Naomi Klein had her detractors when the book came out, but – and this is the point – I wasn’t one of them.  I fully agreed with her.  But somehow, I have taken to a life of “brands” in the very ways she cautioned against. It wasn’t intentional or the result of some merciless kind of craving – it just happened by osmosis, like it did for everyone else.

The life of the modern citizen – the talents, creativity, sociability, cravings for change – requires each of us to show up in our uniqueness, not our sameness.  Without realizing it, most of us bought into a culture more about following the herd than pursuing individual paths that benefitted our communities.  Perhaps people like me can still rediscover the original spirit of No Logo,but that will involve a live of serving others and not just trying to be like them.  Perhaps it's just being naïve and can't be done, but I refuse to believe that. As Klein aptly put it:

“The Brand Called You is the ultimate triumph of space being privatized through branding — even that space in our own minds,” Klein says. “Being a brand teaches you to turn every part of yourself into a marketable product: You’re looking for your ‘braggables’ and for what people can do for you. But ultimately, that’s isolating. In point of fact, you’re not a company — you’re a member of society.”