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New
Branded World
Noami Klein in her NO LOGO has
brilliantly explored another very essential mechanism of winning
the consumer world by branding the products. It is a
well-conceived primer on the mechination of the modern consumer
world and a brilliant account of how Nike, Starbucks, McDonalds
etc branded the world which stands out as the potential monster
that imperialist globalization and along with it cultural
homogenization has created. In a world of MNCs and triumph of
finance capital the technique puts profit before basic human
needs and human values and a spell of crazy consumerism has been
released with mesmerizing effect on the people who can spend.
The authoress finally puts in perspective how the newest
generation of fed-up consumers and anti-capitalist activists
will move for a revolt.
Noami Klein begins, ‘The
astronomical growth in the wealth and cultural influence of
mjlti-national corporations even 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….. until that time, although it was
understood in the corporate world that bolstering one’s brand
name was important, the primary concern of every solid
manufacturers was the production of goods’. (p.3, emphasis
added).
What is the difference between
advertising and brand naming? ‘Advertising any given product is
only one part of branding’s grand plan, as are sponsorship and
logo licensing.’ The authoress makes it more clear “Think of the
brand as the core meaning of the modern corporations and of the
advertisement as the vehicle used to carry that meaning to the
world (p.5). Currently the advertising industry has registered
an unimaginable growth. “The advertising industry’s astronomical
rate of growth is neatly referred in the year to year figures
measuring total advertisement spending in the US, which have
gone up so steadily that by 1998 the figure was set to reach $
196.5 billion while global ad spending is estimated at $ 435
billion. According to the 1998 United Nations’ Human Development
Report, the growth in global ad spending “Now outpaces the
growth of the World economy by one-third”
(pp.8,9).
Noami traces the rapidly
accentuating process of selling brands and a number of brands
spread worldwide and generating huge profits. She mentions,
“……there were the companies that had always understood that were
selling brands before products. Coke, Pepsi, McDonalds, Berger
King and Disney were not fazed by the world crisis, opting
instead to escalate the brand war, specially they had their eyes
firmly fixed on global expansion. They were joined in the
project by a wave of sophisticated producers/retailers who hit
full stride in the late eighties and early nineties….. The
Starbucks Coffee Chain, meanwhile was expanding during this
period…. It was spinning off its revenue into a wide range of
branded projects. “Starbucks airline coffee, office coffee,
coffee ice cream, Coffee Beer.” (pp.17, 20).
Scott Bedbury, Starbucks
Vice-President of Marketing openly recognized that ‘Consumers
doesn’t truly believe there’s huge difference between products,
which is why brand must ‘establish emotional ties’ with their
customers through “the Starbock experience” The people who line
up for Starbucks, writes CEO Howard Sclultz, are not just there
for the Coffee. ‘It is the romance of the Coffee experience, the
feeling of warmth and community people get in Starbcks stores’
(see Noami p.20).
Interestingly, before moving to
Starbucks, Bedbury was head of marketing of Nike, another brand
name, where he oversaw the laurel of the “Just do it” slogan,
among other watershed branding movement. He explains the common
techniques used to infuse a very different brands with meaning;.
“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 people’s lives, and that is far appealing for
emotional leverage. A great brand raises the bar – it adds a
greater sense of purpose to the experiences whether it’s the
challenge to do your best in sports and fitness or the
affirmation that the cup of coffee you are drinking really
matters’ (p.p. 20& 21).
The following passage will provide
a cleaner understanding of secrets of brand war.
Reports of such “brand vision”
epiphanies began surfacing from all corners. “Polaroid problem.”
diagnosed the chairman of the advertising agency, John Hegarty “
was that they kept thinking themselves as a camera. But the
brand vision process taught us something: Polaroid is not a
camera – it’s a social lubricant, ”IBM isn’t selling computers,
it’s selling business “solutions”. Swatch is not about watches,
it is about the idea of time. About Diesel Jeans, owner Renzo
Rosso told Paper magazine, “we don’t sell a product, we sell a
style of life. I think we have started a movement…..The Diesel
concept is everything. It is the way to live, it is a way to
wear, it’s the way to do something.” And as Body Stop founder
Anita Roddick explained her stores aren’t about what they sell,
they are the conveyers of a grand idea – the political
philosophy about women, the environment and ethnical
business…..it wasn’t meant to better this to stand on the
products to shout out on these issues. …… The famous late
graphic designer Thor Kalman summed up the shushing rate of the
brand this way . “The original notion of brand was quality, but
new brand is a skyli___ badge of courage” (pp 23-24).
And the idea of selling the
courageous message of brand as opposed to products, intoxicated
the owners, as it provided limitless expansion of business and
profit without having gone for the product.
But what about the production for
which brand was finally going on? True the brand owners do not
go in for by themselves, but products have to be that for which
the brand name is sold. The multinational companies owning
brands like the Nike, the Gap and Liz Claiborne and others got
their products manufactured not in their own countries, but in
very very low paid third world countries like Indonesia,
Philippines, Bangladesh, Uruguay etc. etc.. They get the
products done through their local contractors who get it
manufactured through their sweets shops where workers are mostly
women and children without any statutory limit of workers or
without any obligation to pay a minimum pay of national average.
The workers are forced to work overtime for long hours without
any legal rate for their over works. Noami Klein cited some
examples in Indonesia and Philippines where the women workers
were fired in batches whom the considered trouble makers,
because the country’s trade union laws do not operate there.
Normally, the average pay of these workers are equivalent to US
$ 2 per day or even less. They have no right to raise their
voice against it. And the pitiable condition of their
accommodation is beyond description. Most surprisingly Noami
informs her wide ranging investigation world wide, way brand
companies do not possess a single production unit anywhere in
the world, though they market their products world wide. For
example she cites that the Nike selling footwear and sport
wears and other converted goods do not own even a single body
anywhere in the world, except one small unit for technological
purpose. All products are manufactured in sweet shops in third
world countries and sell them world wide gaining profits
astronomical figures. Similar is the condition with most other
brand names for selling garments and other consumer goods. So
Noami concludes ‘It would be naďve to believe that Western
Consumers haven’t profited from these global business since the
earliest days of colonization. The third world, as they say, has
always –exerted for the comfort of the First’ (p.xviii)
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