Carsons Post
Always in Development
Always in Development
What are we to make of No Logo a decade on? It remains a stunningly passionate and ambitious snapshot of the newly globalized youth and consumer culture at the end of the 20th century. It is also an often infuriating work of agitprop that marries old Marxist prejudices about the market economy to a paranoid and conspiratorial account of the business of advertising.
If that was all there was to the book, it would be enough to dismiss it as a period piece, the journalistic equivalent to a box of old Polaroids. Sweatshops, the McLibel trial, Brent Spar … weren’t those the days? But that would be a mistake, since it would miss the way in which, in its quest to undermine the branded economy and expose the capitalist-consumer propaganda that motivates all advertising, No Logo inadvertently served as the most influential marketing manual of the decade.
Its on my shelf. Probably as ubiquitous amongst us somewhat politically minded left-leaning GenXers as our Pearl Jam albums and anti-boomer angst.
Follow the link to a very interesting look at the world of marketing in the ten years since No Logo was published.
If you look close enough, you can see all the cars driving sideways.
