No Logo

No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies is a book published in 2000 by Naomi Klein, a Canadian left-wing journalist, which became foundational for the anti-capitalist, anti-globalization movement that developed in response to the World Trade Organization. It describes how Western businesses have shifted from production of goods to production of brands, with the actual goods being produced by outsourcing businesses in developing economies which pay low wages to often exploited workers. Klein also argues that brands are taking over public spaces with advertising now reaching places where it never used to reach: inside classrooms, inside toilet stalls and on the fold-down tables on airliners. Klein also complains about how large financial interests have distorted scientific research being produced by public universities, similarly large corporate media interests exercise a rigid censorship over media and the arts, how large media interests do not cover stories that affect other parts of a corporate empire.

In the second section of the book, Klein argues that the current corporate branding empires have destroyed jobs: by outsourcing well-paying manufacturing jobs to export processing zones lacking the protections of labor law, by the use of temps and internships to garner free labor from idealistic fans of the brand, the use of unpaid 'street teams' to promote brands, by providing only temporary and part-time rather than full-time positions to avoid having to provide the benefits required by law for full-time positions and by dismantling unions.

In the final section of the book, Klein describes how activists are responding to the situation she describes: through 'culture jamming' - surreptitiously replacing adverts with parodies mocking everything from the health effects of cigarettes to the sexist imagery - and a range of autonomous protest movements including Reclaim the Streets.