The Naomi Klein Brand

I should make clear at the outset that I am a professor of marketing and hold a chair endowed by Kraft Foods Canada. This is already two strikes against me from Naomi Klein's perspective, although I am thankfully not the author of one of those "soul-destroying business books" she refers to in the new introduction to No Logo (Klein 2009). My research is focused on consumers, materialism, gift-giving, sharing, the meanings of possessions, and global consumer culture. My studies of brands have been largely critical treatments (e.g., Belk and Tumbat 2005). I have met Naomi Klein only once, when we both spoke at a conference on brands held in 2000 at the Victoria and Albert Museum (see Belk 2000). I share a great admiration for many of her insights and I also share her concern with the power of global brands, especially in the less affluent world (e.g., Belk 1996, 1999; Ger and Belk 1996; Varman and Belk 2009). Nevertheless, what I would like to do in this brief comment is to reflect on "the Naomi Klein brand" from a marketing perspective.

Although there have been other stinging criticisms of the global economic system, such as Nobel Prize–winning Joseph Stiglitz's (2003) critique of global economic policy and the contributory role of world governments and the World Bank, no other book has been as widely read or has stimulated as much discussion of these topics as Naomi Klein's No Logo. Part of this is undoubtedly the result of Klein's careful research and well-crafted arguments, as well as the book's fortuitous publication just after the World Trade Organization protests in Seattle in 1999. But I believe that the larger part of the book's continuing appeal derives from its lucid, clever, and compelling focus on global brands. Global brands like Coca-Cola, Nike, and Wal-Mart are the building blocks of our identity in consumer societies, for better or worse. Like the title of her book, Klein, in her new introduction, professes a hatred of wearing or consuming visible brands (Klein 2009). By implication, those who proudly sport brand logos on their clothing and those who even go further and have these logos tattooed on their bodies are, well, stupid. Although marketers and advertisers recognized the critical role of brands and brand equity a decade or two before No Logo, for most consumers, brands were like water to fish: ubiquitous, but so normal as to escape any serious critical appraisal. All this changed with the attacks on Nike and McDonald's during the Seattle protests and with the publication of Klein's book. Brands suddenly became a focal point and a target for the frustrations of the many who have been adversely affected by global economics: the small stores and minor brands forced out of business by big-box retailers and multinational brands, the displaced and underemployed workers of affluent economies, the sweatshop and child laborers of nonaffluent economies, and the desirous consumers of less affluent economies who must sacrifice mightily to afford the glittering global brands or else make do with counterfeits. With the publication of No Logo, simmering resentment of these brands and their corporate owners went from background to foreground. It is fitting therefore to consider the brand of Naomi Klein, who also went from background to foreground in popular awareness with the initial publication of the book.

Klein herself realized in the original edition of No Logo that there is a relationship between brands and celebrities when they endorse a brand or bring out their own brand of fragrance, food, or faith (on the last, see Einstein 2008). In the book, those cited as celebrities fronting brands include Michael Jordan, Martha Stewart, Tommy Hilfiger, and even the fictitious Aunt Jemima. But what this perspective stopped short of recognizing is that celebrities are themselves brands (Thomson 2006). Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley, and Michael Jackson all left estates that earn more money marketing these postmortem human brands than these figures ever earned when they were alive. Thomson defines human brands as "any well-known persona who is the subject...