Anti-Globalization: Are You Serious?
By Edwin Colyer - Brandchannel.com

When you think about what it is supposed to do—communicate clearly what customers should expect from a product or service—it seems odd that anyone should be against branding. Brands are merely a badge, a promise of quality, an assurance of consistency. Why should anyone rail against that?

"You will always hear the voice of objection," says Chris Wood, chief executive of Corporate Edge. “Imagine a market where product quality is variable and you are never quite sure what you are going to get. Then along comes a company that says, 'This is who we are. You'll always get the same good quality from us.' You're bound to get criticism. First there are all the competitors. In particular, there's the little man who resents a big agglomerating player squeezing them out; if they cannot match the quality and consistency, then they will struggle to compete against the big brand. Lastly you have other parties with vested interests; for example, suppliers. If a supplier suddenly finds that a brand has cornered 50 percent of the market, the suppliers could be against the wall.”

Wood says that dissent is inevitable. "Even though brands seem harmless, you will always find people against them. Today, for example, the large supermarket brands seems fairly benign to consumers, and they offer good value for money. But there's not a single FMCG player that isn't wondering what to do against the power of these retailers and their brands."

People often associate anti-branding sentiment with author and activist Naomi Klein, who first published her No Logo epic in 2000. The book covers everything from Gap and Nike to the World Trade Organization, arguing that brands have become ubiquitous in society and more important than products. Worse, says the author, corporations are more powerful than nation states.

Of course, anti-branding and its close relative anti-corporate feeling have been around for as long as the corporations themselves. In 1930s, magazine's like Ballyhoo parodied brands; in the 50s and 60s it was Mad magazine and now television, like the long running American show "Saturday Night Live." Making fun of corporations is nothing new.

Nevertheless, over recent years, anti-branding has gained new currency. "First there's the spread of the Internet," says Wood, "so information is more accessible. Companies are more transparent and campaigners can be more organized on a global scale.

"Second, brands need to play a different role, as the consumer matures. Homogeneity is the opposite of what many consumer want today. Frankly, I don't want to wear a polo player galloping across my chest. I want to make my own statement rather than borrowing something from a fashion retailer. Now brands have to meet consumer sophistication and aspirations."

But perhaps the main reason that people are reacting against the big brands is from a sense of fear. "People don't like being controlled politically, sociologically or psychologically," says Wood. "There's a backlash from a feeling of over-control, in the sense that they feel manipulated. And big brands almost seem like they are manipulating us. An ultimate example of this would have been Coke in the 90s declaring that they wanted people to drink Coke morning noon and night at the expense of other liquids. This is the kind of control/manipulation that consumers have started to resent."

Nick Wreden, author of FusionBranding, says that the idea that brands can actually dictate our behavior is nonsense. "If it was that easy then we wouldn't have so many failures," he says, noting that studies by accounting firm Ernst & Young show that over 90 percent of products try and fail to become brands. "US$ 1.4 trillion is spent worldwide on advertising and marketing. With that amount of money and such smart people in the industry, why is there such a high failure rate? If there was any element of control or influence there wouldn't be that kind of failure rate."

Wreden argues that what people really fear is the power of the corporations behind the brands. "Government has pulled back on funding of arts and schools, etc. So how do these institutions get their money? They turn to corporations. Now business is everywhere, and people feel that it is intrusive."

Wood agrees that the anti-branding movement is really about corporate responsibility. "As power, especially commercial and economic power, moves from nation states to companies, there is an objection about the control by irresponsible commercial interests. The resentment to such unelected power moves onto the brands that represent them."

The movie "The Corporation," based on Joel Bakan's book of the same name, shows that corporations today are like the Church, the Monarchy and the Communist Party in bygone times. The film comes to a stark conclusion: if the corporation is viewed as a person then it is undoubtedly a psychopath. It is unsurprising, then, that branding—a tool of big corporations—is viewed with growing concern among consumers.

Kalle Lasn, editor of the culture jamming magazine Adbusters and cofounder of the Adbusters Media Foundation, warns that anti-branding sentiment is going to affect business just as much as the environmental movement has done over the past few decades. He calls it mental environmentalism.

"There is talk about the pollution of the mental environment," Lasn says. "People are concerned about the diet our brains are fed. It is fueled by the growth in mental dysfunction. People feel it is to do with branding and the onslaught of the estimated 3,000 marketing messages they receive each day. People are fed up with being mentally abused and mind-fucked. This movement is a potential threat of magnitude-people have not yet recognized the potential backlash to come.

"I believe that in five to 10 years this movement could be as big as the physical environment movement," he concludes.

If you dismiss that as the ravings of radical hype, consider that the culture jammers are using the very same tactics as the corporate marketers (though much more ethically, they claim). The newly launched Blackspot sneaker, therefore, is an "anti-logo" sneaker, made in a family-run factory in Portugal. The black shoes come with a hand painted white spot. "Activists are tired of just whining, they are looking for effective ways to really stand out," says Lasn. "So we launched an anti-logo. We intend to create a cool that is more powerful and cut into the market share of Nike. We hope the Blackspot anti-brand will catch on."

With every pair of Blackspot sneakers you get a share certificate that outlines the Blackspot vision: "If we can make this work, then we will have set a precedent that can be used to transform other industries. Just imagine: a Blackspot music label that is truly independent; a chain of Blackspot restaurants that kicks McDonald's ass by serving only locally-produced food; a network of individually-owned bio-diesel outlets that cuts deeply into Big Oil's market share. The possibilities are limited only by the desire for change. There is no copyright on the Blackspot anti-logo. Take it and use it."

Despite the growing power of the anti-branding/anti-corporation movement, corporations still tend to ignore it as extremist. "The problem is that the corporations and the anti-branding movement is involved in a dialogue of death," says Wreden. "Corporations see branding in terms of economic value. Anti-branders see brands in terms of social value. There's a disconnect between the two sides.

"The idea of a brand having social value is relatively new, and companies need to understand that this is where people are coming from," he continues. "Yes, in terms of economic value then anti-branding can be damaging-you only have to look at boycotts of Nike or McDonald's to see what it can do. But in terms of social value it can be a very positive force and good for companies. Today we are seeing a rise in ethical branding; corporate responsibility is becoming a part of the branding ethos. Some companies [are] going back to their roots, seeing that they are not just for profit but for the benefit of society."

Wood has found that to date companies have rarely taken the anti-branding movement seriously, except in particularly vulnerable sectors such as oil. The growing interest in CSR (corporate social responsibility), for example, is more to do with keeping up than any true desire to avoid an anti-brand backlash. "More often than not people come to us saying, 'Our brand is decreasingly relevant. How do we move it on?' There's little attention paid to anti-branding. The fact is that when a brand has problems, it is linked to problems within the company. But too often they go out to PR agencies that put lipstick on the pig, rather than changing the pig."

Wreden's advice is that companies put social responsibility at the top of their agendas. "That's all anti-branders want really, just that people are aware that they have an obligation to the community. Companies make money from society and they should be aware they need to give something back."