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Bill Gates and Microsoft aren't the only corporate giants suffering a backlash against their superbrands. Last month, computer hackers invaded Nike's Web site in the latest protest against the company's alleged sweatshop practices, redirecting visitors to a site concerned with "the growth of corporate power and the direction of glabalizatian." similar rants have been directed at McDonald's-from the student who waved a sign with the arch logo at the World Trade Organization protest in Seattle to the axe-wielding vandal-crow a cultural hero-who tried to thwart the opening of a McDonald's in the tiny town of Millau,France.
For their brilliance at building their brands. the marketers behind the likes of Nike, McDonald's,Wal-Mart and Starbucks now find themselves at the center of journalist Naomi Klein's avowed "next big political movement" in No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies from Picador/St. Martin's Press. Reporting everywhere from university campuses to garment factories in Third World countries, Klein depicts the encroachment of big-name brands an our daily lives, and the array of in-your-face counter-- measures this has provoked among consumer advocates.
One such measure is discussed in the chapter partially excerpted here:"culture jamming;' the practice of parodying ads and hijacking billboards to drastically alter their messages. "Something not far from the surface of the public psyche is delighted to see the icons of corporate power subverted and mocked," Klein writes, offering up memorable examples of "adbusting" done to Absolut, Levi's, Ford, Exxon, Apple and others.
It's Sunday morning on the edge of New York's Alphabet City and Jorge Rodriguez de Gerada is perched at the top of a high ladder, ripping the paper off a cigarette billboard. Moments before, the billboard at the corner of Houston and Attorney sported a fun-loving Newport couple jostling over a pretzel. Now it showcases the haunting face of a child, which Rodriguez de Gerada has painted in rust. To finish it off, he pastes up a few hand-tom strips of the old Newport ad,which form a fluorescent green frame around the child's face.
When it's done, the installation looks as the 31-year-old artist had intended: as if years of cigarette, beer and car ads had been scraped away to reveal the rusted backing of the billboard. Burned into the metal is the real...