No logo. Taking aim at the brand bullies

First in long line of hits from Canadian writer and activist Naomi Klein, this piece first appeared in 2000. This book marked a turning point in how the power of sophisticated global marketing was perceived.

Literary translation has been stirring interest and passion for centuries. Each month, at Trad&Go, your translation agency, we’ll be recommending a literary gem that you can read in lots of different languages. Or maybe not.

With an entomologist’s eye, the author provides hundreds of popular examples of how brands build universes of meaning and identity so that consumers feel at home with the brands and remain loyal to them. However, what’s really interesting is the way these brands appropriated popular creativity and counter cultural movements to turn their symbols into icons of the globalised consumerism of mainstream culture. Since marketing has been put on this global pedestal, what’s important now is not selling products, but selling a way of life.

With a flat style and linear structure, Klein offers a melting pot of thousands of pieces of evidence that fit together to provide a clear, almost scientific vision of how to hook a whole generation of young people, who are the main target of publicity campaigns of global brands and consumer trends.

The book has now been translated into 22 languages. Two decades after it was first published, it’s as valid today as it ever was.

“Who reads ten centuries of History and doesn’t give up after always seeing the same things happening on different dates?”
León Felipe

At Trad&Go, as experts in literary translation, we recommend that you delve into this work that analyzes the power that big brands have achieved in the world.

Read books: use the skeleton key that opens all the doors

Since there was a world, and people lived in it and travelled around it, basically the same things have always happened, generation after generation. Since time immemorial, the measured voice of books has told us everything. Literature is the precise and infallible microscope that humans invented so they could see themselves in the mirror of their own conscience without being able to look away. The kaleidoscopic truth of literature is as hypnotic as a chasm and liberating as growing wings. Do you want to be well informed? Read books. Do you want to be able to see under the cloak that envelopes current affairs? Read books. Do you feel like a puppet moving through each day in a gullible and indifferent herd of sheep? Read books.