How many of us when buying a specific item at a store or online purchase a certain brand? Do you buy this item for its quality or for any other reason? Brands like Nike, Tommy Hilfiger, Disney or even Apple have invented through images a certain freedom, revolution, and most importantly a lifestyle to sell their products. As a result, consumers are buying into this idea. Yet, have you ever wondered how was your clothing, toys, or shoes made and by whom. In the documentary No Logo, Naomi Klein highlights the reasons why many consumers buy into brands; in addition, the film reveals the ways in which corporations like Nike and Wal-mart operate under free trade-globalization.
Corporations like Nike, Apple, or Tommy Hilfiger represent through their products an abstract idea and identity to divert from their quality. Apple in their ad campaigns wants the consumer to think differently as a way to change the world. 
As for Tommy Hilfiger, they use celebrities in their advertisements to create an identity that this brand is Rock. As for Nike, many ads show this product as the perfect performance shoe that embodies a celebrity ability in order to serve as a metaphor of an American dream. For other brands like the Body Shop, this corporation uses the environment to convey the message of being the center for what is natural and organic. In essence, these brands like many others persuade the consumer to fall into this idea or perfect dream. However, by ourselves being persuaded into these ad campaigns and trying to change are own identity or to be a certain image this often at times furthers social and class differences in our own society. In other words, this can be compared to the idea of an “ American Dream” in which this often refers to the white picket fence and the perfect surreal lifestyle. Naomi Klein underlines this in the documentary with Disney’s own town in Florida in which seems exclusive for individuals that have money and can afford a utopia of so-called perfection.
Other issues of equal importance in the documentary No Logo are the treatment and conditions of workers in other countries from corporations. In order to gain more profit, many corporations have benefited vastly from free trade agreements between countries by having factories in places like Mexico and in Asia. For example, in Mexico factories called maquiladores contain primarily a women workforce between the ages of 18 to 25 years that are originally from provinces. At this location, they produce goods for the United States. These women receive low wages and at night approximately 80% of these women are normally enclosed in the building overnight to continue working. For Nike and its paradigm, they have a tight workforce in which people earn less than $1.00 a day.
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| Nike Sweat Shop |
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| maquiladoras |
In retrospect, these examples in the film for free trade in reference to globalization are not fair trade since the only people benefiting from these products are truly corporations. They gain billons of dollars a year while individuals that work in those factories for these corporations are being raped of their basic human rights. Consequently, this situation creates more disparities and contributes to enslavement of workers by robbing them of better wages, benefits, and better treatment in order for them to remain in the same economic standing and feel dispensable.
Thus, finally take a look in the mirror and contemplate if you fall for the same images as many others when buying an item. Do you find yourself saying yes? I know I am guilty of falling for this ideal lifestyle or I buy an item because I consider it a good brand. Not only that but brands and ads for these products are everywhere even at the university and it is at times hard to escape. However, as emphasized in the No Logo documentary, brands create a fantasy and corporations and those who run them manipulate the world by saying that free trade is good for everyone but is it really. In essence, by buying these items like shoes from Nike, clothing from Wal-mart or a toy from Disney contribute to more disparities in the quality of life and human rights of individuals elsewhere because this is saying to these corporations that it is okay to treat their workers as dispensable. In fact, institutions that the people have fought for to change a system of inequality in the United States are again being reinvented now globally. With corporations, this is only one example of how brands and their images influence in our own lives and elsewhere.
Links to other resources:
Fact Sheet No. 2 (Rev. 1), The International Bill of Human Rights
Institute for Global Labour & Human Rights
Documentary Film: No Logo
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