Resources & Ideas

No Short Cuts! Thoughts on Naomi Klein's book, No Logo

Shortly after reading Naomi Klein's book No Logo, I found myself deeply troubled by some of what she had to say.  I expected some guilt about peripheral issues in my life but not the amount of turmoil the book caused me.   For those of you who haven't heard of the book, No Logo is the international best seller by Canadian activist and journalist Naomi Klein.  In the book Klein, tackles the culture of marketing, globalization, and big business.

While I don't agree with everything Klein wrote, the book hit home in a couple of ways.  One had to deal with the reporting of several labour violations that some brand conscious companies like Nike© has committed over the years.  For me Nike has been a brand that spoke to me growing up.  It was the shoe that symbolized success.  Watching Bo Jackson and Michael Jordan while growing up and seeing the Swoosh everywhere made me want Nike stuff even more.  I was raised by a single mom in a house where she went without so we could get by.  I still remember the three times in my life when she bought me Nike Air runners like they were yesterday.

It wasn't the running shoes that were so great.  It was Nike's ability to bring me closer to Michael Jordan, Bo Jackson, dunking a basketball, or running a faster 40 yard dash.  Nike also came to symbolize "making it" when times were tough in our household.  "In a couple of months when finances are better, we will have enough money for some new shoes" was the hope.

That was 15 years ago and that 12 year old has grown up and is married yet I still enjoy buying a pair of Nike shoes.  One thing has changed, my ideals and values find some of Nike's business and marketing practices wrong.  Even when I read Nike's public reply to Klein's book, I am still uncomfortable with some of their rebuttals.  So why do I buy their products?

I don't.  I don't buy their runners.  I buy the brand.  The Nike lifestyle.  The brand that tells me that I have made it and that I have some security now.  My ideals have a price and they sold out for me to be closer to Michael Jordan, Bo Jackson, Tiger Woods, and the feeling of making it big that I get every time I slip on my Nike runners.

The question that remains unanswered for me is once I think about it, what is more important, my values or some nostalgia or feeling of success?  On a rational level, everyone knows it is my values that are more important.  A quick unscientific poll conducted over coffee with some of my friends had many of them at odds with some of the products they own.  Yet we still all bought them.

The value that the brand gave us subconsciously outweighed the worth of our moral objections.  "It isn't up to me to police (insert name here) company's actions", "what can I do?" were the general responses.  The most horrifying response back I got was "what do I care as long as they make what I like".  That response would require another article to respond to it adequately.  Everyone was uncomfortable that I brought it up.  "I don't want to think about it" was their spoken and unspoken response.  It was mine too.

I posted some of my thoughts on the topic to Beyond Magazine's excellent discussion list (join if you haven't already).  One of the ideas that came up is that we are very responsive to what brands tell us because of the shortcuts they offer.  I want to be more like Mike so I drink Gatorade, eat at McDonald's, and wear his shoes.  I don't want to work at conditioning my body or work on my jumpshot.  Those shoes offer me an easier way.  It clicked in that it is our laziness and insecurities that give brands their power. Brands sell us an illusion that we want to be reality.  It goes beyond shoes or coffee.  I want to be wise so I buy books who have authors that do critical thinking for me.  I want to be a better father so I try to spend money on a family vacation to make up for my working late.  I want to be a better communicator from the pulpit so I log into www.willowcreek.com and download one of Bill's sermons (www.lakeviewchurch.com's busiest server time is Saturday night when pastors are searching our site for and downloading "free sermons").  Even Napster fed on a shortcut mentality.  It allowed me a shortcut to obtain something that I wanted, even if I couldn't afford it.  Many of us looked past the legal or moral issues because we could get things we want easier and quicker.

Part of my job at Lakeview is helping ministries and the church create their brand.  I admit that I have been a follower of Kevin Roberts (CEO of Saatchi & Saatchi).  I want to protect Lakeview's brand and their different ministries.  I get frustrated at staff when the wrong font gets used with the wrong logo or if something is released to the congregation that has the wrong look and feel.  Truth is that some of those ministries are not as rock solid as I would like to think what I am trying to do is sell a shortcut as well.  Create something that isn't yet there.  Maybe that is why Klein's book hit me so hard.  For all our talking about authenticity, we often offer the same shortcuts as the world does.

People look at our generation and they say we won't have as high as a standard of living as our parents and they feel bad for us.  I think it will be the great liberator.  Our generation screams for authenticity.  Maybe it is because we saw through some of the stuff that we have tried to pass off in the past as the real deal.  I still have no vertical.  Vacations now don't make up for being an absentee parent when they were needed.  Someone else's wisdom is no substitute for God's.  The glossy image of that church isn't so nice when we really look at it.

It isn't wrong to by a pair of Nike runners or Starbucks coffee or a jordoncooper.com shirt.  If you are buying the Nike lifestyle, Starbucks political correctness, or something else to take a short cut or as a replacement for something real, then it is a problem.

Branding isn't going to stop and I don't think that we need to feel guilty for the land we live in.  At the same time, we have to ask ourselves who is going to define us.  The brand marketing aimed at our insecurities and laziness? Or are we going to take a stand and start to define our world as God has called us to?  Are we going to be people of illusion or authenticity.  It isn't the brand's fault, it is our own desire for shortcuts that needs to be challenged.

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