Naomi Klein is a Canadian activist and author famous for her book No Logo: a work taking aim at what Klein perceived as the brand bullies. No Logo was written in the 1990’s at the height of globalisation, a political movement which evolved as consequence of the increased trade and connection resulting from both the sharing of resources and lowering of barriers to immigration which followed the end of the cold war.
In No Logo, Klein takes an anti-corporation stance, disapproving of the control, influence and monopoly large companies have on the average person, the outsourcing of manufacturing to the developing world, and the increasing gap in experience between the lives of those creating goods and those of the people purchasing them. More specifically, Klein investigates the branding practices of these large corporations, and how specifically they have been used to reorient a consumer’s mind so that it works in alignment with capitalist ideals.

Klein’s outrage was primarily provoked by areas such as overseas sweatshops, the deregulation or circumnavigation of labour law under pressure from large corporations, the private public partnerships which were flourishing and which foregrounded corporation needs over the needs of the communities they were meant to serve, and the increasing number of toxic and illegal work practices employees were being forced to contend with. Klein also successfully critiqued the tyrannical grip these multinational companies held over their marketing and intellectual property, suing anyone that endangered their company image. No Logo identified the behaviour of juggernaut companies like Microsoft, McDonalds, Nike, and Shell as evidence of a global economic system gone awry. She believed wholeheartedly that the governance of the people should lie with the people, without external tampering from large industries with obvious financial agendas.

Klein’s work to a great degree birthed the anti- globalization movement which called for international resistance against companies that vie for control of government policy and labelled the shirt on your back while manufacturing it elsewhere. This dissociation from the means of production Klein identified, came with harmful consequences to both the worker and the wearer. Globalization would inevitably lead to an antagonised world order, where those who produced, the goods didn’t get to benefit from the wealth it created. Furthermore, the outbreak of Covid-19 and subsequent lockdown would expose further faultlines in a globalised economic model, with an overreliance on single source economic supply chains overseas leaving those same brand bullies with nothing to sell. The drive toward a digitised economy had begun.