The anti-branding movement believes branding has blurred the boundaries between radicalism and the status quo

Anti-branding activists maintain that certain brands have appropriated for commercial ends the symbolism, imagery, language and culture of rebellion, even of anti-capitalism. There is something to be said for this argument. Many youth-oriented brands obviously use the imagery and music of youthful rebellion. Some brands have, however, sought to go much further than this by associating themselves with the epochal images of anti-capitalism itself. One need only look at the repeated use of the iconic image of Marxist guerrilla Che Guevara in adverts selling everything from vodka to digital television channels to see it. Che Guevara is dead and, it might be said, his battles long over and not very relevant to the campaigns of today's anti-capitalists. But what if the symbols and icons of today's anti-capitalists are appropriated for advertising? That is exactly what the fashion brand Benetton proposed. Subcommandante Marcos is the leader of Mexico's Zapatista National Liberation Army, a fiercely anti-globalisation, anti-capitalist, anti-rich organisation. Marcos himself is always shown wearing a balaclava, with a pipe in his mouth, and an automatic weapon at his side. Naomi Klein describes him as 'the Che Guevara of his generation'.21 He is the totemic figure for the current generation of protesters. Apparently Benetton has repeatedly offered Subcommandante Marcos lucrative modelling contracts. He has turned them down.22 This is no isolated occurrence. Ralph Nader, perhaps the best known opponent of corporate America and Green Party presidential candidate in 1996 and 2000, was offered $25,000 to take part in an ironic ad for Nike trainers. He too turned the offer down.23

The phenomenon is not exclusive to the most obvious youth brands. In 2000 the Whitechapel Art Gallery in the East End of London, founded in 1901 to bring art to the working classes, put on an exhibition called 'Protest & Survive'. It was named after an old anti-nuclear slogan. This was an exhibition of 'protest art'. This was not art that also had a political message; the art was created to convey a political message. The exhibits were polemical. The message of the exhibition was explicitly anti-capitalist and anti-corporate. Many of the more recent exhibits were manifestations of the art of anti-branding. A special walkway, apparently a work of art in itself and seemingly constructed out of old packing cases, had been built to connect the Whitechapel Art Gallery with the building, across an alleyway, of the anarchist Freedom Press and its bookshop.24 This press is the publisher of the anarchist paper Freedom and was co-founded in 1886 by the revolutionary and leading anarchist of his generation and founder of anarcho-communism, Prince Peter Kropotkin.25 The idea behind connecting the gallery with the anarchist bookshop was seemingly that once visitors had been to see some anti-capitalist art, they could buy some anti-capitalist theory, perhaps Kropotkin's own Anarchism and Anarchist Communism or his Memoirs of a Revolutionist. This exhibition was sponsored by Bloomberg,26 the media company best known for its terminals providing stock prices to finance houses and brokers, and its 24 hour TV financial news channel. In 1998 Bloomberg had estimated revenues of $1.5 billion.27 It has apparently made its founder and majority shareholder, Michael Bloomberg, a fortune of $4.5 billion.28 He stepped down as Chief Executive of Bloomberg in order to run, as a Republican, for Mayor of New York, leading some to describe him as 'the new Citizen Kane'.29 He was elected Mayor in November 2001, having spent $69 million, or $92.60 per vote, on his election campaign.30 It must be somewhat galling for an anti-capitalist to go to an exhibition of anti-capitalist art, and then find that a multi-national corporation sponsors it. And not just by any multi-national corporation but one that has developed a brand intimately connected with the very apotheosis of capitalism, indeed the engine rooms of globalisation, the financial markets. Even though he was a Prince, Kropotkin must be turning in his grave at such a seemingly unsuitable marriage of revolutionary theory and corporate practice. It is little wonder that anti-capitalists see the warm embrace their icons have been subjected to from capitalists not only as a case of commercial exploitation but as a symptom of what Marxist theorist, and darling of 1960s radicals, Herbert Marcuse termed 'repressive tolerance'. How else are anti-capitalists to explain a phenomenon which appears to be so at odds with their belief that capitalists only promote ideas which serve their own interests, or the wider interests of capitalists?

Corporations have appropriated the language and causes once associated with radical protest

From the activists' point of view, the use of anti-capitalist imagery by capitalist brands is bad enough. The appropriation of language, and thus the concepts this language underpins, is, however, even worse. It undermines the protesters 'ownership' of these concepts. Corporations have obviously not appropriated anti-capitalist rhetoric wholesale. Many corporations have, however, taken on board some of the concepts once associated with those who, at the very least, were highly critical of the workings of capitalism and modern corporations. A study of recent corporate mission statements and annual reports from major multinational corporations found many such documents with much to say about the corporation's commitment to the environment, equal opportunities, empowerment, good labour relations, reducing inequalities and being a force for change.31 This is especially true of those corporations whose products are consumer brands. Therefore for anti-corporate activists simply to state that they are concerned about the environment, abhor bad labour practices, or are working for social change will not have much of an impact. For the corporations, especially those owning the most visible consumer brands, will turn around and state that they too are committed to social change, they too are concerned about the environment and improving the lot of workers in the South. What is more, they will say, this is what they have done about these issues. They have instituted an 'environmental policy' covering their manufacturing processes that goes further than that proposed by organisation x, some environmental NGO, and that this policy is independently audited. The labour practices of their sub-contractors in the South are also regularly subject to independent audits to see if they meet the standards proposed by organisation y, another NGO. To finally clinch the argument and prove the corporation's progressive credentials, they will point out that last year they gave z millions to such and such progressive causes. The types of donation usually mentioned in this context are, for example, the millions corporate America gives to the NAACP,32 the old established civil rights campaigners who were at the forefront of opposing segregation in the Southern states of the USA, the corporate support in the UK for Shelter,33 the group which provides help to the homeless and seeks to keep the issue of homelessness in the public eye, or the $2.5 million Swedish furniture brand IKEA gave to map the world's disappearing forests after hearing about the project's lack of funding from Greenpeace International.34

The activists see this whole phenomenon as taking what they see as their own language, their own ideas, and their own organisations and then having these ideas used by what they see as the enemy, the multinational corporation. They believe that any organisation that receives corporate support must somehow have been domesticated in the interests of the status quo, the interests of multinational capitalism. Why else, they reason, would capitalists support a cause, if they were not using it to boost their own sales, or else had co-opted or neutered it in their own interests? The anti-branding campaigners believe the world is a place that is neatly divided between 'us' and 'them', 'exploited' and 'exploiter', 'people' and 'corporation'. The use by brands of the language, symbolism, and the concepts once associated with protest, obscures what the anti-branders see as a clear, objective, and insurmountable divide. This dichotomisation of the world into those, the many, who are innocent and are victims, and those, the few, who are guilty and are victimisers is, for the anti-branders, an absolute truth never to be questioned; it is their sine qua non.

When anti-capitalist claims prove false, new claims - such as those about branding -are constructed

It used to be an easier task for the radicals to portray the world as neatly dichotomised, and to persuade others to believe it as well. Things seemed neater then. This is not primarily because corporations were less prone to express, for example, environmental concerns in days gone by. More central is the changing imagery of advertising. In the past corporate advertising never used gay imagery, portrayed women as doing the housework and children as being obedient, and rarely showed blacks or Asians and when they did they were often in menial or stereotypical roles. The 1960s generation of anti-capitalists argued that these groups were portrayed as such, because the capitalists needed to maintain, indeed even construct, patriarchal models of the family and racist attitudes in order to sustain their profits, and thus to sustain capitalism itself. Capitalists used advertising, so the argument went, to inculcate the assumptions and values associated with patriarchy and racism.

The 1960s critics of capitalism believed that by challenging racism, traditional gender roles, and conventional sexual behaviour, they were somehow challenging capitalism itself. Imagine the shock of the activists when they saw advertising that celebrated black empowerment, put powerful and independent women on a pedestal, and portrayed homosexuality as chic. This was not meant to happen. Did capitalism not need these traditional notions to survive and had they not learnt that challenging these notions would fatally undermine capitalism? Were not these traditional notions one of the great, and inevitable, evils of capitalism?

One might have thought that they would have acknowledged the fact that their arguments had been proved wrong, and questioned the underlying assumptions of anti-capitalism. This has not, however, happened. The critics of capitalism have responded to the manifest errors of their earlier arguments in their usual manner. In this case as in so many others, when the old reasons for hating capitalism have proved quite simply to be false, new reasons for hating it have been found. As the pre-eminent historian of economic thought, Professor Mark Blaug puts it when describing Marxism: 'What a wonderful story is the history of Marxism, refuted again and again, and revised again and again - not by its enemies but by its friends.'35 This applies just as much to anti-capitalism in its other guises.

The lessons from the failures of the anti-capitalists' earlier claims: advertising is responsive to changing social attitudes

If the anti-capitalists had considered the proven failure of their earlier claims, they could have drawn certain conclusions. For the changing images found in advertising surely show three things. The first is how responsive advertising is to changes in social attitudes. The changing representation of women, gays, and blacks and Asians in advertising is a reflection of the changing attitudes in society as a whole. In other words corporations, individually or collectively, cannot simply impose a worldview upon society through advertising.

Corporations are an integral part of society, not separate from it

The second is that the corporations are not separate from society; they are an integral part of it. Wider social change is also occurring within the corporation. Indeed, the authoritative British Social Attitudes study shows that liberal attitudes on issues such as homosexuality, gender roles, and immigration are much more widespread, and indeed more deeply held, among the professional and managerial classes, ie, those who are the managers and executives in the large corporations, than they are in society as a whole.36 Similar patterns are discernible in the USA, perhaps to an even greater extent. In a recent highly acclaimed, and amusing, book, Bobos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There, 37 David Brooks argues that liberal social attitudes have become the dominant values of the professional and managerial elite, and celebrates this fact. Many of those at the top of large corporations have been marked by the student radicalism of the 1960s, either directly or, for those younger, by the social changes this brought about. While the anti-capitalist ethos of student protest has largely been abandoned by this generation as they have grown up, they have widely retained their liberal social attitudes and have become bourgeois bohemians. This is an ethos which is widely shared by their younger successors.

Anti-capitalist claims about the nature of capitalism say much about the prejudices of anti-capitalists, but nothing about the nature of capitalism

The third relates to the nature of the earlier charge itself. Claims are so often made by anti-capitalists in relation to all manner of phenomena they happen to disapprove of, that such and such is occurring, or such and such attitudes are prevalent, or society is structured in such and such a way, because capitalism needs it to be. Such claims have again and again been shown to be wholly unfounded. The structures or attitudes attacked have changed, indeed often been utterly transformed, yet the market system has not fallen. Something that has little or nothing to do with the market system per se, such as images of traditional gender roles in advertising, is conjoined with it. This is simply because those doing the conjoining disapprove not only of capitalism but also of traditional gender roles, or whatever else might be their particular bete noire. Anything that bad, the reasoning seems to go, must be a product of capitalism. Then some dubious rationale is found for this conjoining. Such arguments tell us more about the attitudes of the anti-capitalists than about the phenomenon they are trying to explain. Since it has so often been proved to be false, it must surely be overdue for anti-capitalists to abandon this type of argument. The errors of the earlier claims about advertising have not, however, caused the anti-capitalists to re-evaluate their antipathy towards capitalism. The anti-capitalists have simply found a new reason for hating the market without truly acknowledging the errors of their earlier claims. A new rationale has had to be constructed which, in the activists' minds, once again divides the world into the innocent many and the guilty few. Anti-branding, and the current attacks on corporations for using progressive ideas, imagery and language, is one such rationale. The activists can sleep happy in the knowledge that all is as it should be. The world is thus, after all, still neatly divided and they can still see themselves as being partisans for altruism over rapacious capitalist greed, and as fighters for 'the people' against the privilege that they believe the few have gained at the expense of the many. The anti-branders see it as their role to make this perception of a dichotomised world, which is so self-evident and glaring to them, apparent to all. It never occurs to the anti-branders to question the correctness of this position.

Re-constructing the divide: what the anti-branding movement is trying to achieve

The purpose of the anti-branding movement is to make other people see the world in the same way the anti-branders see it and thus to sell an idea, namely that corporations are the problem and can never be part of the solution. As the leading anti-brander Tim O'Connor of Nikewatch puts it, 'Nike has been a useful target to make a wider point about globalization'.38 These activists have joined the branding business, except in their case it is the negative branding of the corporations which they believe are selling the public a lie. The anti-branders seek to project their message by highlighting, through the use of powerful and arresting imagery, alleged abuses by the corporations which own consumer brands.

The tarnishing of the reputation, the damaging of the brand, is the primary purpose here; the actual specific charge, whether it is about employment practices, the environment, or where a company buys its raw materials, is secondary. The anti-branding campaigners are not seeking to simply get a corporation to pay its employees slightly more or to change this or that specific environmental practice. The damage to the brand's reputation is the aim. Or more precisely it is the immediate aim, with the hope that the tarnishing of what the activists view as the widely perceived human face of capitalism - namely consumer brands, especially those brands which portray themselves as being progressive - will tarnish the reputation of capitalism as a whole.

This is why brands that seek to adopt a progressive image are targeted especially. Klein puts it succinctly: 'We have heard the refrain over and over again from Nike, Reebok, The Body Shop, Starbucks, Levi's, and The Gap: "Why are you picking on us? We're the good ones!" The answer is simple. They are singled out because the politics they have associated themselves with, which have made them rich - feminism, ecology, inner-city empowerment - were not just random pieces of effective ad copy that their brand mangers found lying around. They are complex, essential social ideas, for which many people have spent lifetimes fighting. That's what lends righteousness to the rage of activists campaigning against what they see as cynical distortions of those ideas.'39 In other words these brands are attacked because they portray themselves as being progressive, because they proclaim their belief in corporate social responsibility, not in spite of it.

'Progressive' brands are easier to attack

The fact that these brands portray themselves as being progressive also makes it easier to attack them for practical reasons. As Klein goes on to say, 'companies such as Levi's and the Body Shop can't shrug them [calls for corporate social accountability] off, because they publicly presented social accountability as the foundation of their corporate philosophy from the first. Over and over again, it is when the advertising teams creatively overreach themselves that - like Icarus - they fall.'40

When brands institute an environmental or a human rights policy or code of conduct, especially of the precise and rigorous sort favoured by many of the brands Klein highlights, it will be very likely that campaigners will be able to find some alleged infringement of this code. The activists will look for some action by some supplier or some subsidiary, which appears to infringe this code, or can be portrayed as infringing it.

It is highly likely that the activists will be able to find something to fit their requirements when dealing with a large and diffuse corporation spread across various continents. Large multi-national corporations will inevitably have difficulty in uniformly implementing such a code, and even greater difficulty in imposing its code upon suppliers. Since many such codes specifically deal with, and were in fact set up to deal with, the employment practices of suppliers, often smallish scale producers on the opposite side of the world from where the code has been drawn up, this is usually where such breaches are to be found. Through the adoption of such codes, the brands have set themselves a benchmark against which they can be tested. And, not surprisingly, they are. If the brands appear to fall below the benchmarks they have set themselves, they can be attacked for this far more clearly than if this benchmark had never existed. The anti-branders can then claim that such codes are worthless; they concentrate on the few cases where they can show the company's code has been infringed and ignore the vast number of cases where the company's code has been adhered to.

By simply hyping alleged infringements, the anti-branders ignore the very real impact such codes can and do have on how companies operate and the very real benefits such codes, if carefully and thoughtfully devised and implemented, can and indeed have produced for the environment and the people they are seeking to protect. The tarring of the corporate reputation is the anti-branders aim, and corporate codes can be an aid in this exercise. Here again, as in so much else, the activists perceive a world in which everything is not perfect as one in which everything is imperfect; they construct an all or nothing world for themselves.

Anti-branding as marketing - 'It's a gateway drug'

The anti-brand movement has learnt to employ, at a fraction of the brander's costs, the brander's techniques and, just like the brands, it too has a product to sell. Anti-branding is an attempt to market a carefully defined product, in this case anti-corporate ideas and sentiment and more specifically the notion of a dichotomised world, in an easily digestible form. How does the activist get this idea across to young people who are not especially interested in politics (for which the activist will obviously blame the machinations of the brands and corporations in general) and who do not feel particularly victimised themselves (again the machinations of the brands in constructing false ideas of contentment)? A picture of a dreadful looking factory in the South, where Brand X allegedly manufacture their products, is far more effective than trying to discuss with them the nature of wage labour, perhaps illustrated - if this particular activist is of Marxist bent - by reference to 'the industrial reserve army' and the 'impoverishment thesis' and quotes from Section 3 of chapter 25, vol.1 of Das Kapital.41 All the better if brand X thus attacked is one which appeals to youth. It is surely no accident, to use that old chestnut of the left, that the brands most attacked by the anti-brand activists - those mentioned by Klein above - are precisely those products which appeal to a youth market, ie, precisely the market to which the anti-brand activists are trying to appeal.

Klein, arguing in The Guardian that in the wake of the September 11th terrorist attacks on New York and Washington DC the anti-corporate movement is more relevant than ever, quotes a fellow activist approvingly when she says that Nike was never the target of her activism but merely a tool to get her message across. 'It's a gateway drug'. Klein goes on to say 'For years, we in the movement have fed off our opponents' symbols - their brands, their office towers, their photo-opportunity summits. We have used them as rallying cries, as focal points, as popular education tools. But these symbols were never the real targets: they were the levers, the handles.'42 In other words, what Klein is acknowledging is that anti-branding is a marketing device.

What remains of organised Marxist-Leninism in the UK, the Trotskyist organisations and their papers such as the Socialist Worker and Workers Power, have become aware of the utility of anti-branding as a device for selling their ideology. These groups now repeatedly use attacks on brands in their papers and their propaganda.43 Theirs is a fairly recent interest in anti-branding, which has developed since they have seen the success of the broader anti-branding movement.

London Greenpeace and McLibel: a classic example of anti-branding activism

To illustrate these points, it is worth examining the activities of London Greenpeace, also known by the name of their web site McSpotlight. This organisation describes itself as 'an open, anarchist, ecological group which has always supported a wide range of radical, social, and environmental issues, networking with other activists and initiatives.'44 This organisation, which has no connection with Greenpeace International, runs a major anti-brand web site and came to public prominence over the so-called McLibel case. This court case, and London Greepeace's actions which led to it, were the defining moment of the anti-branding movement in the UK, and what really launched it into the public vision.

Two London Greenpeace activists, the so-called 'McLibel Two' - David Steel and Helen Morris - were sued for libel by McDonald's for producing and distributing leaflets attacking McDonald's. After 313 days of evidence and the UK's longest ever court case, on 19th June 1997 Mr Justice Bell in the High Court, unusually in a case for libel sitting without a jury because of the length and complexity of the trial, found unequivocally for McDonald's, awarding damages of £60,000.45 In spite of this, the fact that Mr Justice Bell did not reject all the disputed claims made in the leaflet has subsequently been used by opponents of McDonald's to muddy the waters as to the outcome of the case.

McDonald's won the legal battle, but lost the public relations war

Whilst McDonald's were the victors legally, they undoubtedly lost the public relations battle. The so-called 'McLibel Two' managed to turn the action against them into a trial of McDonald's. Their erroneous accusations against McDonald's thus received much more coverage than the original leaflets would ever have done. The publicity the case generated, and the ease with which protest leaflets can be distributed and printed off via the Internet, made the London Greenpeace leaflets, in their own words, 'probably the most famous and widely distributed protest leaflets in history'.46

Immeasurable numbers have viewed these leaflets on the net, three million hard copies have apparently been distributed in the UK since the point when McDonald's started its action and the leaflets have been translated into at least 26 languages.47 Even though the judge found that the 'McLibel Two' had committed 'serious and important libels'48 and awarded damages to McDonald's, the 'McLibel Two' can claim 'we have recently emerged victorious from a huge legal and public battle against McDonald's, another high profile global company making strenuous efforts to project a benevolent image'.49 They believe themselves to be victorious because of the damage they correctly believe they have inflicted upon the reputation of McDonald's. As David Hooper, a lawyer and leading commentator on British libel cases puts it, 'The publicity thus given to the views of the defendants must have exceeded McDonald's worst nightmares. Certainly it must have dented any promotion the company's annual advertising budget of $2 billion could have bought.'50

The McLibel case is the classic example of anti-branding activism. As John Vidal, Guardian journalist and the author of a book about the case highly sympathetic to the 'McLibel Two', puts it, 'McLibel is a battle of image, an appeal by both sides for the hearts and minds of the public'.51 It is not about 'shaming' a corporation into changing this or that practice, using this kind of packaging instead of that kind. It is about damaging a corporation's reputation. By damaging that corporation's reputation they aim not only to damage that corporation's reputation, but also to damage the reputation of all corporations - or at least, for the less doctrinaire anti-branders, all but the very smallest corporations - and thus the reputation of capitalism.

Somewhat ironically for two anarchists who claim to be passionately opposed to the whole notion of leaders, David Steel and Helen Morris have been eulogised by the anti-branding movement for their 'struggle' against McDonald's. Every recent anti-corporate book seems to devote space to their 'brave and heroic fight'. They are portrayed as role models and groups around the world carefully study their tactics. Channel 4 has even made a TV dramatisation of their court case. This can only be described as a massive marketing achievement for what was a small, fairly obscure, near zero budget, doctrinaire activist group. They would not have received even a fraction of this coverage, or the widespread mainstream sympathy and support they have, if they had only produced pamphlets espousing their ideology of green anarchism and had not gone into the anti-branding business. Anti-branding has meant that two activists who are indubitably on the farthest fringes of UK politics have received sympathy even from Middle England. Projecting their campaign as a David and Goliath battle between two plucky individuals and the might of a multi-national corporation is bound to elicit sympathy.

The McLibel campaigners move on to attack The Body Shop

Interestingly, the other 'high profile global company making strenuous efforts to project a benevolent image' compared to McDonald's in the quote above is that quintessential 'ethical consumer' brand, The Body Shop. The 'McLibel Two' and London Greenpeace are targeting this brand because they want to reach the kind of people who are attracted to The Body Shop. London Greenpeace are in battle for hearts and minds and their target is the whole notion of 'ethical consumerism'. They are trying to persuade those who are attracted to 'ethical consumerism' that there is no such thing. The Body Shop is a brand whose 'ethical' message is not a bonus to its customers, but is central to its appeal, makes a great deal of its support for environmental causes,52 and whose co-founder, Anita Roddick, is probably the face of 'ethical' consumerism. London Greenpeace's message is well illustrated in their hostile remarks about The Body Shop. They wrote that: 'The Body Shop have over 1,500 stores in 47 countries, and aggressive expansion plans'. They go on to assume that The Body Shop's purpose, like that of all multi-nationals, is to make lots of money for their shareholders, whom they again assume to be rich. They assert, more or less as an article of faith, that The Body Shop is driven by power and greed. Since The Body Shop is obviously in disagreement with this, they accuse The Body Shop of somehow concealing its true nature. Such claims tell us nothing about The Body Shop but much about the prejudices of theses activists. Such claims are made to reinforce London Greenpeace's central contention, namely that 'The truth is that nobody can make the world a better place by shopping.'53

By attacking The Body Shop, London Greenpeace is trying to get across the notion of a dichotomised world, a world divided between the exploited 'us' of the people, and the exploiting 'them' of the corporation. By attacking The Body Shop they are showing that their issue is capitalism itself. 'Our basic point is to demonstrate that the problem is not this or that particular company, but the economic system based on profits and power'.54 This is the rationale of all of London Greenpeace's campaigns, and indeed of all of the campaigns of anti-branders in general. Whether they are against Nike, McDonald's or The Body Shop is immaterial. The point of these campaigns is not to persuade a given corporation to change a given practice or withdraw from a given activity. Yet again their point is to sell the anti-branders' underlying message about a mutually hostile, dichotomised world.