Branding

Have you ever been to Nike Town? It is as close to hell on earth as any modern shopping experience outside Ikea can conceivably get. Inside the gigantic flagship megastore on Oxford Circus, ordinary citizens drift, lost, from themed section (trainers) to themed section (other trainers). They stumble into one another like unhappy zombies, numbed by the pounding music. You see them browsing on shelved displays (more trainers), many already carrying bags emblazoned with the …

…published by Flamingo, which is an imprint of HarperCollins, which is owned by a certain, um, ravenous global media monopolist. Her mentions of Murdoch are few and timid; but she'd no doubt argue that this is jujitsu in action. This isn't the work of a scattershot anticapitalist, or a flaky apologist for some hippy Utopia. At its best, No Logo is fluent, undogmatically alive to its contradictions and omissions, and positively seethes with intelligent anger.