The Anti-Brand Movement.

As big brands and big stores become more and more important on the landscape and the mindscape, younger consumers around the world are tuning in to the anti-corporate expressions that began to surface during the Seattle uprisings last year. One of the figure heads of the "movement" is a 30 year old self-determination advocate named Naomi Klein, a Canadian who believes in boycotting The Gap and is the author of a dramatic new book called No Logo. The book puts forth the idea that big business has conquered cool and forced consumers to believe that brands and brand names are more important than products and services.

Readers of The Shopper Report who saw our recent report called Store Brands at the Turning Point may remember its discussion of the fact that many consumers perception of brand advertising includes the kind of easy mind control that comes from a lifetime of hearing and seeing good things about advertised brands. While most consumers continue to be comfortable with this basic fact of their consumer life, it's easy to see why Naomi Klein is getting the world-wide audience she is - insisting that she is not trying to create a movement but "to recognize a movement that we already have." This appears to have a direct relationship to the slowly growing success of store brands in this country and to the added attention that big brand producers are giving to working with distributors of store brands - which seems to say: if you can't beat them, join them.