No Logo Rhetorical Analysis

What does it mean to sell an idea? Companies make a profit selling a product however businesses have evolved over the last couple centuries selling a name much larger than their products. Naomi Klein, a well-known journalist and author of “No Logo,” delves into corporate abuses, the effects of globalization, and how branding affects the world. In this essay I will be analyzing Klein’s rhetoric while exploring the idea of branding and the effects it may have. Klein’s purpose in her essay is to teach us through historical tact that brand identity is waging war on public and private space such as institutions, identities, and even nationality (Klein 770).
What is branding? Klein states that a brand is a familiarity, a face that you can learn

More important than product, people, and advertising, branding is going forward as one of the most important factors in a business. While Klein has a bias against branding and wishes the reader a word of warning, in this specific essay she focuses on what branding means for the future. Klein starts off her minor claims with the bloating of corporations. “A consensus emerged that corporations were bloated, oversized; they owned too much, employed too many people, and were weighed down by too many things (Klein 769).” Through the use of branding, these same businesses could cut down all of their problems and payrolls through importing and simply putting their brand name on the product. Then when the dreaded “Marlboro Friday” happened, and it seemed that all brand significance was for naught, Klein showed us examples of businesses that thrived from a new age of marketing. “For these companies, the ostensible product was mere filler for the real production: the brand (Klein 774).” With brand driven marketing rather than product driven sales, businesses soared with selling the idea of their products more than their products quality. Using the example of Starbucks, Klein also supports her claims of branding not through marketing but weaving its name into products and culture. “The Starbucks coffee chain was also expanding during this period spinning its name into a wide range of branded projects: Starbucks airline coffee, office coffee, coffee ice cream, coffee beer (Klein 775).” By spreading its name not through marketing, but through spreading the brand through new and different products Starbucks found success in turning their brand concept into a virus and sending it through cultural sponsorship, political controversy, consumer experience and brand extensions. These forms of image building could make a company like Starbucks successful with branding over