Logo Logic: The Ups and Downs of Branded Political Communication

Abstract

Activists often have difficulties getting messages to larger publics. This is particularly challenging in the U.S. press/politics system, where the mainstream media tend to open the news gates only after government institutions engage with issues. Yet there are signs in recent years that activists are finding creative ways of publicizing their causes by attaching political messages to familiar corporate brands. For example, complex messages about labor conditions in foreign factories making shoes and apparel may travel more easily when attached to a major brand, for example, Nike sweatshop. The first part of this analysis examines how branded political communication works and how it may be effective. The second part looks at possible downsides of getting consumer audiences to actually grasp the larger import of the politics behind the brands and getting targeted companies and industrial sectors (fashion, food, forest products, etc.) to change their offending behaviors.

Green Consumption and Social Change: Debates over Responsibility, Private Action, and Access

“…For example, O'Rourke () reviews campaigns against Staples (environmental practices), Nike (labor and environmental practices), and Dell (e‐waste and labor practices). Bennett and Lagos () explain the strategy of targeting top brands like Starbuck's , while Clouder and Harrison () attempt to define what “success” means for a boycott. And Pralle () offers a good example of how boycotts, against sport utility vehicles in this case, are often part of a larger portfolio of political tactics.…”

“…The term anti‐consumption was originally an umbrella term from the business literature used to describe anything from boycotts to personal dislikes (Iyer and Muncy ). Some scholars would also include “culture jamming” like in Adbusters magazine as a discursive form of anti‐consumption (Bennett and Lagos ; Rumbo ).…”

Political consumerism and the decline of class politics in Western Europe

“…Therefore, the market appears as 'the new location of politics in the twenty-first century' (Micheletti et al, 2004: xii). Scholars generally accept that policies related to consumption and the economy are the backbone of many social movements (Lien and Nerlich, 2004), for example, the antiglobalization movement and the protests against the World Bank or the World Trade Association (Levi and Murphy, 2006), the groups and cooperatives promoting fair trade, or activism against child labor or maquiladoras (Bennett and Lagos, 2007;Stolle and Micheletti, 2007). In fact, previous individual-level crossnational empirical analysis shows that political consumerism is clearly correlated with other modes of political participation, in particular, less institutionalized actions such as protest (Ferrer-Fons, 2006).…”

Fonts of Potential: Areas for Typographic Research in Political Communication

“…Indeed, citizen creators of graphic messages mimicking the Obama campaign's typography "used the logo unofficially, changing it to express their own sentiments" (Seidman, 2010, p. 6) and used Gotham on materials not created by the campaign to seamlessly add their voices to the official Obama rhetoric (Ahmed, 2013). This represents a new evolution of what Bennett (2004;Bennett & Lagos, 2007) called "logo logic," or the attachment of political messages to preexisting brands through memetic manipulation and distribution through both digital and mainstream media platforms. Whereas he considered logo logic only in the context of anticorporate activism, parodying lifestyle brands to earn media attention and to ultimately position the activists in conversation with the targeted corporation, citizen participation in the Obama campaign through spreading usergenerated designs achieved much the same effect, but in a supportive rather than an antagonistic way.…”