Bonfire of the Brands

'People must stop buying and buying': "Dame Vivienne Westwood thinks we should all stop shopping for clothes... with so much fast fashion available to us, we are not giving ourselves the opportunity to develop good taste."
The sweatshop high street - more brands under fire: "India's largest ready-made clothing exporter, Gokaldas Export, which supplies brands including Marks & Spencer, Mothercare and H&M, confirmed that wages paid to garment workers were as low as £1.13 for a nine-hour day."
US babies get global brand names: "He also says that naming a child after a brand such as Armani or Chanel, associated with money or exclusivity, reflects the material hopes of such families."
Microsoft keeps top brand crown: "The greatest difference in voting positions between men and women confirms that women clearly rate high quality lifestyle brands whilst their male counterparts voted in considerably higher numbers for more everyday functional brands..."
All change: "The straightjacket that was once ´the brand manual´ is now more likely to be shorter, encouraging and have a lightness of touch rather than nine ring binders gathering dust on the shelf (the way they used to be)."
Changes to shopping behaviour: "People need stuff. Shopping is still a transactional, experiential pastime and this is where retail brands can arguably add the most, both in terms of reinforcing the brand message and being profitable."
Consistency in retail - is there ever too much?: "A coherent approach to the brand not only prevents confusion about what the brand stands for but it also helps to build consumer trust, which leads to customer experience being solid across the board."
Being Spaces & Brand Spaces: "There is a genuine opportunity to surpass the now ubiquitous ´flagship store´ (still seen as the most radical change in the world of retail branding), by offering something truly new to consumers who are not only looking for entertainment, but also for uniqueness, discovery, trying out, hanging out, empathy and even transformation."
Is that a fake in your pocket? Quite possibly..: "Last year just under 1 million people bought a counterfeit Louis Vuitton item, the study found."
(Still) Made Here: "Two mega-trends of our time, the greening of consumption and the proliferation of alternative status symbols, hold the promise of vast new riches for real-world entrepreneurs, while wreaking havoc on those that lag behind. Which brings us to the (STILL) MADE HERE trend: the comeback of all things local, all things with a sense of place, and how they´re surfacing in a world dominated by globalization."
When shopping becomes a drug: "One of the great myths is that addictive spending is defined by women racking up credit card debt in pursuit of closets full of clothes while we ignore Uncle Charlie "treating" his friends to nights on the town..."
How much mindless consumerism is enough: "One of the larger issues with making shopping available around the clock is it tricks people into believing shopping and consuming goods is a form of entertainment when it was once considered a necessity."

These are the facts: Chain stores dominate our high streets. Adverts dominate our media. And brands dominate our culture - to the extent that owning the right products defines what it is to be normal. For some people this isn’t an issue - they shop for pleasure, they love the big brands, and they feel comfortable being sold to all day. I’m not one of those people. Well, not anymore. I’ll give you three reasons why:

1. Non-essential consumption is a root cause of the situation we find ourselves in today - the environment, the economy and popular culture are all affected by the drive towards consumer growth.

2. Consumerism doesn’t work - in that it’s supposed to make us happy. Not in any sustainable way. Shopping is like a drug - the instant high is fantastic, but it’s never enough.

3. We’re starting to lose the choice. There are millions of consumer choices on the shelves. But alternatives to consumerism isn’t one of them. It’s virtually impossible to live brand-free and be normal.

This website, my videos and my book document my struggle to live within a consumer culture, of which there is next to no escape.

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Buy Less Live More

If we don’t shift to a less consumerist and throwaway society, we’ll hit crisis after crisis, and it’s coming soon.

We are going to have, we have to have and it would make us happy to have a change, coming from ordinary human beings who say ‘I don’t want to be trapped, I want more time, less stress.

Clare Short, former International Development Secretary, writing in Bonfire Of The Brands book

The Future Of Your Skin’s Your Hands

The Mark Of A Moron

It’s surely the mark of an individual to refuse to be branded. It’s daft to spend money on Nike clothes. The mark of a moron. Anyone who does so has been merely duped by the million-dollar marketing campaigns. To buy Nike shows a sheep-like nature and a lack of imagination and style.

Who in their right mind would want to be branded, like a cow? A brand identifies you as someone else’s property. It is the mark of a tamed and exploited animal. Brands promise freedom but they deliver the opposite: the worst kind of slavish conformity.

Tom Hodgkisnon, in an excerpt from ‘Bonfire Of The Brands’

Human Billboard

Paperback Edition
Original Edition

24.3m transactions worth £1.3bn will be spent on plastic cards today.

10. Be realistic
Trying to live brand free is like keeping to a low fat diet - a little bit of chocolate cake once in a while isn’t going to kill you as long as the bulk of your diet is healthy.

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