1) "Predictably, the ad agencies panicked when they saw their prestige clients abandoning them for the bargain bins and they did what they could to convince big spenders like Procter and Gamble and Philip Morris that the proper route out of the brand crisis wasn't less brand marketing but more. At the annual meeting of the U.S. Association of National Advertisers in 1988, Graham H. Phillips, the U.S. chairman of Ogilvy & Mather, berated the assembled executives for stooping to participate in 'a commodity marketplace' rather than an image-based one. 'I doubt that many of you would welcome a commodity marketplace in which one competed solely on price, promotion and trade deals, all of which can easily be duplicated by competition, leading to ever-decreasing profits, decay and eventual bankruptcy.' Others spoke of the importance of maintaining 'conceptual value-added,' which in effect means adding nothing but marketing. Stooping to compete on the basis of real value, the agencies ominously warned, would spell not just the death of the brand, but corporate death as well."

2) "So focused is Nike on borrowing style, attitude and imagery from black urban youth that the company has its own word for the practice: bro-ing. That's when Nike marketers and designers bring their prototypes to inner-city neighbourhoods in Mew York, Philadelphia or Chicago and say, 'Hey, bro, check out the shoes,' to gauge the reaction to new styles and to build up a buzz. In an interview with journalist Josh Feit, Mike designer Aaron Cooper described his bro-ing conversion in Harlem: 'We go to the playground, and we dump the shoes out. It's unbelievable. The kids go nuts. That's when you realize the importance of Nike. Having kids tell you Nike is the number one thing in their life —number two is their girlfriend.' Nike has even succeeded in branding the basketball courts where it goes bro-ing through its philanthropic wing, P.L.A.Y (Participate in the Lives of Youth). P.L.A.Y sponsors inner-city sports programs in exchange for high swoosh visibility, including giant swooshes at the centre of resurfaced urban basketball courts. In tonier parts of the city, that kind of thing would be called an ad and the space would come at a price, but on this side of the tracks, Mike pays nothing, and files the cost under charity."

3) "Like so much of cool hunting, Hilfiger's marketing journey feeds off the alienation at the heart of America's race relations: selling white youth on their fetishization of black style, and black youth on their fetishization of white wealth."

4) "Artists will always make art by reconfiguring our shared cultural languages and references, but as those shared experiences shift from firsthand to mediated, and the most powerful political forces in our society are as likely to be multinational corporations as politicians, a new set of issues emerges that once again raises serious questions about out-of-date definitions of freedom of expression in a branded culture. In this context, telling video artists that they can't use old car commercials, or musicians that they can't sample or distort lyrics, is like banning the guitar or telling a painter he can't use red. The underlying message is that culture is something that happens to you. You buy it at the Virgin Mega store or Toys 'R' Us and rent it at Blockbuster Video. It is not something in which you participate, or to which you have the right to respond."

5) "'Our strategic plan in North America is to focus intensely on brand management, marketing and product design as a means to meet the casual clothing wants and needs of consumers. Shifting a significant portion of our manufacturing from the U.S. and Canadian markets to contractors throughout the world will give the company greater flexibility to allocate resources and capital to its brands. These steps are crucial if we are to remain competitive.' -John Ermatinger, president of Levi Strauss Americas division, explains the company's decision to shut down twenty-two plants and lay off 13,000 North American workers between November 1997 and February 1999"

6) "Franny Armstrong, who produced a documentary about the trial, points out that Britain's libel law was changed in 1993 'so that governmental bodies such as local councils are no longer able to sue for libel. This was to protect people's right to criticize public bodies. Multinationals are fast becoming more powerful than governments -- and even less accountable -- so shouldn't the same rules apply? With advertising budgets in the billions, it's not as though they need to turn to the law to ensure their point of view is heard.' In other words, for many of its supporters, Steel and Morris's case was less about the merits of fast food than about the need to protect freedom of speech in a climate of mounting corporate control. If Brent Spar was about loss of space, and Nike was about the loss of good jobs, McLibel was about loss of voice - it was about corporate censorship."