Critique of Media Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

Critique of Media - Essay Example She demonstrates how consumers and corporations have more contact than ever and how this has allowed the consumer to make their angry voices heard. In spite of lavish advertising campaigns, big business is finding it more and more difficult to keep issues such as exploitation and environmental damage under wraps. The brand, which for so long has inspired trust and loyalty, is becoming undermined by the increasing ability of the consumer to rebel against its one-size-fits-all approach and exercise self-determination, argues Klein. Klein’s argument bases itself around the idea that companies now produce brands rather than products. They rely on their name, rather than the quality of their goods, to shift stock and make profits. This is not a new concept in media criticism. Companies now regularly invest in brand management as part of their overall advertising budget2. Media channels reflect this through advertising which focuses on selling the name and developing a certain image to accompany the brand. She then goes on to explain that companies exploit both producers and consumers, paying a less than fair wage for good produced in the third world which are then sold in the west for designer prices. The originality in her critique comes when she does not focus on the exploited third-world worker, but rather explores western culture and its suffocation by branding. Everything is branded, she states, and this leaves no space free from advertising and marketing. Schools, youth culture and sexual identity ar e all targets for the brands and this leads to the situation in which we now find ourselves – with no unbranded public spaces left. Klein then moves beyond this, passing from media critic, to her secondary role as activist. In order to get away from the branding machine, she suggests ‘culture jamming.’ This subversion of advertising allows the consumer to take back control and free themselves from marketing’s