ABSTRACT
Buying into brands and logos helps articulate a sense of identity through consumer choice, and in some parts of the world may stand for freedom and democratic values by displaying them. This chapter examines the semiotics of advertising, and more specifically the poetics and politics of brands, advertising, and logos. It starts with the history of brands and logos, beginning in the nineteenth century but accelerating after the Second World War. The chapter recognizes the split between poetics and politics by having a section on each, and finally a section on 'commodity racism'. It considers brands and logos as indices of the transformations within industrial capitalism, as a way of obscuring the relations of production that are now global in nature, outsourced to factories in Special Economic Zones (SEZ) in Asia. The chapter also considers special 'Bonded Zones' in China that prop up multinational corporations through a system of tax incentives, pools of cheap labour, and import/export agreements.
