OUIL501 - Naomi Klein - No Logo

• No Logo talks about how corporate branding has taken over America
• The rise in consumerism forced corporations to create a brand for themselves in order to create brand loyalty with consumers and to stand out from the competition as more and more brands surfaced.
• As manufacturing processes developed and upgraded and products began to be made in large scale factories, more and more variations of common products were being made, and different sales strategies needed to be employed, hence the development of the brand. 
• The purpose of advertisement changed from 'delivering product news bulletins' to creating a branded image of a particular product.
• Brands had to create an emotional response in their customers, to make themselves appear more human in order to appeal to consumers. 
• Brands became important to children and young teens as a way to fit in, as young people began to have more of a disposable income and their own identity. 
• Brands aimed their advertisements towards children to instil brand awareness, which would grow as they grew themselves. 
• This links to Pester Power.
• Brand Logos have become more popular as they have become more visable, the product is more about the logo than the use of the product itself. 
• "This scaling-up of the logo's role has been so dramatic that it has become a change in substance. Over the past decade and a half, logos have grown so dominant that they have essentially transformed the clothing on which they appear into empty carriers for the brands they represent. The metaphorical alligator, in other words, has risen up and swallowed the literal shirt."

OUIL501 - ‘I felt like a piece of trash’ – Life inside America’s food processing plants

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/dec/21/life-inside-america-food-processing-plants-cheap-meat

Until now, little attention has been paid to the workers who plant and harvest produce in the American south or who work in the high-speed packing houses in the midwest.

the meat industry was becoming overwhelmingly staffed by recent immigrants – many without legal employment status – as a way of pushing production lines to go faster and faster.

Undocumented workers, many from Mexico and other parts of Latin America, formed a perfect corporate workforce: thankful for their pay cheques, willing to endure harsh working conditions, unlikely to unionise or even complain.

In 2006 and 2007, when the American mortgage crisis began to peak and then stock markets crashed worldwide, the freedom to run faster production lines positioned Hormel to capitalise on demand the economic downturn created for budget-friendly meat like Spam without significantly increasing its workforce or raising wages to match the elevated output.

in 2002, Hormel’s production lines were running at 900 pigs per hour; by 2007, they were running 1,350 pigs per hour. 

The speed of pork production is not only affecting the health and safety of workers on the line; now lines are moving so fast that the safety of consumers is being placed at risk. Inspectors have discovered pig carcasses with lesions from tuberculosis, septic arthritis (with bloody fluid pouring from joints) and smears from faecal matter and intestinal contents.

 when the whole system is built around producing cheap meat, it means that fewer and fewer low-income families, even in the developed world, have access to high-quality meat. So it’s not enough to buy grass-fed steaks for your own family and then tut-tut at poor families lined up at McDonald’s or filling their shopping carts with Spam.

OUIL501 - The Red Meat Industry: Product and Consumerism

http://www.journalofanimalscience.org/content/57/Supplement_2/119.full.pdf

The red meat industry has undergone significant change during recent decades.
Mechanization has resulted in high-efficiency, high-volume cattle slaughter-dressing facilities. 

Future trends will include consumer marketplace expression of a preference for reduced fat, which will be reflected in further grade standard changes.
Cultural trends affect the industries that supply them and they change to meet certain changing demands.

The passage of the federal Humane Slaughter Act became effective on July 1st 1961.

A number of recent reports or consumer surveys provide evidence that diet-health and(or) price considerations have had an impact

on the red meat industry.

OUIL501 - Fast Food Nation

http://jhampton.pbworks.com/w/file/fetch/51769044/Fast%20Food%20Nation.pdf

In 1970, Americans spent about $6 billion on fast food; in 2001, they spent more than $110 billion.

What people eat (or don’t eat) has always been determined by a complex interplay of social, economic, and technological forces.

On any given day in the United States about one-quarter of the adult population visits a fast food restaurant.

In 1968, McDonald’s operated about one thousand restaurants.Today it has about thirty thousand restaurants worldwide and opens almost two thousand new ones each year.

Farmers and cattle ranchers are losing their independence, essentially becoming hired hands for the agribusiness giants or being forced off the land. Family farms are now being replaced by gigantic corporate farms with absentee owners

The fast food chains’ vast purchasing power and their demand for a uniform product have encouraged fundamental changes in how cattle are raised, slaughtered, and processed into ground beef.

OUIL501 - Pester Power research

• Pester Power is a term used to refer to the tactic that some corporations use of targeting their marketing towards children in order to encourage them to pester their parents into buying whatever is being advertised.
• Targeted marketing towards children was first seen in the early 1950's with the first childrens TV advert for the Mr Potato head toy. 
• Companies often target their marketing at very young children in order to instil the idea of brand loyalty as they grow older.
• Childhood obesity is linked to Pester Power, as the main products that are marketed to children are fast food, sugary cereals and fizzy drinks. Mcdonald's is the largest toy distributor in the world as uses the inclusion of a toy within Happy Meal's to directly market their food to children. 
• The rise in the use of Pester Power could also be linked to the commercialisation of public holidays like Christmas, Easter and Halloween. Specific advertisements for these holidays always target children at times like these with holiday specific items.  

OUIL501 - The industrial revolution and consumerism

• The industrial revolution was a transitional period to using new manufacturing processes between around 1760 and 1840.
• The revolution affected almost every aspect of day to day life, mainly population and family income, greatly affecting the standard of living. 
• The industrial revolution greatly increased the scale of the textiles manufacturing business
• The growth of the textiles industry links to the growth of consumerism as the average income was raised, middle classes began to emerge who were more concerned with buying non necessities like fashion items. 
• The industrial revolution greatly increased the accessibility of consumer goods to the general public. 
• Some people argue that consumerism brought about the industrial revolution as it was the growing demand for consumable products that the industrial revolution was a response to.