Let’s do the time warp again: a marketing manifesto for retro revolutionaries

Abstract

A spectre is stalking marketing: the spectre of consumerism. All the powers of old marketing have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre: Kotier & Levitt, Grönroos & Gummesson, Procter & Gamble, Bang & Olufsen. But they are wasting their time. Consumers have had enough, more than enough. The anti-capitalist protests in Seattle and elsewhere; the boycotts of Nike and the Gap; the attacks on McDonald’s and Starbucks; the best-selling status of ban-branding tracts such as No Logo; the egregious enormity of the Enron imbroglio; the dot.com meltdown that did for day-traders worldwide; and the rise of the Adbusting Angry Brigade, who expropriate marketing messages for hate-marketing ends, all attest to the power of the consumer counter-revolution (e.g., Cockburn, St Clair and Sekula, 2000; Frank, 2000; Klein, 2000; Monbiot, 2000; Bircham and Charlton, 2001; Bové and Dufour, 2001; Hertz, 2001).