Branded Nation: Our Love Affair with Luxury - Couverture rigide

Why did the terrorists target the World Trade Centre? Why did they choose United and American airlines over Delta or Southwest? Why do anti-World Trade Organisation activists trash Niketown instead of the local supermarket? How is it that a Big Mac is merely lunch in America and a spectre of cultural imperialism in France? It is because they are branded, looming as larger-than-life symbols of America. They are ubiquitous names, born of ingenious marketing strategies.
Cultural commentator James Twitchell demonstrates how branding has infiltrated every corner of high culture today, including religious institutions, universities, and museums. Like everyone else, the gatekeepers to higher culture have turned to the power of marketing for their continued survival. BRANDED NATION lays bare an American society where mega churches resemble shopping malls, where a university lives or dies on the talents of its image-makers and where museums have turned to motorcycle exhibits and fashion shows to bolster revenue. Written with great wit and striking optimism, and full of provocative anecdotes and penetrating analyses, Twitchell's parsing of Madison Avenue's takeover of high culture is an engaging work of inspired observation.

"Jim Twitchell is Jay Chiat wrapped in H. L. Mencken. He gets marketing better than most marketers -- and writes about it better, with more insight and wit, than just about any writer. Now that brands have moved off the rumps of cows onto colleges, museums, and even churches, we need Twitchell's intelligence more than ever."
-- Randall Rothenberg, author of Where the Suckers Moon: An Advertising Story and columnist, Advertising Age

"Twitchell is a tart-tongued observer who details how every corner of the culture has been exploited for commerce."
-- Geoff Lewis, BusinessWeek

"Readers fascinated by the pervasiveness of marketing in American life will revel in the way Twitchell parses our industry and academic lexicon."
-- Clayton Collins, The Christian Science Monitor