Brands are obsessed with appearing cool; therefore, they capture and mine youth

In expanding their power and profits, brands 
have inadvertently made themselves the 
main targets for activists.
Brands can often find themselves the targets of 
activist campaigns protesting, for example, their 
use of sweatshops, unecological practices or 
unethical advertising.
Certain activist groups attach themselves like 
leeches to a brand and follow their practices 
across the globe, bringing the brand’s actions to 
wider public attention.
In the past, activists largely considered 
companies as neutral entities caught up in wider 
political conflicts, but now they are increasingly 
seen as the direct cause for suffering across the 
globe. Brands have overtaken governments as 
the main focus for criticism, mostly due to their 
increased dominance of our cultural, political 
and economic lives since the 1980s.
The 
enormous 
economic 
power 
that 
multinationals possess through their brands has 
led to them gaining increased political power, 

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too. Huge corporations are increasingly 
becoming the major political entities in the world, 
influencing and even controlling national 
governments. Multinationals, however, possess 
this enormous amount of power without being 
constrained by the legal and electoral framework 
that controls and oversees governments. 
Activists campaign because they feel that these 
corporations must be held to account.
As brands have grown in influence, they have 
become an increasingly prominent part of our 
everyday lives – in many ways, they are the 
dominant iconography of our times. We tend to 
think of our lives in branded terms and are 
increasingly likely to form emotional attachments 
to certain brands. This means that when brands 
are accused of malpractice or unethical 
behavior, we are more likely to feel emotionally 
responsible ourselves and more likely to speak 
out against them.
In expanding their power and profits, brands 
have inadvertently made themselves the main 
targets for activists.