Consumer Republic: Using Brands To Get What You Want, Make Corporations Behave And Maybe Even Save The World

If we really want to save the world, maybe we should start at the mall.

Consumer Republic’s message begins with this single, inarguable truth: brands make corporations accountable. Expensive to create, essential to making money, and more public than anything else a corporation has or does, a brand is an enormously valuable and fragile asset to them. And we consumers have the power to make it worthless.

As someone who has worked on the inside, Bruce Philp knows exactly what this power can do. With fascinating case examples, and a startling yet pragmatic argument, he dismantles the simplistic predator–prey narrative behind the anti-brand movement, confronts us with our real role in the system, and inspires us to make every dollar we spend count. To buy less, but demand better. To make meaningful choices instead of just easy ones. And then to speak up when we’re happy and when we’re not. Pin every one of these acts to a brand, and corporations will be forced to cooperate in making our way of life sustainable.

Brands, says Philp, are the only leverage the average consumer has with which to make a company behave itself. Abandon them, and we’ll surrender our marketplace to scoundrels. Take control of them, and we can save the world.