No Space - New Blood and the Production of Brand Culture Colonies

We consider the potential impact of critical texts published outside the marketing academy upon the new generation of marketing lecturers by focussing on Naomi Klein's influential No Logo and her claims regarding the colonisation of musical spaces. Noting that the text has an insider/outsider relationship with marketing scholarship, we subject the ideas presented by Klein for review through empirical investigation. Specifically, we explore her concept of No Space whereby branding processes insidiously saturate and ultimately dominate cultural production and in so doing, contextualise her claims through a study of professional musicians. We conclude the piece by reflecting upon the growing gap between marketing practice and marketing scholarship and also the implications for the so-called New Blood of the academy.