Corporate marketing language can be weaponized back against the company that wrote it.

Evidence

Thank you for your quick response to my inquiry about my custom ZOOM XC USA running shoes. Although I commend you for your prompt customer service, I disagree with the claim that my personal iD was inappropriate slang. After consulting Webster’s Dictionary, I discovered that “sweatshop” is in fact part of standard English, and not slang. The word means: “a shop or factory in which workers are employed for long hours at low wages and under unhealthy conditions” and its origin dates from 1892. So my personal iD does meet the criteria detailed in your first email. Your web site advertises that the NIKE iD program is “about freedom to choose and freedom to express who you are.” I share Nike’s love of freedom and personal expression. The site also says that “If you want it done right…build it yourself.” I was thrilled to be able to build my own shoes, and my personal iD was offered as a small token of appreciation for the sweatshop workers poised to help me realize my vision. I hope that you will value my freedom of expression and reconsider your decision to reject my order. — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 937

Categorization

• ADDENDUM: Directly extends ‘On Sacrifice: The Real Kind, with Corpses’ in its textual irony register, and connects to the ethics of sweatshop labor raised throughout the graft-and-growth and immodesty articles. The turning of a company’s freedom-of-expression slogan against itself is a genre of protest worth an essay section.
• CANDY: A perfect example of turning a corporation’s own language back on them — ‘I share Nike’s love of freedom and personal expression.’
• XREF: connects to: Corporate solidarity gestures can provoke activist backlash when company practices contradict them — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities: Living with…, 724; Deliberately mismanaging one’s brand can liberate the person trapped inside it. — Naomi Klein, Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror…, 170

Broader Connections

• Corporate solidarity gestures can provoke activist backlash when company practices contradict them #exemplifies (0.90) — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 724
• Deliberately mismanaging one’s brand can liberate the person trapped inside it. #expands (0.75) — Naomi Klein, Doppelganger, 170