One of the sad­dest things that has hap­pened in today’s world of mega­cor­po­ra­tions and mar­ket­ing is the dis­so­lu­tion of the once-indivisible tie between the Com­pany and the Brand. For exam­ple, when you buy some­thing that says Acme on it, you would nat­u­rally assume that it was made by the Acme Cor­po­ra­tion. Or, the more astute con­sumer might even fig­ure that a con­trac­tor made it while the design and qual­ity con­trol were ulti­mately left to Acme’s discretion.

Thanks to the shift in the brand’s role from resource to com­mod­ity in the 1990′s, those assump­tions are no longer valid.

Take, for exam­ple, the case of GT Bicy­cles. Until the late 90′s, GT bikes, famous for their unique design and sturdy con­struc­tion, were hand-assembled at GT’s Cal­i­for­nia fac­tory. As they were a spe­cialty item, they were some­what costly and sold only through knowl­edgable deal­ers. In 2001, the com­pany went bank­rupt. Its assets were pur­chased by Pacific Cycle, which now man­u­fac­tures crude looka­likes of GT bikes in China com­plete with GT’s orig­i­nal logo. These bikes are sold at Wal-Mart to unas­sum­ing con­sumers. (Pacific Cycle also sells bikes labelled with the “Schwinn” brand, even though the sto­ried Schwinn Cor­po­ra­tion also went out of busi­ness in 2001.)

The most egre­gious case in my book is that of West­ing­house. Per­haps you’ve seen West­ing­house light bulbs for sale in your gro­cery store or hard­ware store. The pack­ages indi­cate that they are made by the “West­ing­house Light­ing Corp.” Wow, you might think—the famous West­ing­house Corp. has been in busi­ness for 120 years—and yes, there’s that leg­endary Paul Rand logo to prove it! Wrong. The West­ing­house Elec­tric Cor­po­ra­tion dis­solved in 1997 when its assets were puchased by CBS/Viacom. Even so, they had already sold their light bulb man­u­fac­tur­ing busi­ness to Philips in the 1980s.

The real crime in the case of the West­ing­house light bulb is that, while there once was a real West­ing­house Corp. that made very nice light bulbs, today’s “West­ing­house” light bulb is not made by West­ing­house at all, but by a ran­dom Chi­nese com­pany. Some­one in the USA buys the Chi­nese bulbs in bulk, puts them in West­ing­house boxes, and, thanks to the igno­rantly brand-hungry con­sumer, reaps the prof­its from a long-deceased company.

In the mod­ern par­lance, this prac­tice may be called “brand recharg­ing.”