Cheap Thought of the Day

A foreign war is an incredibly expensive and inefficient way to make people hate us.

On the Perils of Brand

By Lael Ewy

Because most of the objects in our lives are actually manufactured by a limited number of Chinese suppliers and using a relatively limited number of techniques, “brand” is the only thing distinguishing one item from another. In a few cases, a company like Apple distinguishes itself through aesthetics. But open one up (which they strongly discourage) and you’ll find—surprise!—Intel inside.

This lack of substantive differentiation doesn’t bother most corporations, of course, since they long ago discovered that owning a brand is much less of a financial hassle than owning an actual manufacturing concern, what with its resource needs, its waste, and, above all, its pesky an occasionally uppity human employees. This has been a positive boon for China and a few other countries in Southeast Asia, but it also seriously erodes confidence in a brand and brand loyalty when problems develop. Examples abound, but the most recent have involved tainted cat food, jewelry, and toys. These scandals have revealed a deeper issue: there is no difference between the “premium” and the “discount” product other than the label, Your cat or dog would have been just as happy and healthy—and just as doomed—with the Friskies or the Science Diet.

For a corporation to act this way is to act not only cynically toward its customers, the local employees it has laid off in order to outsource its workforce, and to its brand, but it is to complete the cycle of alienation so completely as to make the creation of any object for marketing purposes almost meaningless. The notions of quality, pride in production, craftsmanship, ownership, have been dead for a long while, and in their stead there is nothing but the efficiency with which cash flows through the system. By making brand the only thing, corporations have also, now, made it nothing at all.