Brands like Nike and Adidas competed fiercely in the marketing sphere, and yet they manufactured their products in some of the same factories, with the same workers stitching their shoes. And why not? Making stuff was no longer considered a “core competency.” Head offices (now increasingly being called “campuses”) wanted to be as free as possible to focus on what they considered the real business at hand: creating a corporate mythology powerful enough to project meaning onto pretty much any object, simply by stamping their brand on it.
