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At around this same time a new kind of corporation began to rival the traditional allAmerican manufacturers for market share; these were the Nikes and Microsoft’s, and
later, the Tommy Hilfiger’s and Intel’s. These pioneers made the bold claim that producing
goods was only an incidental part of their operations, and that thanks to recent victories in
trade liberalization and labour-law reform; they were able to have their products made for
them by contractors, many of them overseas. What these companies produced primarily
were not things, they said, but images of their brands. Their real work lay not in
manufacturing but in marketing. This formula, needless to say, has proved enormously
profitable, and its success has companies competing in a race toward weightlessness:
whoever owns the least has the fewest employees on the payroll and produces the most
powerful images, as opposed to products, wins the race.
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