But then what of the "shareholder value"? They'd have to pay out tens or hundreds of millions in executive bonus and would not be artificially inflating the stock.
Seth Godin often makes the distinction between having a brand and a logo with interesting examples. The one I like is that if you can put your logo on a competitor's product and nobody would know the difference, you don't have a brand, you have a logo. The example he uses are hotel chains.
Don't work with coca cola, I would no be able to differentiate a Pepsi bottle with a Coca-Cola logo (note that I dislike every sodas :) ); the Coca-Cola is still powerful, perhaps it does not even need a product :)
