The company appeared to be eyeing significant market share opportunities offered up by the 2009 conversion to digital TV in the U.S. It was a bold move, because while it’s easy to cash in your brand equity and go down-market, once the decision is made it’s nearly impossible to reverse course.

Last month another famous brand made that fateful choice. Liz Claiborne, Inc. agreed to license its namesake brand exclusively to J.C. Penney, ending decades-long relationships with department stores like Macy’s, Dillard’s and Bon-Ton. The Claiborne brand has long been in decline, and a Macy’s spokesperson said the retailer could no longer justify expanding the line because of customer confusion between it and the “Liz & Co.” sub-brand that was being sold exclusively at–you guessed it–J.C. Penney.

The Claiborne brain trust may have created their own problem by overextending the brand, a common manifestation of the loss of focus that afflicts many stalled companies. That said, this new decision may work out. It’s not the first time J.C. Penney has partnered with respected, high-profile designers (Polo Ralph Lauren and Nicole Miller, to name two), and Penney is doing better than many of its rivals in this tough economy.

As with Panasonic’s decision, however, this one will be interesting to watch, and will serve as yet another object lesson for any company struggling with stalled growth. Going downscale–where all the value-conscious buyers are these days–can be extremely tempting. But if you do it, make sure you’re extremely comfortable with your decision. There’s no turning back.

A November 13 Wall Street Journal story reported that IHG is preparing to pull the Holiday Inn flag from as many as 300 hotels in North America whose franchisees won’t spend as much as $250,000 per property to overhaul their lobbies, signage, lighting and bedding, among other things. Said Kevin Kowalski, SVP of brand management for IHG, “On the compliance date, Feb. 1, those hotels will get a failure letter and so will their banks.”

Those are tough words, and they back up a tough policy announced back in 2007–before the recession made financing for such renovations difficult to acquire. But IHG has little choice if it’s to keep the damaged brand from sliding into oblivion. It has a responsibility to restore the Holiday Inn brand on behalf of the other 2,400 properties, 1,400 of which were substandard and whose owners have embarked on the required remodeling.

Once one of the nation’s leading hotel chains, Holiday Inn milked its half-century of heritage for too long, allowing many of its properties to show (and smell) their age. IHG is doing the best it can to address the brand’s long-eroding reputation, having stripped the name from hotels accounting for 125,000 rooms around the globe, according to the Journal. As it does, it continues investing in all-new properties that will aid in revamping the brand’s reputation, as well as its Holiday Inn Express sub-brand.

I can’t say that Holiday Inn makes list of hotels I might choose for my next vacation or business trip—I’ve been disappointed (disgusted?) the handful of times when I’ve had no choice but to stay in one in the past. That said, knowing that IGH is drawing a line in the sand, I’ll consider giving the brand another shot. That kind of commitment is worth rewarding.

It’s not the first time Systemax has pursued such a strategy (having purchased the rights to the CompUSA name last year), nor is Systemax the only company in the business of rejuvenating defunct brands. These companies understand that names like CompUSA and Circuit City have real economic value beyond the bricks, mortar, employees and inventory with which they were once associated.

It’s easy to dismiss “brand equity” as nothing more than a convenient term for some fuzzy essence of goodwill in the marketplace. But Systemax and companies like it are opportunistic, not sentimental. Their rational, arms-length offers to reclaim once-proud names that for one reason or another have gone dormant demonstrates that brands are real assets with real value that grows (or declines) over time.

When times are tough, the valuation of most corporate assets–from real estate to receivables–tends to be in decline. But there’s no reason why any company can’t continue to enhance its brand equity in spite of the economy. In some ways, the opportunity may be better than ever.