I hate that every known company has to suddenly exploit their “brand recognition” and expand into unrelated areas. It’s completely logical from a short-term-profits-from-uninterested-in-anything-besides-profits shareholders but destroys the value people ascribe to a certain brand in the long run. My favourite example: Marshall. They’ve been known for loud and DISTORTED guitar amplifiers for decades. They shaped the sound of so many famous bands. Their amps would last a lifetime and sound great! So someone thought "Hey let’s make shitty headphones and Bluetooth speakers that will - by nature - not be durable, will have to excell in an area that Marshall never was interested in: amplifiers that do not distort the source material and that sound neutral. They had to rely on completely new technology like Bluetooth (which changes it’s standard over time) or be dependent on shitty Internet companies like Spotify (who decide suddenly to brick devices by not supporting them anymore). It’s almost the complete opposite of everything Marshall stood for IMHO. The only thing they have in common is that they make sound. The effect is that people buy products that break, decay or deteriorate on timescales much much shorter than the original brand would be expected. The thing that Marshal will be known for in the future is these speakers or breaking headphones with OK-sound quality. But a few management people will have made a lot of money of course.
Comment on What’s Hiding Inside Haribo’s Power Bank and Headphones?
whaleross@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
I think it is fair to assume that if you get electronics branded by a candy manufacturer, you will not get any sort of quality electronics.
Obviously they shouldn’t be a fire hazard but still.
exocortex@discuss.tchncs.de 5 weeks ago
brsrklf@jlai.lu 5 weeks ago
Yeah, I would never even have considered those if I just encountered them with no other info.
I can get branding things that are maybe even tangentially related to their main activity, and then there’s a chance they’d want something at least decent. Possibly.
That one is so random I couldn’t imagine more thought went into it than tacking their logo on the cheapest thing they could buy.