From the start and all through, the whole point of the article is that these things are neither rral brands nor the absense of a brand. a brand that isn't, not the absense of a brand.
To me it seems like an unfortunate but common tactic in marketing-land to seek out any sort of affiliation with a well known brand and to publish it as much as possible.
Christ... It's not a "brand extension" (whatever that means); it's a blog post intended for the general public, not researchers. If you want research, look at the journal archives.
They are simply exploiting the fact that their brand identity plus retail presence generates plenty of sales....plus most consumers don't care what is under the hood.
It's not. Consider e.g. Instagram and Facebook, both currently owned by the same company, yet being distinct Brands both in the regular meaning of the word, and in the meaning used by the article.
Irrelevant to the article, every business dreams of the brand loyalty that Moleskine enjoys. Look how often the article uses the brand name for a largely commodity product.
As if these companies care about the brand reputation over decades, they just want to milk it and then sell it to idiots (public) that recognize the name.
To be fair it's not just corporate raiders who do this to companies. IBM and HP quite happily did it to themselves.
No, I am saying some people do that, and it is one way in which companies can maintain profit margins. Do you really believe brand name products really have no real brand-only advantage? Hell: the Costco store brands are so famous for being good it managed to become something of a brand itself!
Well, there's plagiarism and then there's impersonating a well-known (admittedly in niche circles) brand to make money. I think they made a good call here.
This has to be the most tone-deaf strain of journalism I've seen made on the topic.
Everyone knows that brands (personal and commercial) aren't cool. They aren't our friends. They're self-interested and often insincerely masquerade as being in the public interest, whilst polluting social consciousness with noise. They are also often humorless and tone-deaf. Well calibrated people don't and shouldn't care about the safety of brands from ridicule. And, it happens that ridiculing and embarrassing brands is quite amusing.
Surely even the worst journalists who churn out advertorials see that there is no sympathy to be had here by going "think of those poor, suffering brands bu-hu".
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