Bem Strum Bluetooth Speaker
- A Bluetooth speaker they claim looks like a guitar but really mostly just looks nicer than generic black rectangles
- It sounds good with all (good) music, despite its bizarre claims to be “tuned for country music”
- Bass and treble knobs let you “tune” it to whichever genre you prefer
- Rechargeable battery provides 6-8 hours of playback, or roughly 105 breakup songs
- Model: HL2515 (This week in “Get to Know a British Parliamentary Legal Proceeding” we learn about HL2515, a question posed by Lord Harris of Haringey concerning the census of schoolchildren’s nationality: To ask Her Majesty’s Government, further to the answer by Viscount Younger of Leckie on 12 October (HL Deb, col 1889–90), what steps they have taken to inform parents that the provision of information about their child’s nationality for inclusion in the school censure is optional and that they can decline to provide that information without any adverse consequences. This has been “Get to Know a British Parliamentary Legal Proceeding”)
No Country For All Meh
Something went terribly wrong in the marketing of this speaker. It claims to be “tuned for country music,” but as far as we can tell that doesn’t mean a gosh-darned thing. So those who don’t like country music will be turned off by the branding, and those that do like country music will be disappointed. It’s a lose-lose!
Except … it’s a good Bluetooth speaker. So if you can see past the absurd “tuned for country music” claim and weird honky-tonk guitar aesthetic, you can nab a good deal on a solid speaker thanks to the incompetence of the original marketing team. That’s the Meh.com way.
We reckon this speaker was an ill-conceived attempt at “product differentiation,” which Wikipedia defines as, “The process of distinguishing a product or service from others, to make it more attractive to a particular target market.” And you can understand their rationale. The Bluetooth speaker market has become more saturated than the Georgia air on a muggy July day, and positioning this speaker as the one for country music makes sense … on the surface.
But this product positioning faces more problems than a long-tailed cat in the room full of rocking chairs. For starters, people who don’t listen to country music aren’t agnostic about the genre – they often downright hate it. “I like all kinds of music, except country” is a common refrain among the coastal elite. So they wouldn’t touch this thing with a 10-foot fishin’ pole.
What’s more, the songs on top of the Billboard Top Country list these days are basically pop songs. Artists keep things honest by throwing in the occasional steel guitar, twangy vocals, or country-fried reference, but for the most part, pop and country are sonically indistinguishable. The only difference between country Taylor Swift and pop Taylor Swift is that she decided to call what she was doing pop. It’s a durn shame.
And the only difference between this “tuned for country music” speaker and a normal speaker is a desperate attempt to appeal to a niche market. And that’s as pathetic as a deal-a-day site trying to use authentic country phrases.
