More than just a fancy name

As anyone with patience enough to follow this blog has come to understand, I cannot be bothered to be regular about writing. Yet once in a while I come across something so daft, I just cannot ignore it.

This time, the ranter in me has been aroused by Porsche. I have never been a great fan of Porsche cars. I have never liked their shape, which has remained the same for 40 years now and looks like a tail-heavy rat. I don’t like the golf-club nature of the people who own them. I don’t like the fact that the engine, like in an auto-rickshaw, is in the back, which is just wrong. But I do respect the fact that their cars are the last word in engineering excellence. I can understand why a man would part with a hundred thousand dollars for a Porsche car.

While enjoying a spot of mall-browsing the other day though, I saw an ad for Porsche sunglasses. This left me catatonic with rage. If you think about it, it means that Porsche is trying to be condescending towards us plebes who cannot afford their cars.  It’s a marketing gimmick, trying to capitalize on all that Porsche stands for.

I mean, what do Porsche sunglasses stand for anyway? If I had to hazard a guess, they would be catastrophically ugly, look like they came out of the ‘70s, be bought exclusively by golf-course bores and have the lenses on backwards. And it’s not like they’re cheap. On the contrary, they cost several hundreds of dollars. That puts them in direct competition with proper eyewear manufacturers like Ray-Ban and proper fashion houses like Gucci.

Now listen, Porsche. Ray-Ban hires as many people to design eyewear as you do to design your cars. And I dare say you hire as many people to design eyewear as Ray-Ban does to design cars, i.e. none. They stake their entire business on the sales of their sunglasses. You simply pimp eyewear as a gimmick to promote your cars. Why would any midway sensible person with marginally more than a peanut for a brain buy your sunglasses?

And if it is promoting your cars that you’re after, then you are woefully mistaken there too. A man with a Porsche car would never buy Porsche sunglasses. And people who aspire to Porsche sunglasses could never afford a Porsche car.

It’s the same with Ferrari perfumes, and Harley Davidson T-shirts and whatnot. Look, Porsche, Ferrari, Harley, you are all superb brands that evoke a lot of emotional response. But you aren’t Ray-Ban or Givenchy or Ralph Lauren. If you intend to diversify into making quality apparel or fragrances, that’s your choice. But for god’s sake, don’t load us with your half-assed perfumes so that customers “feel like we’ve bought a Ferrari”. Because we don’t. We’ve just bought some perfume. And if we’ve bought yours, then we’ve bought some inferior stuff.

But you know what? There will be a queue of monumental idiots, who just don’t realize what a clod they look in their Harley leather jackets, lining up all the way out of the stores’ doors and into the street for “the Porsche lifestyle”, and “a taste of the Ferrari experience”. And the Porsches of the world will be laughing their way to the bank. It makes me sick.

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