JBL has been netting quite a bit of attention on social media as younger generations have been posting a multitude of short videos poking fun at the legacy audiophile brand. If you’ve been on Instagram or TikTok over the last few weeks, you’ve probably seen the meme: a movie, TV show, or a documentary of an important moment in history disrupted by someone entering the scene with a portable JBL speaker blasting Fetty Wap’s “Again.”
Essentially, the joke is about playing a catchy hip hop song at severely inappropriate times.
Picture the beaches in Normandy during the Allied invasion, but the tension is pierced by an American troop with his speaker playing the song on a portable JBL speaker.
What if instead of Pippin knocking down an armor-laden corpse in the Mines of Moria in “Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring,” it was instead a JBL speaker playing Fetty Wap that caught the attention of the Balrog.
Imagine the Native Americans first hearing Fetty Wap from a fleet of ships as Christopher Columbus nears the shore.
Lightapalooza took place in late February, and the growth of the event has mirrored the rapid ascension lighting fixtures and controls.
For those unaccustomed to internet memes and meme culture, a meme is essentially a joke that gets widely spread across social media and internet platforms, often with people engaging by creating their own versions of the original joke and sharing those around as well. It is for sure a bit strange, and if you have any questions as to how the JBL meme got started, it likely formed like most do: one chronically online person thought of something they figured was funny, posted it, and then everyone else just ran with it.
In fact, that’s exactly how KnowYourMeme.com explains it.
Essentially, these JBL memes capture the absurdity of someone ruining (or enhancing, depending on how much you like bad hip hop) a sensitive moment by playing the song much too loudly on a portable JBL speaker.
According to JBL, this viral and somewhat strange meme trend has actually been great for spreading awareness of the company’s offerings. JBL leaned into this trend, posting their own take on the meme on TikTok and Instagram Reels. Smartly, the company is otherwise letting creators drive the conversation.
JBL’s own Reels post alone drove more than 9,000 new followers and 300,000 engagements in just three days, according to a company spokesperson. Nearly all (98%) of the exposure came from non-JBL followers, resulting in 2 million new brand impressions, and an estimated earned media value of $16.3 million, underscoring the power of social media and how a chronically online society can drive the conversation, even if it stems from a joke.
According to JBL, the trend has also boosted Fetty Wap’s song, putting it back on the Billboard Hot 100 charts for the first time since early 2016.
Internet ridiculousness aside, the trend does sort of pigeon-hole Harman-owned JBL as a tacky brand of portable Bluetooth speakers, which couldn’t be further from the truth. In fact, JBL makes speakers that are much, much larger and far more advanced.
At ISE 2025 Jim Garrett, senior director of product strategy and planning for JBL parent company Harman’s luxury audio group, commented on the company’s popularity among that portable audio consumer market and the consumer’s journey across the JBL product portfolio from a simple Bluetooth speaker to a robust home theater system with the JBL Synthesis line of products.
“That’s exactly what these products came out of,” Garrett says when speaking about the company’s sleek-looking Modern Audio AVRs and speakers that were designed to essentially bridge the gap between basic home audio solutions like soundbars and the company’s high-end solutions like the Synthesis line of architectural speakers and subwoofers, surround processor preamplifiers, multichannel amplifiers, and digital equalizers.
“We’re one of the biggest audio brands in the world, certainly one of the most popular, and we’ve got tremendous share of the Bluetooth portables and headphones,” Garrett says. “As consumers have aged, they’re grown up, bought their own house, start to have a family, and have moved up from here.”
JBL unfortunately didn’t play Fetty Wap in their booth, but it would have been incredible given the size and quality of the speakers on display, including its Stage 2 series ofModern Audio and architectural loudspeakers and the massive SSW-1, the company’s flagship subwoofer.
To JBL’s marketing and events team: please lean into the joke more and blast Fetty Wap from these amazing speakers at InfoComm 2025 and CEDIA Expo 2025.
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