Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Do Bad Reviews Kill Companies?”.
All right, I review a lot of products right. I’Ve. I’Ve talked about hundreds, maybe thousands of products at this point, but as many videos as I’ve made about products, there are way more products out there in the world that exist, so the process of selecting which products to even review in the first place is like an Art form to itself most products are just meh they’re, fine, like they exist. They they get made they’re fine whatever, so they have to. They have to reach a certain level of Interest or or being really good to even be considered for a review or sometimes really really bad.
So there’s been a lot of interesting discourse lately on this topic. There will be, you know some negative reviews and then a company will eventually go out of business and then the internet poses the question: do bad reviews kill companies, do bad reviews, kill companies or or do bad products, kill companies I yeah I. I do have a lot of thoughts, so two of the biggest examples that have been pointed to especially on Twitter were the Fisker ocean review that I did and the Humane AI pin from a couple days ago. So the Fisker Saga was pretty well documented, but in case you missed it.
I reviewed a car. I had a pretty horrible experience with it documented it published their review on the autofocus Channel and then a few months later, the entire company appears to be on life. Support like likely filing for bankruptcy soon, and now this startup Humane, you know they dropped their first product. This pin, I review it.
It’S not super positive. A lot of people are saying the same thing and I don’t even think Humane is going anywhere by the way, but I think there’s some pretty simple logic. We can use to decipher what the the real danger is to these companies, which is, do you still get a bunch of negative reviews and then die as a company if the product is actually really good, but you know let’s back up for a second.
What is a review little pet peeve of mine is, I think, people misuse or overuse that word a lot, but a review is just somebody uses a product and then just delivers their Impressions on whether they think it’s any good or not how well it actually worked And if their honest opinion is, if it’s good, then that’s the review. If it’s bad, that’s the review, that’s basically it, and so I’ve been a advocate of good independent reviews for what feels like forever now. But the thing about reviews is, if they’re not honest, then they’re basically useless.
I really strongly feel like everything that comes from a review, all the consequences and everything that comes around it. Everything in the world of an ecosystem of reviews depends on the review being truthful and actually honest about things. So let me I’ll just give an example.
I’Ve told this story before but years ago I remember I reviewed the first uh Razer phone when it came out. So Razer gaming company, they make lots of stuff they’re getting into smartphones for the first time, so they made a phone that appeals to the same Target demographic of Gamers. So you know it had a bunch of upsides and downsides.
Obviously, gaming Focus Features. So it’s got like front-facing speakers and a high refresh rate. The battery was pretty big, but also the camera was weak and I specifically I remember I, the vibration motor was horrible and I remember calling it out. I remember saying this also: the vibration motor in this phone trash straight trash, I’m going to call myself. So you can hear this. It sounds broken like it’s, but it sounded that way out the box since day one so that is the Razer phone.
Just one of the worst vibration Motors I’ve ever experienced in a new phone, so okay fast forward a year right, I’m at a briefing it’s in New York City, it’s for the Razer phone 2 and so they’re walking me and some other people through this new phone They’Ve made and they’ve got a bunch of changes. It’S got a glossy back, they added wireless charging. Now the logo glows and, like the speakers, are better and all this stuff and they’re talking us through it and then the guy turns to me, and he says and Marquez you got to try the new vibration motor in this phone and it’s such a niche thing.
But I sure enough, I try it and it’s way better and that’s to me what that’s a big part of what reviews are all about that honest feedback turned into actually action for the company to make it better. So people who bought the first one knew what they were getting into, and people who bought the second one actually benefited from that. So that’s number one honesty, obviously super important, but the second thing is: these reviews are also definitely for the people that are watching them and consuming them.
So you’ve probably been in the situation when you’re you’re about to buy something, and you just want to double check. So you you hop on YouTube, you search it up, watch a couple videos about the product, just to make sure you’re not missing anything, and then you either decide on the moment or later that day, like okay yeah, I’m definitely going to buy it. We’Ve all been there, that’s the reason, that’s exactly how this YouTube channel started. Like my first ever Tech, video was reviewing a laptop, but specifically I I bought the laptop with my allowance money in high school and I found a Windows Media Center remote in the PCI slot that wasn’t in any of the other reviews.
So the first thing I decided to do was talk through it in a video so that anyone else who bought the laptop after me would know about it. So you’re thinking about buying the thing you watch a couple reviews of the thing you learn everything you need to know boom success, but here’s where it gets a little bit interesting. I do have a bit of an extra dimension on my hands with these videos, because I know that there’s no way that every single person watching a review of every single product is one of those people who was considering buying it. I get that comment actually in personal all the time I you.
I watch the reviews, even though I’m not buying any of this stuff, so I know that a lot of people, in fact most people watching these videos are actually just here to watch an interesting, informative, good video in general, an an entertaining video and so the way That I satisfy those things is much more subjective. I think, like everyone has a different way, they do it. Everyone has a different Target demographic, but that’s a little bit of a new dimension. So then, I think if we go back to the original question, so can uh can a video be? Can a video kill, a company I’ll use the uh, Humane and Fisker examples? Specifically, the Fisker ocean was a terrible car.
It is a terrible car. I’Ve reviewed about 40 50 different cars in the past few years made videos about many of them. This is the first one where I genuinely couldn’t wait to be done, driving it like it just had tons of problems bugs missing features, safety issues like it’s just bad right. So I review the thing I give people. What I feel is a fair assessment that also doubles as a warning not to buy this bad car um. So hopefully it’s entertaining and informative to the majority of people who weren’t thinking about buying the car, but also that it is as honest as possible with the people who are and maybe a week or two later, the company’s stock price is plummeting to an all-time low And they appear to be like filing for bankruptcy: Q, the internet going nuts, which I I guess I get it like.
Obviously it makes a nice headline like oh this. This review came out and it killed this company. This review bankrupted all of Fisker, maybe like there was a whole morning Brew thread on how Fisker handled this video so poorly that they’re now going to go bankrupt because of it also there were.
There were whole stock Investments, themed channels saying this was like a paid promoted attack against the Fisker stock price, like it got pretty crazy, but did one review killed the entire company? I would say to zoom out a bit. I would really, I think, it’s important to zoom out a bit actually. First of all, I was not the only one to review the car, not even close, and so yes, the stock price did drop after my video, but the stock was in freef Fall for many.
Many months before my video too, and if you zoom out on YouTube or in the car review space in general, I was far from the only person saying these things about the car. For all of these months, many other reviewers had been having a plethora of issues. Even stuff that I didn’t have with this thing, actually I feel like that might be the easiest way to tell if a review is honest or not like we’re we’re we’re all reviewing the same product.
Basically, if we all have the same thing, so we’re all going to find a lot of the same things, we’re all eventually going to have a lot of the same upsides downsides. If there are issues they may eventually surface so yeah they’re, they’re, they’re, probably going to agree with each other, a bunch of honest reviews, they all say a lot of the same stuff, oh and also the in the US, the stock price. There’S this thing where, if a, if a stock, what is it if it’s below a a dollar for, however many days in a row, then they’ll get a warning that they may be delisted and they have six months to get the stock price back up over a Dollar and Fisker had just received that notice right around the same time that my I think right before my video came out actually and if you’re, an investor you’re looking at that that’s the type of stuff that really tanks the stock price. If you’re asking me and if you’re asking me personally, I I literally don’t care what the stock price is of any company of any product. I review I just don’t care, and so, if I’m, if I’m talking about a product that will never have anything to do with what I say about the product – and I I hope that’s not true about other people either. I shouldn’t even have to say this. I I’m not invested in any companies that I cover it’s just a matter of trying to make an informative, educ, ational and honest video review.
That’S my goal. My only goal is to do that and I don’t have any duty to any of the companies whose products I cover. It is only to the people watching the videos so now, okay, fast forward to you know pretty recently, the Humane AI pin comes out a lot of the same stuff. Right like this pin has a lot of missing promises. You know the things it does.
It doesn’t actually do super well, the battery life is bad. It overheats the laser projector, is kind of bad, like the list just goes on and on. I try to be as Fair as possible and as informative as possible, but I’m also absolutely not about to sugarcoat or leave anything out to protect any company’s $ 700 device with a monthly subscription not into that. But yet even still there are some threads blowing up saying it’s extra bad. What I did to this poor company – and you know – maybe you could argue – since this is the biggest channel that covered it – maybe there’s some extra impact there.
But again I would say to zoom out I just zoom out again I am not. I was not the first actually even to cover the Humane pit, but I’m also far from the only one to talk about it and even a little inside baseball when a product comes out. That’S this notable or this bad uh, which isn’t very often a lot of reviewers like that’s it’s a very it’s stressful. You want to make sure you get everything right.
A lot of us are literally trading notes and like trying to figure out like when mine died. In two hours and overheated on my chest, without doing anything, I thought it was like an issue with mine and I was texting a couple, others and sure enough. They’Re having the same things happen to them, so we’re all trying to be as as thorough as possible and making sure reviews are truthful, and so that’s how you get a bunch of truthful reviews. Now you could argue – and I think the the guy on Twitter did – that the packaging was too clickbaity and I totally get that.
But I also stand by our title and thumbnail and especially the end of the title, but keep in mind the dimension that that that most of the people who who see this in their feed and their subscription box have never heard of The Humane AI pin. And this will be the first time they hear about it and they click on it hopefully, and then they’re delivered with a thoughtful, well-considered, balanced and honest and entertaining and informative video. That happens to be a review. So look I’ve reviewed a lot of bad products. In my day, you might remember some of them, you might remember the Dyson headphones or the red hydrogen 1 or the pixel slate or the htcu ultra. The list goes on, but one thing is definitely been clear and consistent throughout all this, which is anytime. The company goes under, you, don’t get those bad reviews without the product being bad to begin with. Obviously, I have a massive amount of respect and appreciation for people and groups of people who are actually making new stuff like Building Products. That’S the hard part at the end of the day and we to get a whole bunch of new, exciting things that might change the world and that’s really exciting, but my reviews technically are not for them all that any honest review actually does is just accelerate. Whatever was already going on, think of it that way: okay, thanks for watching catch, you guys in the next one peace, .