Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Why We Pulled our Oura Ring Video”.
In other controversial news, the Ura ring our Aura ring. Excuse me, video got pulled from short circuit this week, yeah. I know nothing about this, but that was very surprising yeah. So uh, our our history with aura and I’ll, explain why I’ve uh changed my pronunciation here. In a moment, our history with them is a little complicated. First, we were going to do a sponsored video for their Gen 2 ring which they sent us and I used for a while and liked. Then that never happened or maybe we shot it and like it. Ultimately, didn’t publish it that somehow the deal fell through I’m saying: okay, you know it happens, right um. I liked the product.
I got an upgrade offer to the Gen 3 ring that would make it so that I would not have to pay the monthly fee. They basically said: if you have a Gen 2 ring and you upgrade to the Gen 3, you will be grandfathered in for life to not have to pay the monthly subscription. I was like I like this product. I do not like monthly subscriptions.
Fine gen 3 ring has some feature cool new features. I don’t really care about them, but sure uh, so I was using that for a while. Maybe they saw me using it.
I know a lot of you saw me using it and asked oh what’s that. What’S that, how do you like it, etc, etc? So they find they reached out and they were like. Okay, let’s try this again, so their New Gen 3 Horizon design. They sent it over. We shot a sponsored short circuit.
We got as far as uploading the video in the in the video. I talked a lot about how it is a product I actually use. I like it, of course, any sponsored video. I still can’t say anything.
I don’t actually believe like by law. Some people don’t take that very seriously. I do so everything I said was stuff that I believed, and one of the things I believed was that the pronunciation of their company o? U r a, was Ura. It’S not it’s Ara like a? U r a so to be completely honest.
I thought their company was named Aura, no, it’s o-u-r-a, because I I don’t think I think I’ve heard you say it more than I’ve read it. So I always just thought it was yeah anyways, anywho um. So I said it wrong repeatedly in the video because and this kind of ties into what I said earlier in the show about – I only read things I don’t watch or listen to them, so I have only ever. The only context I have is how it’s spelled. Um – and you know, I think that at this stage in our company, we should probably have processes for making sure that the pronunciation of things, particularly on a sponsored video, is correct, but it slipped through the cracks and we shot a whole video with the name wrong. They were apparently very upset um and we offered a fix, which was, I think, we’re gon na use the YouTube Editor to be like the LOL lines, got the name pronounced wrong and a pinned comment: uh. They weren’t happy with it and uh trigger happy newbie here by the name of Colton uh, reacted to this by pulling the video. Actually it was a.
It was a. It was a decision that was made in the business department before I really got an opportunity to weigh in on it. We were told that um there was no way for us to make a change to the video to like alter the pronunciation um because of like YouTube’s policy. But I was like okay yeah but like I might have been able to call people once the video is pulled.
It’S like dead. You can’t like yeah, you could put it live again, but nobody’s gon na watch it like that initial burst from publishing. Unless it’s you know a miracle viral video, it’s not gon na. It’S not nothing good is going to come of it if you republish it, but so it was pulled.
So it was kind of too late to do anything about it and I might have not been able to do anything about it anyway. It might have been the same decision so uh. Really. This is just about maintaining transparency for you guys, not.
You know blaming anyone. It was a team decision that was made. I was not informed, but I might have.
I might have made the same decision anyway. So the bottom line is we pulled the video we’re not putting it back up uh. This isn’t the first time we’ve had difficulty dealing with aura.
I like the product um, but you know I don’t think they’re bad thing, bad people or anything. I just think it’s fair to say that we are unlikely to attempt to work with them again. At this point – and it’s left a bit of a bad taste in my mouth – it wasn’t entirely their fault for sure. Like you know, I get it, but also you know um. I think their reaction was not really uh helpful. I don’t think it was really constructive.
I also don’t think that it was an unmakeable mistake, o, u r a um, I would have guessed Ura yeah. Maybe you should have paid for you, know the domain and trademark Aura Aura. If that’s what you wanted like, you can’t just spell stuff wrong and then be like: why don’t you pronounce it right like come on guys, there’s also like tons of different things like that that get quote unquote pronounced wrong uh someone in a full plane chat. I mentioned Nvidia Thai yeah. No one at Nvidia even knows whether it’s TI or Tai or Asus in general uh there’s lots of them. The the the better way to do it is to attack with humor uh Asus did that they made some like joke videos back in the day about how to pronounce their name and stuff.
Opu. Lance GT and twitch chat says the Ooh Yeah pronounced it. So it’s not like, I was coming at this completely out of nowhere. I didn’t I didn’t even think about that.
Like it’s just one of the things is you never know where the root language is from, so those letters in combination from different root languages might make different, sounds and stuff like it’s. It’S actually really hard to just read something in in uh. You know English letters and know what it means. Cyan wave says I agree Linus you should have done diligence and taken the error on the chin.
Your fault uh yeah, but it’s not about fault. You know like in business um you can. You can take a very hard line stance like that, but then you don’t have a video given to tons of people about your product. It’S not constructive! Right like it’s about it’s about finding a fix that works for everyone and getting it done right, so yeah sure assign blame go ahead, but it’s not helpful right.
So it’s it’s about. What are you trying to do? Are you trying to just kill a relationship and never work together? Again then, by all means be like that right, but if you’re trying to fix it and trying to move forward, which is what smart business people do, then you got to take a different stance. Right, like you got ta, I I I mean anyone that I’ve ever coached on email etiquette, probably including you uh, one of the first things I’ll tell you is even though you know a hundred percent, that it’s the other person’s fault and that they’re an idiot and They’Re ass, covering or whatever the first thing you do is say, I’m sorry I might have misunderstood, I might have been yeah. That’S actually been one of the most useful things too, because a lot of the times you can be like 95, 98 sure you’re right. But if you say I might have misunderstood, it’s very likely you’ll get more information yeah and then they will end up figuring out that they made the mistake, which is just easier for everyone. It’S simple, math, the second you attack someone.
They will be defensive. It’S a battle; now they are on the they’re on the the defense and in a lot of situations you don’t want to battle. You want a resolution because you just want the problem to be fixed, so it’s it’s easier to just be like whatever I might have misunderstood is a way to say, like I’m, not placing blame, but let’s just solve the problem, which is better M. Hindman, says Linus. Stop putting your foot in it in that last segment, you throw your staff under the bus and criticize the sponsor. I’M telling you guys what happened. That’S what happened? What what? What more can I say it did? Did I say that that I pronounced it right? No did I say I did my due diligence. Nope did. I say I pronounced it wrong and that I didn’t do my due diligence. Yes, okay, what like? What do you guys? What do you guys, what do like what, ultimately, what do you want from me right? Like what can I do um? What can I do other than be transparent? Should I just not tell you things I feel, like we’ve run into this a fair bit lately, I’ve brought this up before this is actually a really big problem. I, though, the way I brought it up is devs on stage yeah. A lot of people want to hear directly from developers very often uh, but then, when a developer, missteps or says something slightly incorrectly or says the thing that people decide that they they shouldn’t have uh.
One of the examples that I bring up is the don’t you guys have phones comment from the blizzard developer, like yeah. That was stupid, of course, both other people in this room cringed, when when I said it, yes, that was really stupid, but the more you really heavily attack stuff like that yeah the less devs on stage. That’S true, because they’re going to throw a PR person at you and like, is that really what you want, because you got to think about what you’re attacking what you’re criticizing right it gets.
It gets a little sketchy if you want the real information. If you want the knowledge, whatever you got to be a little, you got ta, take it sometimes yeah, and sometimes that Dev on stage is going to say something real dumb, but you still want that Dev on stage all right. You think you want it, but you don’t yeah, that’s another quote: blizzard has a lot of them, but blizzard has put devs on stage at BlizzCon for a long time so like it makes sense.
They’Re gon na say some dumb stuff um, and it is what it is. .