Do Bad Reviews Kill Companies?

- All right, I review a lot of products, right?

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 get made, they're fine, whatever.

So they have to reach a certain level of interest

or being really good to even be considered for review,

or sometimes really, really bad.

So there's been a lotta

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 do bad products kill companies?

Yeah, 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 the review

on the Auto Focus 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 is some pretty simple logic we can use

to decipher what 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 what, 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 the 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 and ecosystem of reviews

depends on the review being truthful

and actually honest about things.

So, I'll just give you an example.

I've told this story before,

but years ago I remember

I reviewed the first Razer Phone when it came out.

So Razer, gaming company, they make lots of stuff.

They were 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 focused features,

so it's got like front-facing speakers

and a high refresh rate.

The battery's pretty big, but also the camera was weak.

And I specifically, I remember,

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 gonna call myself so you can hear this.

(phone ringing and vibrating)

(phone ringing and vibrating)

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 walkin' 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 talkin' us through it.

And then the guy turns to me and he says,

"And Marques, you gotta try

"the new vibration motor in this phone."

And it's such a niche thing,

but, sure enough, I try it, and it's way better.

And that's, to me,

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 this situation

when you're about to buy something

and you just wanna double check,

so you hop on YouTube, you search it up,

watch a couple videos about the product,

just to make sure you're not missin' anything,

and then you either decide on the moment

or later that day, like, okay,

yeah, I'm definitely gonna 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 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 a 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 person all the time.

"I watch the reviews even though

"I'm not buyin' 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 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 a video kill a company?

I'll use the 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.

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.

Cue the internet, going nuts,

which I guess I get it.

Like obviously it makes a nice headline.

Like, oh, 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 gonna go bankrupt because of it.

Also, there were whole stock investments theme channels

saying this was like a paid promoted attack

against the Fisker stock price.

Like it got pretty crazy.

But did one review kill 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 free 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.

I actually, I feel like that might be

the easiest way to tell if a review is honest or not.

Like,

we're all reviewing the same product basically.

We all have the same thing,

so we're all gonna 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 probably gonna agree with each other.

A bunch of honest reviews.

They'll all say a lot of the same stuff.

Oh, and also, in the U.S. the stock price,

there's this thing where if a stock, what is it?

If it's below a dollar for however many days in a row,

then they'll get a warning that they may be de-listed

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 askin' me.

And if you're askin' me personally,

I literally don't care what the stock price is

of any company, of any product I review.

I just don't care. (chuckling)

And so if I'm talking about a product

that will never have anything to do with

what I say about the product,

and I hope that's not true about other people either.

And I shouldn't even have to say this.

I'm not invested in any companies that I cover.

It's just a matter of trying to make an informative,

educational, 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 that,

you know, the things it does,

it doesn't actually do super well.

The battery life is bad, it overheats.

The laser projector is kinda bad.

Like the list just goes on and on.

I tried 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.

Just zoom out again.

I was not the first, actually, even,

to cover the Humane Pin,

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,

which isn't very often, a lot of reviewers,

like it's a very...

It's stressful.

You wanna 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 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 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 most of the people who see this in their feed,

in 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 One or the Pixel Slate,

or the HTCU Ultra.

The list goes on.

But one thing has definitely been clear

and consistent throughout all of 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 get 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 watchin'.

Catch you guys on the next one.

Peace.

(upbeat relaxed music)