Dying a Qwikster Death
It was a death that most everyone knew was inevitable. The ill-conceived direct mail spin-off of Netflix, Qwikster, has been declared dead only a month after its creation.
Brian Stelter of the New York Times covers it deftly in his Media Decoder column. While this is a catastrophic and high-profile failure, we see this same type of mistake daily in companies big and small. Reed Hastings, CEO of Netflix is attributing it in his press release to moving too quickly.
“Consumers value the simplicity Netflix has always offered and we respect that. There is a difference between moving quickly — which Netflix has done very well for years — and moving too fast, which is what we did in this case.”
There is no doubt that they moved to quickly, but speed doesn't kill, if you don't make the other mistakes they made. Hidden in the multiple missteps of bad naming, terrible branding, bad launch strategy, poor planning and unsatisfying public relations management are two key failures.
Failure #1: They lost sight of their company vision in making this decision.
Reed Hastings, Founder and CEO of Netflix stated in his 2003 Annual Report that the vision of the company was to create "the best movie experience. Period." A laudable goal and a worthy one. The company abandoned this vision in an attempt to advance the company to what future customers will demand.
The problem with that is that their customers are not future customers, they are current customers. Anyone who uses Netflix will tell you that the online streaming library is far from "The best movie experience." It lacks many current films and TV shows as well as many classics and art house films. The consumer does not want to hear excuses. There are valid ones about licensing, Hollywood studios being difficult and cost-revenue factors. It is not the consumer’s responsibility to understand your company’s challenges. All they are required to do is determine if your company vision matches the experience.
Failure #2: They forgot that the customer comes first.
It’s an old adage, but a very important one. Simply put, they placed revenue and expense at the forefront of boardroom decision making. Evert decision should start with the questions "what will make our most loyal customers love us even more? What will make our former customers love us? What will convert new customers over to us?" Those questions are the first litmus test. Once those ideas are on the table is when you sharpen the pencil and determine what makes the most financial sense for the current landscape and into the future.
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