Top 3 Reasons Why Quibi Failed and Only Lasted for..Well..A Quibi

Before I start to completely go off, just wanna say thank you in advance for taking the time out & reading my blogs & what I have to say :) it’s much appreciated! Now let’s begin..

I’m sure you’ve all heard of Quibi, the “revolutionary” entertainment streaming app featuring original short-films, or how Quibi liked to refer to them as “Quibites” (yeah Idk either) that basically were “made for your phone” (as if we haven’t already been streaming on mobile devices for a decade)

Nonetheless, October 21st 2020, just 6 and a half months or a “quibi” after launching, announced it was shutting down the app, and encouraging investors to take their money & run far away as possible. In this article, I broke down the Top 3 Reasons in my opinion on why Quibi failed miserably.

3. Over Promised. Under delivered. Bad Combination.

When Quibi first started making noise around early 2020, I’m not going to lie, I was pretty impressed by their marketing & advertising, Megan Imbres (former Brand & Content executive) did an amazing job capturing the right audiences, being in the proper places & making us laugh. After launching in February, that’s when things began to go down hill.

From purely looking at live consumer reactions, people were not too satisfied with the content Quibi was producing, like at all, even after announcing they were shutting down. Don’t believe me? see for yourself:

There’s plenty more, but you definitely get the picture.

Entertainment business is no easy business, trust me I’m in it. Pleasing a crowd and or audience is no easy task, but when you capital raise nearly $1.75B in Hollywood VC money, you think they’d take the time to do a thorough consumer research analysis BEFORE hand to see the genre of content the CONSUMERS wanted, not what the executives & produces WANTED to make. When an app goes away, people are supposed to be sad & mournful, not happy. Quibi seen this & failed to innovate for the entire period of Covid, which leads us to fuck up #2

2. They FAILED TO INNOVATE

Now I’m extremely empathetic to the lives affected due to COVID & how that might’ve created bumpy roads for the economy, but considering the industry Quibi was in, and the fact that content consumption was astronomical amid COVID where nearly 70% of Americans were either in quarantine, working remotely, or even laid off, you’d think Quibi would’ve taken that opportunity to vamp up their advertising? Or perhaps create a better strategy to get more consumer insights to produce better content? Or go full OTT & implement TV / Cable access for families to watch content together?

NONE of that happened.

We’ve seen companies go out of business for this very same reason, Blockbuster failed to innovate when streaming came about in early 2000’s, the Netflix’s, RedBoxes totally annihilated Blockbuster and forced them into bankruptcy, solely off lack of innovation to where the market was headed.

I tweeted about some possible ideas that Quibi could’ve done to gain some new demographics & brand equity:

Why not try to partner with Sony / PlayStation or Microsoft / X-Box , ride off all the hype and attention the two consoles were receiving at the time, create a bundle where you get 3 months of Free Quibi?

Now I will give them this, The partnership with T-Mobile was a smart move where they gave T-Mobile users a Year free membership, but here’s where they screwed up again.

It gave people the option to choose between Quibi and guess who? You guessed right! NETLFLIX

I’m not too sure if Jeffrey Katzenburg or Megan Whitman was behind that deal early April, but that’s a big no-no allowing consumers to choose between YOU & your direct competition…. that deal should’ve been exclusive to Quibi.

Oh yeah, and did I mention Quibi wasn’t even on Dish, Cable, Comcast, or anything? You didn’t stand a chance to Hulu, Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, or any of the big boys because you failed to innovate, and that costed them big time, not to mention their complete lack of caring about what the consumer needed & wanted. Which brings us to our final and biggest failure of them all.

1. THEY DIDN’T PUT THE CONSUMER FIRST!!

If any of you follow me on social (@khendriix_) you know I talk about giving the people what they want non-stop, not for kicks and giggles, but for actual business practicality. When you don’t put the consumers needs and wants before anything else, not only do you lose, but you don’t know WHY you lost because you don’t have any insights from the community.

For months, social media has bombarded Quibi on all platforms about lagging issues within the app, slow loading, poor content, no TV access, can’t screen record (which isn’t but still) the complaints pile and pile on, and Quibi showed little to no concern whatsoever. Being a social media person, I believe in B2C companies, Community management is your best friend. Whenever your business page is being tagged, or quoted, or shared on social media, there needs to be a human response, period. Apple does this religiously, tweet someting and @ Apple, and there will be a real LIVE human being there assiting you. Netflix also takes community management seriously as well, and it shows within their communities.

The closer you are to the end user, the more you actively engage with your customers, especially when they are dissatisfied, nothing will guarantee you to lose a customer forever more than an un responded to complaint. The reason these other DTC / OTT companies are winning is because they listen to their customers, they value what they want to see, not what will satisfy their shareholders and producers.

The closer you are to the end user, the better shot you’ll have in building something real, a long lasting business predicated on loyalty & customer service, not just quick, arbitrary entertainment.

Thank you for taking the time out for reading! Look out for more blog posts coming soon. If you liked this article, go ahead and tell me on Twitter