- 7 weeks ago
When the boss doesn't believe in their own product, you know there's a problem! Join us as we examine the times corporate leaders threw their own companies under the bus. From "total crap" jewelry to "bloatware" software, these executives didn't hold back their true feelings about what they were selling to the public. Which executive do you think was justified in their criticism?
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00:00And that means that we need to sort of give you a little dopamine hit every once in a while.
00:04Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we're discussing our picks for the time CEOs,
00:09VPs, and other execs bashed their own company's products.
00:12It's 30 years this month since one of the biggest disasters in British business history.
00:19Stephen Elop and Nokia.
00:21Calling those smartphones, or what is the term that you're using for Series 40 going on?
00:24We call those mobile phones.
00:26In the early days of cell phones, Nokia was a major competitor,
00:29but over time, it began to lose its dominance.
00:32After several years of slumping sales, the company brought in new CEO Stephen Elop in 2010.
00:38He was not shy about making his mark.
00:40Just a few months after taking the job, he issued a now infamous memo blasting the company,
00:45comparing it to an oil rig on fire in the ocean.
00:47My role, as the leader of Nokia, is to lead this team through this period of change.
00:54Take the organization through a period of disruption.
00:57Elop slammed Nokia for failing to innovate and losing market share to the iPhone, Android, and cheap Chinese models.
01:04He criticized its operating system for being slow and difficult to work with,
01:08and he accused leadership of lacking accountability and not collaborating with each other.
01:13Unsurprisingly, he was not a popular CEO.
01:16Smartphones like these drive industry profits.
01:19Right now, Nokia is still the leader and hopes the N8 will help defend its market share.
01:23John McAfee and McAfee Antivirus Software.
01:26Although I've had nothing to do with this company for over 15 years,
01:29I still get volumes of mail asking, how do I uninstall this software?
01:36I have no idea.
01:37You might not know that the creator of everyone's least favorite pre-installed software had a wild life.
01:43He was a presidential candidate, a murder suspect, and enthusiastic user of illicit substances.
01:47McAfee created the first commercial antivirus software in 1987 and remained in charge of McAfee Associates until 1994, when he sold his stake.
01:57He later criticized the software, complaining about how useless it had become and calling it bloatware.
02:03In 2013, McAfee released an outrageous satire video featuring himself in a silk dressing gown, lighting a cigarette with a $100 bill.
02:11Surrounded by women and guns, he claims that he still receives tons of complaints about McAfee antivirus from people demanding to know how to uninstall it.
02:19The video was quintessentially John McAfee.
02:22Akio Toyota and Toyota's Boring Cars.
02:25This is just another boring Texas, they said.
02:30Seriously, I couldn't believe it.
02:32As a former race car driver, it makes sense that Akio Toyota likes exciting cars that are fun to drive.
02:38But that's not exactly what his family's company, Toyota Motors, is known for.
02:42Toyotas have a reputation for being practical, reliable cars for middle-class families.
02:47Subsidary, Lexus, is basically a higher-end version of the same thing.
02:51So, in 2017, when Akio Toyota told investors he was tired of hearing people say the company's cars were boring, people took note.
02:58The CEO agreed that they were boring, and he vowed in that moment that the cars would never be described that way again.
03:04In fact, I took another look at all our cars, both Toyota and Lexus, and I said, they are right.
03:14John Silvan and Keurig Coffee Pods.
03:16The inventor of a gadget used in millions of kitchens every morning says he doesn't use his invention, and sometimes regrets making it.
03:25He didn't just criticize his own product.
03:27The founder of Keurig once said he sometimes wishes he'd never invented the K-Cup.
03:32John Silvan originally invented the single-serving coffee pod to be used by office workers as an alternative to going to Starbucks or Dunkin' every day.
03:40He never expected them to become so popular in people's homes, or for billions of them to be stuffing landfills.
03:45In an interview in The Atlantic, he says the pods are expensive to use, and he feels bad he ever invented them because of their environmental impact.
03:54The environmental issue really weighed on his mind, and Silvan said he didn't buy K-Cups himself.
03:59Keurig claims that its pods are now recyclable, but you still have to take them apart, and lots of recycling programs don't accept them.
04:06Silvan, unfortunately, is on point in his criticism.
04:09It's estimated that if all K-Cups ever sold were placed end-to-end, they'd circle the globe more than ten times.
04:16Colonel Sanders and KFC.
04:18Hillary's the oldest. She's in charge.
04:20But not equipped to lead.
04:22She's a figurehead, like Queen Elizabeth, Dan Quayle, Colonel Sanders.
04:25After Harlan Sanders sold the Kentucky Fried Chicken Corporation in 1964, he stayed on as a brand ambassador, appearing in commercials, and traveling all over North America to promote it.
04:35But since he no longer owned the company, he no longer controlled the recipes, and the new guys in charge started changing things to make the food simpler and cheaper to produce.
04:44Busy, busy, busy.
04:46Oh, look at that one now.
04:47Where's my pots?
04:50That.
04:51It's the gravy burger.
04:52Yeah, there's a lot of gravy to be made, isn't there?
04:54Colonel Sanders did not like this, especially the changes to the gravy.
04:58He called it sludge that tasted like wallpaper paste.
05:01Things got so bad that Sanders sued the new owners for using his image to promote food he didn't approve of.
05:07They settled for $1 million.
05:08Meanwhile, a franchisee tried to sue Sanders for libel, but he was unsuccessful.
05:13A hot tub?
05:14It's not just a hot tub.
05:16Taste it.
05:18Go ahead, taste it.
05:22Gravy?
05:23Kentucky Fried Chicken Gravy.
05:25Sean Parker and Facebook.
05:27You don't even know what the thing is yet.
05:29How big it can get, how far it can go.
05:31This is no time to take your chips down.
05:33A million dollars isn't cool.
05:34You know what's cool?
05:35You?
05:38A billion dollars.
05:40He was the social media giant's first president, and now he's one of its major critics.
05:45But unlike John Silvan and his K-Cups, Parker admits he knew exactly what he was doing when he and other creators designed it to be addictive and ultra popular.
05:53Yet in 2017, Parker acknowledged that he hadn't predicted the consequences of Facebook and other social media platforms, amassing billions of users.
06:02It literally changes your relationship with society, with each other, with, you know, it probably interferes with productivity in weird ways.
06:15God only knows what it's doing to our children's brains.
06:19He worried that it was affecting productivity, having negative impacts on kids, and who knows what else.
06:25It's no secret that lots of tech billionaires limit their kids' screen time.
06:28Maybe we should take a cue from them.
06:30If you're the place where you can convene a billion or two billion people, the potential there is unlimited.
06:40Howard Moskovitz and Dr. Pepper.
06:41It's engineered in such a scientific degree.
06:45I mean, you were talking about sugar.
06:46Too much sugar, ew.
06:48But they hit the right note every time.
06:51Do you ever wonder how processed food companies make their products so darn delicious and addictive?
06:56It turns out, they hire experts who make that their only job.
07:00They experiment with levels of sugar, salt, and flavor to find the combo that consumers love the most and keep coming back for.
07:08Experimental psychologist Howard Moskovitz is one of them.
07:11We're at the top of the curve is the optimum amount of sweetness.
07:16Again, not too little, not too much.
07:18And the bliss point is just such a perfect encapsulation of that feeling you get when you eat these products.
07:25Dr. Pepper hired him in 2004 to help them compete against Coke and Pepsi.
07:30And he came up with cherry vanilla Dr. Pepper.
07:32But Moskovitz himself hates it.
07:34While having lunch with writer Michael Moss, Moskovitz said he doesn't drink soda at all.
07:39And described Dr. Pepper as terrible, overwhelming, and just awful.
07:43That kind of makes his accomplishments with the product even more impressive.
07:46A Harvard-trained mathematician, Moskovitz uses models to test people's reactions to different versions of a product.
07:53Once he's found the bliss point, the product hits the shelves.
07:56Steve Jobs and Apple's extended keyboard.
08:11Jobs was famous for hating buttons.
08:13Some even joked it was the reason he wore turtlenecks instead of dress shirts.
08:16When he introduced the iPhone, its most distinguishing feature was its lack of a physical keyboard.
08:21So it's unsurprising that Jobs hated Apple's famous extended keyboard.
08:25And what's wrong with their user interfaces?
08:28Well, the problem with them is really sort of in the bottom 40 there.
08:33It's this stuff right here.
08:34Many Mac loyalists love this keyboard.
08:37Although it's been discontinued since 1994, some people still seek them out to use with their modern Macs.
08:42But it has a lot of buttons, which made it enemy number one to Jobs.
08:45Once, while speaking to some students, he complained,
08:49This keyboard represents everything about Apple that I hate.
08:51He then pried the function keys off the keyboard one by one.
08:55That was a man dedicated to getting rid of buttons.
08:57A great keyboard?
08:58A great keyboard and the coolest mouse you've ever seen.
09:01This is what those things look like today.
09:03Oh, yeah.
09:04Now, I'd like to show you what they're gonna look like tomorrow.
09:10This is the iMac.
09:12Gerald Ratner's Family Jewelry Business
09:14This CEO has become an infamous example of how not to talk about your company's products.
09:31After Ratner inherited his family's jewelry chain,
09:34he massively expanded the business by offering super low prices.
09:37It was extremely successful, but he managed to throw it all away after one terrible speech in 1991.
09:42While addressing a British entrepreneur's group,
09:45he joked that some of the company's products were total crap and extremely cheaply made.
09:49People say to me, how can you sell this for such a low price?
09:54I say because it's total crap.
09:55The audience laughed, but when customers read his remarks in newspapers, the effect was devastating.
10:01The company lost half a billion pounds in value almost overnight.
10:04Ratner hired a chairman to do damage control, who later fired Ratner.
10:08The company changed his name from Ratner Group to Signet Group and has since recovered.
10:12We even sell a pair of earrings for under a pound, gold earrings as well.
10:20And some people say, well, that's cheaper than a prawn sandwich from Marks & Spencers.
10:26But I have to say, the sandwich will probably last longer than the earring.
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10:45Martin Bally and Campbell's Soup.
10:47Amden, New Jersey-based Campbell's has fired an executive who's accused of making racist comments
10:53and mocking its products and customers.
10:56Gerald Ratner was joking when he called his company's products crap, but Martin Bally most certainly wasn't.
11:02The former Campbell's Soup vice president was caught on a secret recording trashing the ingredients,
11:07calling the products unhealthy and saying they're made for poor people.
11:10We have f*** that's for poor people.
11:12Who buys our f***?
11:14He also threw in some racist remarks for good measure.
11:16The audio was captured by a former Campbell's employee,
11:18who was fired after reporting the incident to his manager and has since filed a lawsuit against the company.
11:24Campbell's later confirmed that the recording was legitimate,
11:26and fired Bally.
11:28It hasn't suffered the same backlash that Ratner Group did,
11:30but Bally will probably have a hard time finding another job anytime soon.
11:34I don't buy f***ing sandwich products barely anymore.
11:36It's unhealthy.
11:37Now that I know what the f*** is, I can eat pot bioengineered meat.
11:41I don't want to eat a f***.
11:43A piece of chicken that came from a 3D printer?
11:45Which of these execs do you think were right,
11:47and which ones were being too harsh?
11:48Let us know in the comments below.
11:50Now for example.
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