I put as much effort into this image as the CEO did in making his choice.
How to Kill a Giant:
Reed Hastings, Co-Founder and CEO of Netflix is a David to his companies Goliath.Netflix is a successful and thriving business of providing entertainment to millions of satisfied customers. No one should kid themselves here. Netflix is first and formost an entertainment company, my 5 year old kid knows that netflix, either in the mail or on the Google TV, means a bowl of popcorn and a good time is on the way.
People were a bit upset
First we have the insanity of a 40 – 60% price increase. If your company makes that choice, and you weather the public relation fire storm why on earth would anyone poke the bear a second time? The powers that be have now decided to pull the massive and full catalog of DVD choices and spin it into a new company, Qwikster (not a brand similar Quixter or anything intelligent) Your que will soon move over to that site.
Netflix will become streaming only, complete with their lack luster catalog and massive amount of B movies and horrible animation. yes there are a couple Gems, but who ere hasn’t looked into watch instantly and said, I swear I’ve seen every movie worth seeing. Its because movies people want to see are not available. Oh yeah they will add a video game option. Boring, and predictable move.
That great feature where you can look at your DVD que and see what movies are currently available to watch? GONE. See that wonderful functionality of reviews and rating sof DVD movies used to reccommend Watch instantly titles? GONE. See that lush and full customer base? Gone…
People are still displeased
The CEO has been putting out fires all night and some of the morning. But what he hasn’t done is make sense. At what point do the Stockholders throw down and find someone a bit more prepared to lead the company forward. This is a company that has spent millions improving their recommendation algorithm to increase the chances that the movies you see recommended will be good choices. I wonder what algorithmic recommended this course change?
This would be like Apple saying hey, I know you love our computers and our phones. how about we change the name of our computer company to Blando and keep Apple just for the phones, no support ties, no common customer database, no brand recognition. I don’t see that one happening either.
Gap clothing has one website and one common brand for all of their satelite companies. All of the discount programs and card member benifits have been integrated, to make things simple.
The only simple choice is the blame the last 6 months on some bad cough syrup and fix the mistakes. The good thing is if you choose to keep the companies together no one will fall back to bitching about the price increase. Way to wag the dog there Reed.
Here is Reed Hastings from 2009, talking about integration and simplicty. And a slight shout out to studio greed. This dude needs to come back