Celebrity Brands
Yesterday, the news dropped that Panels, the wallpaper app launched in September 2024 by YouTuber Marques Brownlee, is shutting down.
The reason for failure? From the TechCrunch covering the news:
"We knew it was niche, but we made mistakes in making our first app, and ultimately, we weren’t able to turn it into the vision I had,” Brownlee said in an unlisted YouTube video. In a blog post, he added that “the makeup of the development team changed,” and he was unable to find the right collaborators to grow the app.”
Here’s the actual reason it failed: the product sucked, and there was no vision. It had no utility, solved no problem, and was ill-conceived from the start. It was a mercenary money grab: a hype tempest in a pointless teacup.
At its worst, the influencer economy is a superficial rehash of the endorsement economy that has been around for decades. A big name and celebrity status will never alone build a big business. Yes, you will get people through the door to trial - well known faces are brilliant for that, and always have been. But if the product itself sucks, consumers won’t come back. It’s that simple.
Fans may love celebrities, but they don’t love being ripped off. Consumers' hard earned money, in the long-run, flows towards products and services that deliver actual value on a day-to-day basis. The failure and fallout of Mr Beast Burger is another case study of the same phenomenon. In other words, to tweak the aphorism designed for the stock market from the godfather of investing, Benjamin Graham:
"In the short run, the
marketconsumer is a voting machine but in the long run, it is a weighing machine.”
That doesn't mean all celebrity brands are doomed to failure. The $1bn acquisition of Hailey Bieber's beauty brand Rhode proves that it can work. The same goes for the empire Kim Kardashian has built with the likes of SKIMS. Celebrities can be a wonderful acquisition tool, cutting through the noise and solving for the ever-present CAC challenge with consumer businesses. But a famous face is not, cannot be and will never be a retention tool (unless, perhaps, where they are the product, à la OnlyFans). For people to stick around, the thing has to be great.
Let's hope the celebrity talent out there turns their mind to more meaningful and quality products and services. There are so many big problems out there that could be solved with a boost from the brand exposure that comes from partnering with someone with a megaphone.