A famous campaign, scored stage by stage through the ILAW 8-stage funnel. The judges are in. Did it power the journey, or sashay away?
The judges’ scorecard
The same eight stages every campaign moves through, scored out of 10. Tap a stage for the notes.
Same eight stages, every episode. Broad attention up top, loyal advocacy down the bottom. We score all eight, because most brands only run three.
The read, stage by stage
Acquisition is investment. Retention is where the money returns. Tap a stage for the judges’ notes.
9 /10▾
“This thing is suddenly everywhere.”
What they did
- Ran a Super Bowl ad before the app even existed.
- Put Steven Spielberg, a celebrity content slate and two media legends, Jeffrey Katzenberg and Meg Whitman, at the centre of the story.
- Bought ubiquity: an Oscars spot, billboards, wall-to-wall press.
Metric · addressable attention
Fact $1.75bn raised pre-launch, backers including Disney, WarnerMedia, NBCUniversal and Alibaba.
Fact Super Bowl LIV ad ran Feb 2020, weeks before the app went live.
Est Launch marketing widely reported near $400m. Treat as reported, not confirmed.
7 /10▾
“Fine, I’ll try it. It’s free.”
What they did
- Turned the noise into trials with aggressive 90-day free offers, tied to T-Mobile and Pepsi.
- Shipped a slick, heavily marketed app with a novel “Turnstyle” vertical/horizontal format.
Metric · engaged audience
Fact About 2.6m app installs in the first month (Sensor Tower). Quibi claimed 3.5m downloads.
Est A large share arrived on free-trial partnerships, not paid intent.
4 /10▾
“Wait, I can’t watch it on my TV? And it costs how much?”
What they did
- Asked people to pay $4.99 to $7.99 a month for mobile-only, short-form video.
- Launched with no cast-to-TV, no free ad-supported tier, and no way to screenshot or share.
Metric · consideration & validation
Fact Mobile-only at launch. TV casting arrived later, after the damage.
Fact Launched 6 Apr 2020, deep into lockdown, when the “watch on your commute” occasion had just vanished.
2 /10▾
“The trial’s up. I’m out.”
What they did
- Bet the business on 90-day free trials converting to paid.
- Offered no lower-priced or ad-funded way to stay.
Metric · conversion & sales
Fact About 500k paying subscribers against a 7.4m year-one projection, roughly 7% of plan.
Est Most trials never reached their paid conversion date before the company folded.
2 /10▾
“I opened it twice.”
What they did
- Built 5 to 10 minute “quick bites” and the Turnstyle gimmick, but engineered almost nothing into habit.
- Gave people no TV viewing, no offline social loop, no reason to return daily.
Metric · consumption
Fact No cast-to-TV at launch removed the biggest home-viewing occasion.
Est No breakout, must-watch title emerged to drive repeat sessions.
3 /10▾
“Isn’t that the thing that already flopped?”
What they did
- Spent big on prestige content and did earn some Emmy nominations.
- Let the brand itself become a punchline within weeks.
Metric · verdict
Fact Nominated for Emmys on content, yet the market’s verdict was “flop” almost immediately.
Est No single show entered the culture the way one hit could have rescued the story.
1 /10▾
“Gone.”
What they did
- Folded six months in and began refunding and winding down.
- Had no retained fanbase to re-sell to in the first place.
Metric · repeat & loyalty revenue
Fact Shutdown announced 21 Oct 2020. Service ended 1 Dec 2020.
Est The content library later sold to Roku for a reported $100m, a fire sale, not a return.
1 /10▾
“I’d share a clip, but I literally can’t.”
What they did
- Disabled the one thing that spreads a new product. At launch you could not screenshot or share a clip.
- Made the memes, the reaction videos and the “you have to see this” moment impossible by design.
Metric · advocacy & earned media
Fact No screenshot or social clip sharing at launch.
Est The feature that could have made it spread was the feature they switched off.
The same campaign, in dollars
Because every dollar should show its working. Public figures, US company, so this stays in dollars.
The punchline, in dollars
This is the mirror image of the pop teardowns. Madonna and Kylie built attention, then monetised the back half where the margin lives. Quibi built the most expensive attention in launch history and had no back half at all: nothing engineered to convert it, keep it, or spread it. Attention is not demand. Reach you don’t convert is an expensive pair of jazz hands.
The campaign as a timeline
The verdict — Sashay away
29 of 80. Quibi is the inversion of everything the funnel is for. Spielberg, a Super Bowl and $1.75bn bought the biggest audience in launch history. Then there was nothing built to convert it, keep it or spread it, and the two things that might have saved it, cast-to-TV and shareable clips, were switched off on day one. Most brands run the same shape at a thousandth of the budget. They buy attention and build nothing to catch it. The category is: an expensive pair of jazz hands. It sashays.
Sources
- Wikipedia — funding, launch and shutdown timeline, product detail
- Crunchbase News — $1.75bn raised, shutdown after six months
- CNBC — Katzenberg and Whitman on what went wrong
- NBC News — why it failed: pandemic, product-market fit, ~500k vs 7.4m
- Failory — reasons for failure, marketing and product analysis
