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Eric Siu explains why branding matters by examining Whole Foods' controversial "Yellow Fever" brand, which Tony Hsieh shut down. A bad name can tank a product before it launches, no matter how good the idea is.
Eric Siu explains why branding matters by examining Whole Foods' controversial "Yellow Fever" brand, which Tony Hsieh shut down. A bad name can tank a product before it launches, no matter how good the idea is.
Have you heard about the Whole Foods debacle before? No. Whole Foods had this one brand. It was Asian-inspired food. Now, what happened with this Asian-inspired food was that the restaurant was named something that probably wasn't very politically correct. It's called Yellow Fever. This is part of the reason why Whole Foods sold to Amazon and why Tony Hsieh of Zappos shut down Yellow Fever, all of it. And I think he fired everyone involved. You just got to be smart about how you brand your stuff. At the end of the day, it all comes down to semantics. It all comes down to how you name things. I don't even know how a Yellow Fever gets approved like that. But that is a big reason why Whole Foods had to sell.
