PODCAST · business
The Great Fail
by Debra Chen
The Great Fail is a true crime inspired, business podcast that examines the greatest success stories of the most prominent and prolific companies, brands, and people and what led to their demise. If you love true crime and stories of massive failures, you've come to the right place! Here we take a forensic look at stories that will irk you, shock you, and have you picking your jaw up off the floor, all while learning the oftentimes avoidable, mistakes that have ended the lives of companies and left boardrooms looking like crime scenes. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Episodes
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Flashback: Quibi's Sunken Ship
With the latest buzz surrounding Jeffrey Katzenberg's newest venture WndrCo, raising a staggering $460 million, we thought...what better time than now to bring back an old fan favorite episode, Quibi? Launched in April 2020 during a worldwide pandemic, Quibi was a new streaming service focused on...
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Episode 67: Space Shuttle Challenger
On the cold morning of January 28th, 1986, anticipation filled the air as the space shuttle Challenger prepared for its 10th mission. This historic event featured Christa McAuliffe, the first civilian to join a space mission, aiming to inspire students with live broadcasts from orbit. Tragically,...
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Episode 66: Zume’s Meltdown
In 2015, Alex Garden, the enigmatic co-founder and CEO of Zume, unveiled an ambitious plan to revolutionize the pizza industry with advanced technology and robots. His concept caught the attention of major venture capital funds, including Jerry Yang, co-founder of Yahoo, and SoftBank's $100…
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Episode 65: Action Park’s Final Thrill
In the 1980s, Action Park was a summer hotspot for many in the Tri-State area, attracting visitors from New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut. Entrepreneur Gene Mulvihill sought to transform the former Great Gorge Ski Resort into his own 'Disney of Jersey'—one of the first modern American water...
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Episode 64: The IN-Vince-able McMahon
American wrestling, which most notably revolves around the WWE brand, owes much of its success to the influential presence of the McMahons - Vince McMahon, most of all. There is no doubt about the influence he had on wrestling and the way he turned the likes of Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, John…
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Episode 63: Quiznos is Toast
Once at the top of the food chain, Quiznos achieved over $2 billion in sales and had nearly 5,000 restaurant chains. But just as things were heating up, the iconic company found itself in a pickle, leaving behind a very sour taste. Tune in to Episode 63 of The Great Fail to listen to one of the...
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Episode 62: Kittyhawk: From Moonshot to a Longshot
A surprising announcement rippled through Silicon Valley in the Spring of 2017. A mysterious 'flying car' venture took the spotlight, fueled by rumors of Google co-founder Larry Page's involvement. A marvel of engineering, this all-electric innovation promised to reduce traffic congestion and…
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TGF Presents: Marketing Vanguard
As a special bonus episode this week, we are spotlighting another amazing series on the Adweek Podcast Network. Hosted by Jenny Rooney, Adweek's first chief experience officer, Marketing Vanguard: the podcast, spotlights the people who are driving the industry forward. It will feature valuable,...
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Episode 61: The Wing(s) Get Clipped
The Wing, a pioneering and exclusive women's co-working space, shattered glass ceilings and secured over $100 million from investors, including WeWork and Airbnb, venture capitalists, and celebrity investors such as Megan Rapinoe, star of the US National Women's Soccer Team, and comedian, writer,...
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Episode 60: Bed, Bath &…Bankrupted
For 52 years, Bed, Bath & Beyond was the destination for high-quality home goods merchandise, top brands, and a discovery zone for home shopping that made it inspiring and fun. By January 2014, the company had operated more than 1500 stores in North America and had reached a share price of $70...
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Flashback: The DeLorean: Time Machine to Nowhere
The DeLorean was one of the most era-defining cars of the ‘80s. Sleek, sexy, and unconventional, this iconic car had much promise-- engineering ingenuity, celebrity fanfare, and media hype. But less than a year after it rolled out its first cars, the Company would collapse in a tailspin of lies,...
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Episode 59: Revlon Gets Creamed
In 1952, Revlon created one of the most iconic, paradigm-shifting ad campaigns known as "Fire & Ice," which posed a dramatic twist on why women wore makeup. Instead of seeking male admiration, it empowered women by prioritizing their ambitions and needs. For decades, Revlon spearheaded feminism…
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Episode 58: When the Wheels Came Off for Schwinn Bicycles
In 1895, Schwinn was driven by the pursuit of an American dream when bicycling was still a relatively new sport. As one of the longest-standing bicycle companies, Schwinn signified influence and innovation amidst a biking craze that further catapulted their success. But over the years, it would...
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Episode 57: The Downfall of the Mars Hill Church
Mars Hill was a Seattle-based church led by Mark Driscoll- a beloved, endearing, powerful presence in the evangelical Christian community. He built Mars Hill into one of the fastest-growing churches in the nation, with close to 15,000 attendees and an additional 260,000 viewers tuning in online...
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Episode 56: FTX - From Irresistible to Criminal
FTX was once touted as the cryptocurrency trading platform with its founder, visionary Sam Bankman-Fried, promising to revolutionize the industry. This once-promising company was on a path to decentralize and democratize a highly complex investment within the crypto world but by 2022, headlines...
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Episode 55: Silicon Valley Bank: From Boom to Bust
The Great Fail kicks off Season 3 with one of the biggest failures of 2023 thus far, as we watched one of the nation’s largest banks unravel. Once a rising star in the tech industry, Silicon Valley Bank was a paragon for startup founders and venture capitalists reaching dizzying heights of…
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Flashback: Adapt or Die - The Fall of Tower Records
For over 4 decades, Tower Records was a pioneer in the music industry and the bedrock of record store culture. It was run by rebels and outsiders, where founder Russ Solomon was revered and idolized. Tower would become the mecca for music fans creating a generation that lived by their diehard...
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Flashback: GameStop - The Big Short....Squeeze
In January 2021, the world watched as Reddit traders faced off with Wall Street elites in a trading mania over GameStop shares. Matei Psatta, one of the traders of the subreddit WallStreetBets, joins us this week to comment on what this means and why the financial markets may never be the same....
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Flashback: The Blockbuster Bust
People tend to think that Netflix killed Blockbuster – but that's not true. Blockbuster's demise was actually caused by something far more self-destructive, and almost a decade after the fall of this movie rental giant, there are still misconceptions about what really occurred. Get the scoop on…
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Bonus Episode: Introducing Metaverse Marketing
The Great Fail is taking a break this week. Instead of normal programming, The Great Fail is hosting Metaverse Marketing, another podcast series in the Adweek Podcast Network. In this Season 2 premiere, host Cathy Hackl, metaverse and web3 strategist, dives into how the metaverse is changing our...
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Episode 54: LulaRoe Leggings Stretches the Law
Several legal cases were pending, culminating in January 2019, when a class-action lawsuit led by the Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson was filed against the multi-level marketing Company, LulaRoe. This one alleged that the founders of LulaRoe made false and deceptive representations...
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Episode 53: Valeant: Death by Poison Pill
It was a somewhat ordinary day for David Pyott, the CEO of Allergan, back in April 2014. That is until his eyes glanced over at the TV screen in his office, where he learned that billionaire hedge fund manager and activist investor Bill Ackman was about to back the takeover of his company by way…
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Bonus Episode: Introducing Home / Work
The Great Fail is proud to present Home / Work, a new marketing podcast that is not about marketing. Hosted by AMA Marketing Hall of fame inductee Antonio Lucio, Home / Work is about the real talk on the good, bad, ugly, and extraordinary of balancing life and work. We will bring true role models...
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Episode 52: Bikram Yoga, From Super-Heated to Overheated
Bikram Choudhury was the founder of the wildly popular hot yoga practice that many considered to cure ailments, detoxify bodies, and change lives. At the height in 2006, there were 1,650 studios in at least 40 countries, but by 2013, a series of allegations surfaced when one by one, women stepped...
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Episode 51: Why the World Unfriended MySpace
Before there was Facebook, there was MySpace, once the world’s most dominating social networking company. In the summer of 2005, one of the biggest deals in internet history made headlines when News Corp., famously known as Rupert Murdoch’s media empire, acquired MySpace for $580 million in cash....
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Episode 50: Terra: Crypto’s TERRA-ble Crash
We’re doing a special episode on cryptocurrency this week and covering what occurred in May of 2022 when the world watched as one of the biggest projects imploded. Once valued at $400 billion, the project was known as TerraUST, a stablecoin that was going to transform the crypto market and the…
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Episode 49: Von Dutch, From Price Tags to Toe Tags
Back in the early 2000s, the Von Dutch ubiquitous trucker hats were seen everywhere- and their line of denim brought us the classic low-rise, sometimes frayed at the hem, sometimes with tons of bling, but never without the iconic “Von Dutch” stamped logo. That uniquely distinctive font bared the...
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Bonus Episode: The Speed of Culture Podcast
This week we’re releasing a bonus episode from one of our sister podcasts on the Adweek Podcast Network called The Speed of Culture Podcast. In this episode, host Matt Britton talks to Ken Ohashi about bringing a brand’s DNA into focus. Ken is a marketing expert with years of experience in the...
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Episode 48: Phar-Mor, From Savior to Misbehavior
Get ready to hear about the most scandalous retail pharmacy chain of all time that was Phar-Mor. We hear about companies and financial misconduct frequently–stories of cooked books and misappropriated funds are hardly rare, but often leave us questioning–how do companies manage to pull these off,...
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Episode 47: Kmart, From Blue Light Special to Candlelight Vigil
Who doesn’t remember Kmart? At its height, Kmart was the second-largest retailer in the United States, operating 2,400 stores with 350,000 employees. The company was generating around $37 billion a year in sales, ranking 2nd to Sears. But by 1990 it would see a tectonic shift, with its fortunes...
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Episode 46: Carrian Group Swim with the Fishes
Carrian Group was a tale made for fiction, running the gamut of corruption, human greed, fraudulent accounting, and false profits that spanned across countries. Despite it being almost 4 decades since the collapse of this huge conglomerate, we still don’t know the full story - but what we do know...
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Episode 45: How Jawbone went from Wearable to Terrible
Many regarded Jawbone as one of the pioneers in wearables. After making its mark as a Bluetooth headset maker, it pivoted to capitalize on the new and highly desirable fitness tracking market. This pivot and expansion into a hot new area allowed Jawbone to attract funding from top-tier Silicon...
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Episode 44: Zillow Offers, From Flip to Flop
In September 2021, Sean Gotcher, a Nevada-based real-estate agent, released an infamous TikTok video that ignited a tremendous amount of attention and criticism after alluding to a real estate iBuyer that may have been fixing home prices and engaging in market manipulation. Although many claimed...
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Special Announcement + Encore Episode: MoviePass Roll the Credits
Cinephile and film enthusiast, Stacy Spikes sought to reinvent the way people watched movies. His answer was MoviePass, a subscription-based service that allowed people to watch any movie, at any theater, at any time for one monthly fee. It was ground-breaking, well-suiting the Company to disrupt...
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Episode 43: Ayds Gets a Trim Down
Since the 1930s, Ayds was a popular appetite suppressant touted by Hollywood celebrities and starlets. Despite being a success and household name for over 40 years, Ayds would find itself at the precipice of a PR nightmare, eventually, “crowning” itself as one of the greatest product flops in...
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Episode 42: Circuit City: Electronic Retail Giant Short-Circuits
The rise and fall of Circuit City is a fascinating tale full of ups and downs, when one Company paved the path and dominated the consumer electronics market only to perish after almost 6 decades. From having the largest selections, the best prices, and the brightest talent, Circuit City went from...
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Episode 41: Ctrl+Alt+Del, Microsoft’s Mixer
On June 22, 2020 Microsoft’s live game streaming service, Mixer, made a stunning announcement. After 4 years of building out its channel for gamers and its beloved community of streamers and fans, they were shutting down. As millions of Mixer active users, and even their own employees were...
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Episode 40: The DeLorean: Time Machine to Nowhere
The DeLorean was one of the most era-defining cars of the ‘80s. Sleek, sexy, and unconventional, this iconic car had much promise-- engineering ingenuity, celebrity fanfare, and media hype. But less than a year after it rolled out its first cars, the Company would collapse in a tailspin of lies,...
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Coming Soon: Season 2 of The Great Fail
The Great Fail is coming back with Season 2 on February 16, 2022! In the meantime, enjoy a new show from our friends at Wondery. During the 1-900 number craze of the Nineties, one company provided the vast majority of phone sex. American Telnet was an empire founded by the man who called himself...
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Episode 39: Final Buzzer for Modell’s Sporting Goods
On February 21, 2020, Mitchell Modell, CEO of the largest family-owned sporting goods retailer in the United States went on national TV and made a shocking announcement-he asked viewers to help save his company from financial collapse. The 130-year-old brand at one point was a fixture in the...
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Episode 38: The Final Descent for Trump Shuttle
Leather seats, marble floors, chrome buckles, and pearl necklaces- that was just the beginning of the luxurious Trump Shuttle saga. Back in 1989, Donald J. Trump, graced the covers of Time Magazine with the byline “Young, handsome and ridiculously rich.” He had just acquired Trump Plaza and with...
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Episode 37: How Pier 1 Imports Sank
In its heyday, Pier 1 Imports had 18,000 employees and over 1,000 stores worldwide, bringing us the most eclectic and quirky array of home furnishing design and décor products-- from love beads, exotic rattan chairs to other treasured goods. For over 5 decades, Pier 1 took the reins of the home...
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Episode 36: MoviePass Roll the Credits
Cinephile and film enthusiast, Stacy Spikes sought to reinvent the way people watched movies. His answer was MoviePass, a subscription-based service that allowed people to watch any movie, at any theater, at any time for one monthly fee. It was ground-breaking, well-suiting the Company to disrupt...
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Encore Episode: Adapt or Die, The Fall of Tower Records
For over 4 decades, Tower Records was a pioneer in the music industry and the bedrock of record store culture. It was run by rebels and outsiders, where founder Russ Solomon was revered and idolized. Tower would become the mecca for music fans creating a generation that lived by their diehard...
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Episode 35: United Airlines, Fly the Not-So-Friendly Skies
On April 9, 2017, passengers of United Airlines Flight 3411 watched as aviation officers dragged out a fellow passenger, Dr. David Dao. He was one of the individuals involuntarily bumped off the plane after United Airlines overbooked its flight. Ripped from his seat by law enforcement officers…
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Encore Episode: Bre-X: Fool's Gold
By 1995, Calgary's Bre-X became a $6 billion company when it declared it had discovered the world's largest gold mine within the jungles of Indonesia. What followed years later would entail all the elements of a Hollywood story: lies, betrayal, the collapse of an empire and a badly decomposed…
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Episode 34: How HQ Trivia Crashed
When HQ Trivia went live in 2018, it was an instant hit, generating a tremendous amount of mass appeal and gaining an immediate cult following that went beyond anyone’s expectations. They also had the blessings of the most influential people-from the celebrity world to the investment world. What...
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Episode 33: XFL’s Fatal Fumble
When Vince McMahon announced that he would be creating a new football league-- a grittier, more violent, and more entertaining version called the XFL, many seemed to think this idea would be an ultimate touchdown. When the highly anticipated, highly publicized event premiered on NBC in February…
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Episode 32: Archegos Capital, A Greek Tragedy
On March 26, 2021, the financial world awoke to the news that rattled some of Wall Street’s biggest players. To the outside world, and at the center of it all were some unfamiliar and obscure names-- Archegos Capital and its Founder Bill Hwang. The word on the street was that Archegos defaulted…
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Episode 31: Kodak: Missing the Moment
Kodak dominated the consumer photography market for over a century and their downfall seems to be obvious in their inability to adapt to the digital age. But when you look closer at the company’s history, you’ll come to see that ironically what made them so successful was what ultimately killed…
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
The Great Fail is a true crime inspired, business podcast that examines the greatest success stories of the most prominent and prolific companies, brands, and people and what led to their demise. If you love true crime and stories of massive failures, you've come to the right place! Here we take a forensic look at stories that will irk you, shock you, and have you picking your jaw up off the floor, all while learning the oftentimes avoidable, mistakes that have ended the lives of companies and left boardrooms looking like crime scenes.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
HOSTED BY
Debra Chen
CATEGORIES
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Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does The Great Fail have?
The Great Fail currently has 82 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is The Great Fail about?
The Great Fail is a true crime inspired, business podcast that examines the greatest success stories of the most prominent and prolific companies, brands, and people and what led to their demise. If you love true crime and stories of massive failures, you've come to the right place! Here we take a...
How often does The Great Fail release new episodes?
The Great Fail has 82 episodes. Check the episode list to see recent publication dates and frequency.
Where can I listen to The Great Fail?
You can listen to The Great Fail on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts The Great Fail?
The Great Fail is created and hosted by Debra Chen.
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