Acolyte, Madame Web and Joker Folie à Deux have three things in common.

First, they were all developed starting from existing IP that's been proven time and again successful, namely Star Wars, Spiderman and Joker.

And yet second, they all flopped, big time.

And third, producers blamed the audience in all three cases.

When it comes to this sort of thing, here's the shocking truth: money doesn't lie.

If your product is s**t, it won't sell. And it works the other way around as well. If your product doesn't sell, it's probably because it's s**t.

And customers are certainly not gonna change their mind if you call them stupid. In fact, the opposite is true. They might remember that, next time around.

The same thing happened with Patek Philippe.

The luxury watch brand recently unveiled Cubitus, its first new design in 25 years, and a lot of people didn't like it.

So guess what Patek's President said?

He said, "criticism comes from people who don't own a Patek and never will, so I'm not concerned".

Well. First of all, that's not true. A quick search on YouTube will give you access to a long list of videos from Patek owners who are saying "I own a Patek, but the new one is s**t", and second, that's such an out-of-touch, arrogant thing to say it's beyond belief.

Everyone's familiar with the expression 'the customer is always right' but I think we sometimes misunderstand the meaning.

The customer is always right means that the market, any market, will always, always, always go in whichever direction the public is going.

Sure, you can influence the public, and it sometimes can take time, sometimes even years or decades, to understand that direction, but in the history of the world, this has never been UNTRUE.

We use smartphones, because that's what the public wanted.

Prohibitionism didn't work, because the public wanted a drink.

And we're going to be using crypto, if that's what the public want, which I think it is.

'Mansplaining', berating, patronising the public is a really bad strategy.

It alienates a large chunk of people, and charms no one in particular.