- Zuckerberg started Facebook in a dorm. Snowden exposed the NSA in a hotel. I'm a comedian who's been fired from many social media jobs, so what can I accomplish if I'm locked in a room for one week with just an internet connection and a thousand dollars?
This is Control Room. So, welcome to Control Room. The challenge for this episode is start an alternative medicine company from inside this room.
Now if you guys don't know, alternative medicine companies, there's a ton of them, but I'm gonna talk about two, Goop and LiveWater. And I wanna tell you guys about these, but I have to do it in a special segment called My Viacom Approved Opinions. Just a little bit of background on this.
Viacom, the parent company of Comedy Central, hates this project. They hate everything about it. Just in prep for the PowerPoint that I'm showing you now, they sent me 257 emails about things I am not allowed to say.
One of the last ones was this that just said, it is our opinion that the creative team should either change course or stop development of this project. And most of the other emails were about Gwyneth Paltrow or Goop, and how I should not mention them under any circumstance. So in the segment, I am obligated to keep it positive.
So first, I wanna talk to you guys about LiveWater. If you don't know, LiveWater is unfiltered, untreated, unsterilized spring water. Heres one of their jugs from Instagram, which I like.
I think that that's good. That's great. They sell a 2.
5-gallon jug for 36. 99. Here's their real website.
And people had a lot to say about this. This guy said, "Without water treatment, there's acute and chronic risks. " Stuff like E.
coli bacteria, viruses, parasites, and we don't have that because of our very efficient water treatment process. But what does this guy know? He's just the Director of the Healthy Living Program at the Mayo Clinic, so probably an idiot.
I instead choose to believe, again, the brilliancy of the company who says, "Tap water? "You're drinking toilet water "with birth control drugs in them. " "They're putting in fluoride.
"It's a mind-control drug that has "no benefit to our dental health. " And who would be more in touch with nature and the human body than this man who, even in this press photo, is staring directly into the sun? And so now, I wanna talk about Goop.
And I gotta be careful, but I'm just gonna point a couple things out, keep it real straightforward. This is Goop's very slick, very cool logo. That's important to remember later when I'm building my company.
And then I wanna talk to you about some of their, these are real products that are for sale on the Goop website. This is their Aromatic Stress Treatment. You can pick this up for 80 bucks and you get .
16 ounces! This is their Psychic Vampire Repellent. I thought that it was weird how they included instructions on how to use this as if it's not obvious that this is a product which you spray around the aura to protect from psychic attack.
That's clearly what it's for. They have Chill Child, Kid Calming Mist. That's 27 bucks.
And under almost all of the products on the website, not all, but almost all, there's this cool disclaimer that says, these statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drg Administration. This is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. And I don't think that there's anything wrong with me putting these images next to each other.
I don't think there's anything wrong with me saying that's a great deal. I don't think there's anything wrong with me pointing to these two images and mentioning that Goop is worth $250 million. I don't think there's anything wrong with me showing Gwyneth Paltrow's beautiful, $10 million home, or putting this on top of it, or putting that on top of it.
And that's fine, and those are my Viacom Approved Opinions. So again, back to the task here. My task was to start an alternative medicine company.
And what that means is I want to start and operate an actual company that has slick branding, that seems sophisticated, this really means European. And in order to prove how effective those marketing tactics are, I need to make sure that the product itself has to be a gross and dangerous piece of nonsense. So my idea for this was a used tissue that works like a vaccine, in that someone sneezes on it.
And the you have the tissue. Someone else breathes that tissue in so that they get sick now and don't get sick later. And the tissue itself costs $80.
So the metrics I'm gonna use to determine whether this experiment is a success is do people believe it? Will people use it? And do people like it?
So the first thing I needed was a brand. And I used the Haagen Dazs Method. The Haagen Dazs Method, if you don't know, is when you take a product that's not Danish at all and you give it a Danish name so it seems cooler.
So I went on Google Translate. I typed in tissue and it came out Vaev, and I'm like yeah, obviously that's the name of the company now. Are you serious?
That's perfect! What? - Whoo!
- And then I hit up my buddy who's a graphic designer and told him about the whole thing, told him I was locked in a room, and he sent over these mock ups. I picked this one. And so that's the logo for the company.
And I wanted a slick package. And you guys have seen those knockoff iPhone boxes, right? They look pretty much like the real thing, but they're fake?
Turns out, you can get those on the internet custom made for 50 cents a piece. So I did that and it looks good. And then I was in the room.
I ordered a bunch of Petri dishes off of Amazon, some Kleenexes that I just balled up, never sneezed on. And I started putting these things together with stickers and gold tape that I got from a craft store all delivered to the room. So this is the logo on the little unit thing.
On the back, we see the same warning from the Goop products. On the side, you can see into it. You see this quote, quote, "used tissue" and some of our nice gold tape.
It also has instructions in English and Danish. It comes with two of these cool stickers that say blessed you on them. It's our little tagline.
It's like Apple. Oh, and also it has this trashcan on the back. I don't know what that means or what it is, but I feel like it's on a lot of products, so it makes it look more legit.
So I put a bunch of these together, and when it was all said and done and taken care of, this product cost me $2 to make. So I'm selling them for 80 is the idea, but I needed marketing materials. Any good company has them.
So again, I'm locked in a room so I spent a little bit of time writing a commercial, and then I went online and found out that I can get a casting room. And you can get it for like $34. I put out an ad on LA casting for people to audition for this.
People came in to play these roles in the commercial I wrote. And then to save money, I pulled every favor I could and I sent buddies of mine that make videos and stuff like that to my buddy's garage in Silver Lake and they set up a shitty studio thing in the garage where they did everything they could to shoot this commercial. And I directed the entire thing on FaceTime in the room.
And this is the commercial we made. - [Narrator] You tear your muscles to become stronger. You learn to fall to become a dancer.
You callous your fingers to become a musician. Why is your immune system any different? Introducing a tissue powered by the human body, for the human body.
This flu season, keep your immune system feeling like your immune system. Vaev. - So that's the commercial.
So once all that was put together, I distilled everything down to a Squarespace website, and it took like 15 minutes to set up. It cost 18 bucks, super cheap. And I also marked the product sold out on the store so that it would seem that there was this incredible demand for the thing that doesn't exist.
Then I created a Twitter account, bought some followers, and I used that to announce all day long that we just ran out of stock. We sold out again, and also to retweet any article that had something to do with Sean Parker so that people thought he had something to do with this. And he doesn't but, that's kinda cool.
You can just do that if you want. It's easy. Then I set up this Instagram page that has one of these splashy grid things.
I mean, it's bullshit but it looks cool I think. Spent like 50 bucks buying some followers and included our other little tagline, a tissue unlike any you've #UsedBefore. So now I had a website, a Twitter account, and an Instagram.
So once it was all in place, I was like I need a focus group to tell me if people like this, right? So I went on Craigslist and I searched like hey. I made a post.
Does anybody wanna come by and do this focus group? I went online and found out that you can rent a legit-looking focus group center for like 150 bucks. And then I sent a camera crew to go behind the one-way glass, film everything.
I also hit up my friend, Tien Tran, who's an amazing comedian. So the first thing that we did was a product demo so that I could make it clear exactly how disgusting and ridiculous this product and this idea is, and here's what they said. - Okay.
To go back to the question, do people like it? Yes. What?
So now that I had a product that people seemed to be connecting with, I wanted to find out if I could hire somebody. Now this would be the ultimate test of do people believe it? Would somebody think yeah, I could work for a company like that.
So I went back to Craigslist and I made a post, but I was look for something really specific. Keep in mind, this company has no real product, no plan, and I possibly committing a crime. So there's only one type that's perfect for this situation and that is a bro.
You need a bro for this, and I feel like I found a perfect bro. This guy, I'm talking about Scotty Babbitt, AKA Blizzard. As soon as I got the email with this resume, I knew he was our guy because he was in not one, but two, fraternities in college.
And also, under every photo, somebody had commented the word scoot. Even when he showed up, his buttons on his shirt were buttoned incorrectly. So this was the guy.
This was our guy. Now, I don't have an office space for this, so I hit up my buddy and asked if I could use his brother's office. And if you have a chain of white guys hooking you up with stuff, can you do anything you want?
Yes. Is that problematic? Yes.
Do I have time to get to it? No, let's move on. The head of customer service is the job that he was interviewing for.
So I brought him in for this interview and my friend Kiel, who's a comedian, was the one interviewing him. We set up a webcam directly in front of his face, but just said that it was for a higher up in the company to review the interview later. So for this interview, he's under the impression that he's taking real calls from real angry customers, but what he doesn't know is that those real angry customers are me in the room.
And the only instruction that he's been given is to deny everything, and no one can sue us. And so we were like, let's see if he does it. So the first thing I did was called and said that my son is sick, and here is what Scott had to say to this customer.
- What? What! That happened so fast.
He denied everything. And then, unprompted, he started to deny him that we, again, never told him to deny. Here's what happened a second later in that interview.
You can Google it! So Scott's hired. Give it up for Scott!
Wow! What? So again, back to do people believe it?
Yes. What? People believe it.
So kinda the last thing for me to do is find out what happens when I take this product into the world. What happens if we've got Vaev out there with people, right? Will people use it?
And most of the time when companies have new products, they have a promo team go out and hand out free units. And the truth is, I can't afford a promo unit like this, but what I can afford is my girlfriend and her two friends who conveniently did used to work for Red Bull. This really only cost me the 60 bucks to get these matching polos made.
Unfortunately, the one real edge that a company like that has is these cool cars, and obviously this is crazy expensive and I'm hocking used tissues here. What was I gonna do? Go on Amazon and get a bunch of shipping boxes and then spray paint them black and get my friend if I can borrow his girlfriend's MINI Cooper?
I mean yes, of course that's what I'm gonna do. Yes. And that cost about 80 bucks in total.
And then the most expensive thing on the entire project is this photo booth that we rented. But we told people if you come in here and get a cool gif for your Instagram, you gotta use one of our used tissues. But even with all that, it felt like there was still no way people will use this on the street, right?
- So again, will people use it? Yes. Yes, they will use it.
Do people believe it? Yes. Do people like it?
Frankly too much. Really, I mean. So the last thing I did, this was my last day in the room, I was like can I get some kinda press?
So I went online. I didn't have a lot of time at all and I just Googled like, hey, is there addresses of newspapers or whatever that I can send this to? And then I put together these envelopes with the Vaev in them.
That cost me like 30 bucks for postage. It came with this little postcard that says we're huge fans of you and that there's a human sneeze in here. And it even outlined that this is being sent by Oliver, Oliver Niessen, the fictional Danish CEO of his company that's not real.
Unfortunately I didn't have a lot of time in the room, so I didn't make him a Facebook. I couldn't make him a LinkedIn or anything. There's no information about this guy anywhere.
So I think that's maybe where I messed up on this part, because this company has no sales, no CEO that you can find anywhere online. It's not incorporated anywhere. It's not a real company.
And a simple Google search will reveal all that stuff. So it would have been nice to get a little clipping or something somewhere, but that is unfortunately the end, 'cause there's no way anybody would write about this. Right?
- The world's boldest tissue company. It's called Vaev tissue. - Vaev.
- Vaev. - Vaev. - Vaev.
- Vaev Tissue. - Vaev. - Vaev.
- A pre-infected. - Used tissue. - For 80 bucks.
- $80 a pop, and this one's apparently true. - Is this real? - I don't know.
- [Reporter] I guess it was in time magazine. - It's used tissues for $80. It's incredible.
- [Reporter] Fox news says the tissues have been sold out for months now. - Tissues are in high demand. Used tissues.
- You ready? - No! I can't believe you just did that.
No! - The company apparently has customers. - I wanna see those people.
- This is nasty. Plain old nasty. - I would never wanna go near them.
- There's over 200 different types of rhinovirus. Are you gonna stuff 200 different types of tissues in your nose? - It's expensive.
It's dangerous. It's disgusting and it won't work, so naturally it is sold out. Introducing, Dead.
You've contracted giardia on your terms. - [Narrator] This flu season, keep your immune system feeling like your immune system. - Okay, I know, I know, I know!
But these tissues are so popular that the company says that they have sold out. What do you guys think? - So the question is how did this happen?
So to break it down, what happened was I put those in those envelopes and the only people that got back to me, I don't know why, was Time Magazine. And we exchanged a couple of emails, and then after I left the room, over the period of a couple of months, I did a bunch of phone interviews as the fictional Danish CEO, Oliver Niessen. And then Time published a seven-page writeup about this company that was packed with lies that this CEO, whatever guy said, like a human sneeze is safer than needles or pills.
I told them that we have a stable of 10 go-to sneezers. And when they asked me whether or not I pay the sneezers, I said I would rather not address my relationship with those people. So the headline came out and it is a little careful.
This is good journalism on the part of Mandy Oaklander at Time. She included all this information about maybe it's real, maybe it's not. This is a question.
Is it real, right? But the problem is other journalists at every different publication who I did not speak to didn't bother to read the seven-page Time article, and then started running their own stories about it. They used words like virus-infested and disease-infected.
It's crazy. Even the Time Magazine hyperlink that they posted is way scarier than the real headline. Vaev, The $80 Used Tissue Designed to Make You Sick.
That's terrifying! And I didn't say anything to Time that was verifiable at all. If any of these other publications had looked into it or read it, they would have thought something beyond we'll just run this, but they did anyway.
And the question is kind of why? And I think the answer is it's exciting, you know? If you're trying to sell ads and get social engagement and run commercials, your story doesn't have to be true.
It just has to be exciting. When Fox News posted this, their entire comment section explodes, like hundreds and then thousands of comments about this that say stuff like, sounds like a liberal idea. And Obamacare would probably cover it.
But it's not just people that hated it. Every time another one of these articles came out, the product itself that has no evidence of existing anywhere online became more real. Every time something came out, I would get a ton of emails asking when we were gonna restock, or if I had a baby-strength version that you could give to your toddler.
But I think that's kinda the crazy thing. It's like you can manipulate the international media if you have like 900 bucks and take one Photoshop class. You can do this.
But also, please don't do this. Don't lie to people. It's bad.
That's the one thing I learned in this entire process is that I suck for doing this, you know? Even the used tissue idea itself was divisive. People didn't know if they hated it and wanted to leave mean comments, or if they loved it and wanted a restock.
But the one thing that was perfectly clear that everyone unanimously agreed on is that I am extremely unlikeable. - Thank you so much, everyone!
