Here’s an anatomy of a marketing nightmare. The folks at Sprint.com were ready to roll out a new and improved website last weekend, planning to flip the switch early Sunday morning. Unfortunately, it didn’t take and the customer portal for the nation’s third largest cellphone company disappeared from the Internet.
Fast forward three days later and there’s still no Sprint.com. Customers are flaming Sprint in online forums for leaving them unable to manage their accounts online. Other than numerous apologies, the most Sprint has done to deflect all this anger is to launch a Twitter feed with updates on the outage that can be summarized in four words — “we’re working on it.”
The saddest part of this story is that the new website does look pretty cool, but all that coolness will be washed away in the sea of bile that’s being spilled with all the spleen venting over this botched rollout.
But there are lessons to be learned in The School of Hard Knocks. First is the favorite adage of my boss — always under-promise and over-deliver. That’s true for marketing campaigns the same as it is for launching new websites. And let’s crib another one — as they say in the Hippocratic Oath, “first, do no harm.” Your new marketing concept may not be a smashing success, but be sure it doesn’t sink your image either. Due diligence in planning and rollout goes a long way to prevent the kind of serious, self-inflicted wound that Sprint is trying to recover from now.
Remember the movie Field Of Dreams and the famous line, “If you build it, they will come?” Some people think that’s true about business web sites — just build a great one and they’ll come. But to keep them coming, you need to begin renovations immediately.
More on the game show analogy later. But first, some opening credits. 
OK, let’s start with a confession — the owner of my company is Twitter-phobic. Just last week he said he’s afraid that all this social media is taking time away from getting REAL work done. That’s a fair concern for someone who signs the paychecks, but how do I get him to embrace the power of Twitter to grow our brand and connect with clients and prospects?
