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Posts Tagged ‘Avoiding disaster form downtime’


marketing-so-good-it-kills
September 2nd, 2010 - by: Marc Frechette; Marketing Communications
Marketing So Good, It Kills

You find a coupon online for a free muffin and coffee at a small bakery you’ve never thought to try. That Monday, you break your normal routine to wait in line at the bakery only to learn that the coffee and muffins have run out. You’re late for work, hungry and uncaffeinated. The baker apologizes and offers you another coupon you have no intention of ever using.

Marketing efforts can be too good. We’ve discussed plans for dealing with downtime. In this section of SilverTech’s ‘Avoiding Disaster from Downtime’ series we take a look at the curious pitfalls of a campaign that is ‘too successful’ and the importance of strategic marketing and infrastructure partnerships.

A ‘so good, it kills’ campaign generates an overwhelming increase in consumer action, leading to reduced quality of service and cognitive dissonance. The common, detrimental and avoidable mistakes often made during a campaign result in traffic spikes capable of overloading the company’s infrastructure and ruining the brand to both new and loyal customers, thus rendering it ‘so good, it kills.’

Read how your bakery distaste was the result of a disasterously good campaign and a disconnect between marketing and infrastructure. (more…)

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the-5-keys-to-digital-communications-disaster-readiness-for-zombies
August 25th, 2010 - by: Marc Frechette; Marketing Communications
The 5 Keys to Digital Communications Disaster Readiness… For Zombies.

This is a survival guide for a digital communications response from a web outage to stolen client data. This post’s tone is light-hearted, but the reality is quite serious. No failure, no matter how improbable, is impossible. Proactive planning of your communications in the cases of specific problems before they happen can be the difference between an understandable downtime and utter disaster.

A glance at communications disasters and debacles from a major apparel brand’s scramble for recovery after a  week-long web outage to the Twitter lampooning of stumbling oil giant BP, highlights how unforgiving our ‘always connected’ consumers are of any lax, or lag in communication, and how potent the improbable can be.

Five years ago your team could take a day to evaluate, prepare and disseminate the official response for almost anything. Today’s digital powered public demands instant response (or they’ll start making one for you.) They want a response now, and they want it across the plethora of channels they use. The only way to respond on your public’s instantaneous deadline is to have planned your response before the panic.

Zombies at your door: A Proactive Digital PR Party game

The goal of this PR party game is to form effective communications procedures for the situation presented, no matter how ridiculous. Zombies are a fun starting point because the situation is a) ridiculous and b) pushes the limits of communication.

As a game, it’s a great way for your team to have some fun without trust falls, not that there’s anything wrong with trust falls. (There is.) As a practice, this skill and forethought puts your organization in a state of readiness so that you can respond clearly, quickly and effectively to any situation.

The Case of Zombies:

Zombies have descended on your facility, making you, your products and services unavailable until the hordes recede. You may be back up and running at daybreak, or the curse of Romero could take your business down permanently. You’re not sure.

Aside from a cricket bat or S Mart chainsaw, your plan should include these 5 key elements, and be built with my number survival-school secret for preplanning success.

(more…)

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