Do as I say, Not as I do...

There's this great company called BzzAgent based in Boston that's essentially a word-of-mouth organization that has a small army of marketers as "agents "to produce word of mouth on various products and campaigns. I am one of those agents. They send you something to try and then you "bzz" about it.

The latest campaign I'm a part of is for U.S. Cellular. They sent me a free, gitchy little Motorola phone and you get free service for a month or whatever to try it (and then talk about it). A slick brochure came with it that says, "Activate your phone by calling 888-xxx-xxxx for Immediate Customer Service". Called the number at 8:30PM on a Tuesday night, having just returned from a late business meeting (like any other average professional). "The average wait time is over 15 minutes..." said the recording on the other end.

Ah, no thanks. I'll try again -- maybe. If you're going to execute a promotion and need to cover a higher call volume, you better be prepared to commit the resources (labor, in this case) to getting it done.

If you're gonna print it, you better be prepared to live up to it...