Be Unpredictable
Customers love delightful surprises

Giving away Lady Gaga’s Born This Way album for 99-cents was a generous offer by Amazon. Daring carries risks. In this case it generated bad customer experiences when extreme demand crashed Amazon’s servers. What no one could have predicted was what happened next.

After scaling up their server capability, Amazon  repeated the offer two days later. Bad feelings were washed away by their making it right. The offer was incredibly generous: the do-over cost Amazon an estimated $3 million dollars. Because it was so unpredictable, the entire episode generated many more times that in publicity.

What else would you expect from a double-dip of the Ten Be’s of Better Branding?