UnMarketing, 2nd Edition

52Be Prepared for Success

The ability for social media to bring someone from anonymity one day to fame the next, and the consequences and potential of that fame, might seem like the kind of problem we all should want. But like a business that grows too fast, keeping up with the demands and expectations of popularity can ruin your processes and reputation very quickly. Just like with online negativity, when we invite the world to come, we need to be prepared for them.

Not being prepared for success in business and in viral marketing is worse than never having success at all. Yeah, that's a sound byte, so go ahead and write that one down.

Scott was not prepared for the success of the Time Movie. The first problem was that he had the movie on his own server, a personal hosting account for $9 a month. Luckily it wasn't on a free site like Geocity or something like that from back in the day—the Angelfire days. He put the movie on there, and that's when he learned about the term transfer bandwidth. He sent the movie out to a couple hundred people he had on his own list, and it took off.

The movie takes off! He's a somebody! Then, as he's in the middle of congratulating himself, the movie stops working.

Here's a reenactment:

“Hey, Frank, go see the Time Movie!”

“It goes to error 404.”

“That's not the thing I'm trying to show you. It's not an error page!”

So Scott went to his host and told them he was paying a solid $9 a month here! So what the hell was going on? Which is when the ...