Comments on: Where’s My Dr Pepper?

By: Erik

Erik — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 19:42:50 +0000

This thing is way out of control. One brand’s failure is so great that it’s affecting another brand and making Axl Rose look like a victim. So much for any publicity being better than no publicity.

Maybe Dr Pepper will end up doing the “right” thing after all–the threat of litigation probably means releasing the product to make the problem go away so they don’t have to pay out of pocket, right?

By: Bob

Bob — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 15:35:08 +0000

Yeah, here’s an idea – pull the Dr. J ads and run the program for an entire month, no, the rest of the year. The PR would be huge, consumers would re-engage with this failing brand, and the real cost would be less than buck per redeemed coupon.

By: Charles

Charles — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 10:50:30 +0000

I’m slightly upset that I didn’t know today was the day for the free Dr.Pepper. They should have informed everyone in a tv ad about the bet and that Nov 23rd was the big day instead of airing the Dr. J commercial.

By: Jonathan

Jonathan — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 14:48:18 +0000

Good news: They’ve extended the deadline, probably because of this very blog post. ; )

http://www.drpepper.com/freeDrPepper/?icamp=hp_dpfree_coupon

It now runs through 6 PM EST.

Bad news: the server still has some issues because it hangs when you try to register.

Still a disaster apparently.

By: Dave J. (Scoop0901)

Dave J. (Scoop0901) — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 07:13:47 +0000

As you said — much like I said in my initial post, as well as the follow-up, about the server failure on the topic — if you are going to do something like this, you really need to have a solid, knowledgeable team do all the prep work, such as server load balancing, server/traffic handoff (Akami comes to mind quickly, which is used by many sites to handle excess traffic which would normally cause sites and servers to crash), among other issues.

Planning is always the critical step. Without adequate planning for all contingences — whether in the military sector, civilian sector, or the online sector — things will get botched and you will have egg on your face.

Once the egg is on your face, though, it’s how you handle the situation as far as wiping it off. Indeed, it will be interesting to see how Dr Pepper (for the brand, there hasn’t been a period after the word “Dr” in many decades) and Snapple handle this situation.