You may or may not have heard about Steers’ little marketing exercise yesterday. Offering a once-off Wacky Wednesday special of rib burgers for a mere R10, they were right to think that their stores might get a little busy. Boy, did they underestimate the response.

Two big mistakes were made, and these proved to be fatal. Many branches were not adequately stocked to supply the sudden demand, meaning that many were not able to take advantage of the special. But the real nail in the coffin was the lack of a limit on how many burgers people could order.

By 11h30, Steers posted the following on their Facebook page:

OK – the demand today has been nothing short of stratospheric. Companies have literally been ordering 100′s [sic] at a time, customers 50 at a time, and some stores have had to bypass the ‘no limit per person’ and some stores have cancelled phone orders – it’s just been kinda crazy.

Our stocks have been whipped from our feet by this unpredictable response and some stores have already sold out – because of selling 500 burgers before 9am.

Angry customers took to Twitter and the restaurant’s Facebook page, feeling conned and cheated. The exercise is considered a big fail.

I suppose all that’s left to do now is to wait for the Nandos spoof.

[Source: MyBroadband]