When Bad Customer Experience is Goodish PR

Go to a snazzy restaurant. Find a fly in your soup. Get a snotty brush off from the waiter. Never go back and tell your friends. Perhaps even  post something on Trip Adviser or load up a  YouTube video of said bluebottle doing the backstroke in your expensive consommé.

Well in the world of new tech product launches it really works in reverse sometimes. Google seems to have an iPad killer on its hands in the Asus Nexus 7 with great reviews, a growing eco-system of content and a good price.

But if you had paid your money to be front of the queue, you’d have been mighty disappointed last week when it seems stocks dried up almost immediately at launch.

Coming to market with not enough product is great for your reputation as the shortage suggests you have a cracker of a product for sale and there’s been a buying panic. And that’s what Google’s PR machine – or the media at least – have presented with some success.

Well done but now we’ll expect the supply chain to be properly filled because you can’t play this trick more than once.