What will Kimi do next?

We all have been pondering about the future of Kimi Räikkönen. The discussion has been in the spotlight of sports channels as well as many home studios, like mine. As an eager fan I had been staring relentlessly at the countdown on WhatWillKimiDoNext.com -site.

The countdown reached zero at 12:00 yesterday. My heart was beating fiercely when I clicked the link that appeared. My curiosity was overwhelming. What will Kimi do next?!

The anticlimax was stunning. The link could not be opened. The target site was down!

Later on I found out that there was a clothing and design company Makia from Finland that was behind it all. They had build an impressive marketing campaing around a new line of clothing with Kimi -brand. It had a potential of being an impressive success story in marketing, but something went wrong.

Makia’s site looks really good and it probably has managed the visitor flow pretty well over the last years. But what really happens if the visitor count multiplies for example by 100 in an instant? What happens when years of work in marketing hits the sweet spot around the world?

Great deal of all energy, time and money invested simply vanishes. At the peak moment, the brand should have been bathing in the golden spotlight, but now it was all the deepest darkness instead!

Part of the problem can be explained by the mindset Makia has in business. They summarize the motto like this:

To me its not a shame to learn from the mistakes of others as well! I wager, it would not have bothered the marketing director of Makia either.

While executing a marketing campaing, one should always take all “what if” -scenarios into account. At Red Bull they most definitely had considered: “What if Felix Baumgartners parachute does not open after all?”

What if your campaing really succeeds? Have you tested that your web site really can perform under a heavy load?