What Internet Marketers Can Learn from the Boy Scouts

Posted on January 29, 2008
by Blog.thegioiwebsite.Net Internet marketing articles |

by Peter De Legge

Perhaps marketers should have mandatory training from the Boy Scouts, where the motto is “be prepared.” It is a lesson Encyclopedia Britannica is learning the hard way. The Encyclopedia Britannica has long been highly regarded for their top notch product, but the company has historically been slow to embrace technology. They were late to get their encyclopedia into the CD-ROM market and late to put together a significant Web site effort. So their recent announcement to put their entire encyclopedia online for free created a giant media buzz.



You’re probably thinking to yourself, wow, the opportunity every business with a significant Web presence dreams of — tons of free publicity for a site launch.

The problem is, the folks at Britannica didn’t plan on their enormous success. And on the Internet, there is no forgiveness when it comes to significant increases or “spikes” in Web site traffic. 

Britannica.com’s servers were simply unprepared to handle the traffic and the company soon took their site down. It was a disaster.

Read this excerpt posted on the Britannica.com home page (at the time of publishing this article, the only available page on the britannica.com Web site):


“The launch of Britannica.com last week created such an enormous volume of traffic that we were simply unable to handle the demand. We have been working around the clock to correct the problem. Our teams have been busy unpacking crates, installing hardware, configuring software and boosting capacity worldwide.

What’s more, after evaluating the situation we have decided to not only boost our capacity several-fold; but redesign our system to meet the extraordinary demands placed on it. We’re taking this extraordinary step to ensure that we can meet the demands of our users going forward.

We apologize to everyone who has been unable to access Britannica.com. Soon we will be able to make the Britannica.com site available once again. In the meantime, I ask for your patience as we work to ensure that our systems around the world can meet the enormous demand for Britannica.com.”

What can marketers from companies big and small learn from this? First, you need to be ready for spikes in Internet traffic; Britannica blew an incredible opportunity because they were not prepared. Marketing and IT departments need to work closely and make sure that everyone in IT and involved in the technical side of the company’s Web site is aware of any potential large traffic spikes. If your company is going to have an executive appear on national television program such as an interview on CNN or Nightline, have a plan in place and get things ready long before the event. Experienced consultants should be brought in…experience is paramount.

Fortunately for Britannica, they are very likely to recover. But will Britannica receive the same amount of publicity for the re-launch of their site? If this same thing were to happen to a significant e-commerce or stock trading site it would have done serious damage to the company’s stock price, reputation and caused immediate losses in the millions.

Internet marketers don’t only need to be guerillas, they should also be good scouts.

Peter De Legge is the publisher and editor of Marketing Today. He has more than 15 years marketing and advertising experience that includes holding  various marketing management posts at several corporations and consulting to numerous companies, from start-ups to Fortune 500’s, in the areas of Internet Marketing, integrated marketing and Internet strategy. E-business efforts and Web sites Peter has been a part of have won the praise of leading marketing and e-business experts, including being selected being selected among E-Week’s “Top 500 E-business Innovators of 2000.” Peter’s MarketingToday.com Web site has received  the praise of e-marketing innovators like Seth Godin and industry publications such as Folio Magazine,  which recently selected the site as one of several “Web sites worth watching.” To learn more about Peter De Legge visit:  http://www.businessmarketing.net or e-mail marketingtoday@usa.net.



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