The Oprah Effect?

As a preface to today's post, have any of you seen the CNBC show, The Oprah Effect?  I watched it the other night and was amazed the lengths businesses will go to be on the Oprah Show or to be one of Oprah's favorite things.  After these businesses have been on her show, their sales went through the roof, so much so, these business could not handle the number of orders rolling in until weeks/months after the show aired.

Below is an email I received after signing up for a free sample of doggie shampoo from Happytails Spa!  It reminded me of the Oprah Effect, and it also reminded me when I see a freebie to not delay and sign up for it pronto! 

Many of the companies trying to get on the Oprah show spend “boat loads” of money sending Oprah and her staff tons of their products in hopes that she will try, love it and share it with her audiance.  Since Oprah is going off the air, maybe these companies will redirect their Oprah funds to "the world of internet freebies."  The news of the company's product will spread like "wild fire" all over the internet by "everyone and their brother" trying to get a free try at the latest products.  How about those not so free Shenanigans?

So, when reading this email, do you think this company missed their opportunity at a "Pseudo Oprah Effect" or handled it pretty good considering the situation?

Email Subject: An Apology
From: Happytails Canine Spa Line
"It was a simple plan; add a free sample banner ad to Dogster's email, what could possibly go wrong?
We were expecting (at the very most) 2000 requests. Then someone was kind enough (?) to post the link to several 'free stuff' web sites (you probably know the ones I'm talking about) and within minutes we were receiving thousands of requests per hour. So far we have received more than 50,000 requests, yikes! This far exceeds the 500 per week we had promised to send (& which we have sent).
We're a small company, but we thought that if all four humans and all three dogs worked 24 hours a day to make and send samples we could finish by the end of the decade. But then the dogs brought up that whole 'lack of opposable thumbs' thing and we knew we were sunk.
We could have just ignored this whole episode but we don't want to own a company that does that kind of thing, you made the effort to write and the least we could do is thank you and apologize.
We're SOOO sorry.
So, here's what we're gonna do:

1. Give you a $15 'gift certificate' to be used on any order $35 or more. Good through January 31, 2010. Just use promotion code: $15DOGSTERGIFT

2. We already gave you a 20% promotion code (DOGSTERDISCOUNT) good through Feb. 15th. But as our way of apologizing we are going to make the code good through the end of July- you can use it as many times as you'd like. Just go to www.happytailsspa.com to redeem it.

Again, we can only apologize for mix up, next time we'll be sure to add a little more fine print.
Lorna, Kevin, Lauryn & Jason (the humans)
and RiQui, Brie and Jimmy (the dogs)"