Hasbro Strikes Back! A follow up

So those of you that read my last post titled “Marketing Fail: Hasbro, how you disappoint me!” know how disappointed I was with my experience on the Monopoly.com website. If you didn’t read it you missed out, so go here, here OR here.

Well wouldn’t you know it, Hasbro also read the blog post and this is what Hasbro said (in human form, as “Kriss” from Consumer Affairs)

Dear Mr. Orozco:

I saw your blog posting about Hasbro’s advertisement for Monopoly DEAL and looked into your concerns immediately.  We appreciate and value your feedback as we are continuously looking for means in which we can build the best website possible.

What I found was that Monopoly DEAL is displayed in a three game rotation on the home page of Monopoly.com.   As it takes several seconds for this rotation to complete itself, it is possible that you might have missed the information about the product on the home page, if you clicked through very quickly.  I also found that Monopoly DEAL is  the second item displayed when using the option to “browse all games” — and there is an added feature on the bottom left of the home page of Monopoly.com where you can “try it now” to learn more about how the game is played.  My sincere apologies if you did not find any of these three means easy to navigate.

I would like to invite you to return to Monopoly.com and let us know if you still have any trouble finding information about Monopoly DEAL by contacting us directly @ 888-***-****.   Please note that I have escalated your concerns to our marketing teams for further observation.

Thanks very much for your interest in Monopoly DEAL and I hope you’ll let me know if you have any further concerns.

Kriss
Hasbro Consumer Affairs

Well FIRST of all “Kriss” from Hasbro Consumer Affairs (if that really is your name) , my father was Mr. Orozco. You may address me as Ulises, Uli and/or Ninja/Jedi/Pirate/Vampire or any other super-wicked mythical creature; that would not only be appropriate  but an extension of my very own reality.

SECOND of all “Kriss” from Hasbro Consumer Affairs, although my inner man-child is very much biased towards Hasbro – given the hundreds of hours that I spent enjoying the games and toys manufactured by Hasbro, Hasbro subsidiaries and companies that Hasbro acquired through good-old-fashioned American Capitalism – I still feel like a few things could have been done better with your response. Don’t get me wrong “Kriss” from Hasbro Consumer Affairs, I’m very impressed that Hasbro EVEN HAS a Consumer Affairs department that looks for dissatisfaction where dissatisfaction dwells (blogs, New Jersey and in the hearts of young hollywood celebs, of course). MOREOVER, I’m further impressed that a remedy was implemented in an expeditious manner. So I guess you could say that OVERALL, not too bad.

HOWEVER, seriously, a few things:

Corporate Silo’s

“Kriss” from Consumer Affairs, sorry, you’re in a silo my friend. Allow me to explain. The “three game rotation” that you referred to in the second paragraph is on THIS page: http://www.hasbro.com/games/kid-games/monopoly/ which has now become the monopoly.com homepage. When I first saw the Monopoly DEAL commercial, typing in monopoly.com into the browser took me to the Hasbro homepage (http://www.hasbro.com/). Did you know that? Did Marketing know that? Did Web Development/Tech tell Marketing that the redirect wasn’t done before they ran the commercial? Questions to ask yourself and your cohort because ,you tell me, where on the Hasbro homepage would ANYONE find find ANY information on Monopoly DEAL. You wouldn’t, the homepage has the top products (which makes complete sense). The point that I’m trying to get across here is that the consumer (for at least a time) was being forwarded to the wrong page and no one noticed it. How many potential sales, leads and cross selling opportunities do you think might have been missed Hasbro?

Give me solutions not excuses

With the exception of the last sentence, the second paragraph just annoyed me. Let me tell you why Hasbro – it sounds like a bunch of excuses. It’s littered with a bunch of “if you WOULD have done this” kind of things, which I SHOULDN’T have to do! If a commercial SPECIFICALLY tells me to go to monopoly.com for more information then when I get to monopoly.com I expect “more information”. If the commercial would have told me to go to monopoly.com and go on an online scavenger hunt then I would have not even bothered. As a consumer I don’t care if Marketing didn’t know that monopoly.com was redirecting to the wrong page – I was sent to what I THOUGHT was the right landing page (Hasbro.com) and it was a horrible mistake/decision. So just admit the mistake and be on with it, don’t give me excuses.

Hopefully this was a learning experience, for you Hasbro and your human form “Kriss” from Hasbro Consumer Affairs. I mean that in the most sincere way, even though you didn’t offer me any free stuff given that my copy of Cranium has seen better days, my copy of Clue is none existent (and missing a Homer), I’m getting way Smarter than a 5th Grader and my Monopoly still has no DEAL!

I’m keeping my eyes on you Hasbro *squint*