One of the best times to check how serious a company is, is at its launch. Imagine Digicel at its launch, think back to the launch of the iPhone, or even the launch of a local mom and pop store or small business that you know. One thing everybody has in common, is the desire to put on a good show, impress their customers, and grow their business – from day 1.
Blast is doing just that. So far they have been impressive in their strategy (and I am not even close to them or their team to see that), they have been responsive, they have been executing (despite a few glitches), and the response from the customers…. wow! Let’s just say I’m happy their first deal was fully taken up within the time, or else that would have definitely not have been a good sign.
Impressive Launch, But First Deal Behind Schedule
Taking some of the right steps so far, with their media promo in the local papers and in social media, Blast has been gaining traction with their impressive marketing and campaigning. However, we don’t know if it was the impressive and possibly tiring launch that was held at Usain Bolt’s Tracks and Records, but Blast’s first deal was a few hours behind, what was the anticipated 12am launch.
I realized, as I remembered reading in the Jamaica Observer on Wednesday that ‘Blast officially launches today, and the site becomes live at midnight.’ But not seeing that, I figured it could have been a mistake or something else, so when I checked the website at 12am and realized that the countdown was still saying 22hours, I knew something was off, and that wouldn’t make it 12pm Thursday either.
I wondered if I got the time correct, but seeing Gordon Swaby’s tweet just confirmed that in fact I did have the correct time. They eventually confirmed by twitter that they were behind and they would launch soon.
@gordonswaby @blastpass @mcclureshannon will soon be up
— Alex Morrissey (@alexmorrissey) April 18, 2013
I responded and they apologized as well for keeping me up 🙂 .
@moneymax101 Sorry for keeping you up last night! Not sure if you noticed but we’re up and running now, check it out blastja.com
— Blast (@BlastPass) April 18, 2013
Successful First Deal
Eventually the deal went up and by 8am Thursday April 18 they tweeted that the deal was live. By 10am when I checked I saw that the required numbers for them to hit the minimum was decreasing, a good sign of a quick take up of the offer and of interest. Compared to what was offered as the first deal on a IrieSocial, I realized there was much more thought and strategy behind this.
Eventually (I think by the end of the day), the deal was fully sold out and had hit the cap of 100 maximum.
Bring on The Deals!
Now that we’ve seen it, we want more! I didn’t try this first deal, but one of my friends promised to do so; so I will find out about the process and service at the restaurant. However the thing is that with things like this, one good deal and one big launch wont satisfy! We want more.
When is the next deal going live? How often will the deals be posted?
Now that the first deal has been sold out, we don’t want to keep staring at that sold out screen or checking our inboxes ad infinitum (up to Sunday a new deal hasn’t been launched). Best case, we’d want to see a new deal go up when one has expired; but if not let’s know when, probably you could say ‘New deal coming in x time’.