User blog:JakePT/The Mass Effect 3 Lucky Dip!

Or: How to Frustrate and Annoy Your Customers 101 Step 1

Make a limited stock item available for pre-order.

Step 2

Wait 6 months, to you know, chill.

Step 3

After those 6 months are up (relaxed?), make deals with retailers for exclusive bonuses to come with the item.

Just tell your customers that you're 'working on' the possibility of retailer-exclusive preorder bonuses that will come with the item.

Make sure to warn your customers of very low levels of stock, and tell them to hurry up and order.

Step 4

Take an item, preferably one you'd already designed and planned to include – even better if it was designed over 6 months ago, and you even made a replica of it that you took to conventions – and sell it to the highest bidder. They get to offer it as an exclusive bonus.

Make sure that the retailer that gets it is different from the one that got it last time. Make sure you're inconsistent between regions. It will help with our goals later.

Step 5

A mere one week later, accidentally announce retail bonuses (with spelling errors!). Make sure not to tell people which retailers will be carrying what. Let them figure it out on their own.

Step 6

Wait a week or two, tell some people who will be carrying it in their country, but completely ignore others. Also, make sure to reiterate how low the stocks are.

Step 7

Once everyone has pre-ordered announce who will be carrying what. They will probably have already chosen a retailer without that knowledge because of fears of low stock. Don't worry, we're not interested in that, we're hear to frustrate and annoy remember?

Congratulations! Now you have the knowledge on how to deploy an utterly pointless marketing strategy that will frustrate, confuse, annoy and alienate your customers. Good luck!

Credits: David Silverman Director of Marketing at BioWare ([@dsilvermanea) & Patrick Buechner VP of Marketing at BioWare (@EAGamer).