Dear Mr. Box,

I am very sorry you got hit with all that traffic. But it's inevitable when you spend $3 million to air a cliffhanger Superbowl commercial in which you are hit by a bus and then send me - along with 90 million television witnesses - to HangInThereJack.com to track your recovery, that your site is going to be hit with many, many bus loads of traffic.

I assume this was to launch a clever viral marketing campaign?

I couldn't tell at first. The site crashed immediately after the ad aired:

Bummer. I liked the ad.

But I wasn't the only one who was confused or tweeted about the downtime. I hate to say this, but your web marketing team fumbled. Big time.

How big?

Google Trends shows how much potential you'd generated instantly during the 3rd quarter of the biggest television marketing event of the year:

Today your company's press release noted the crash in formally announcing the campaign:

Within minutes of the ad airing, a special website created to provide updates and news on Jack's condition - www.hangintherejack.com - crashed for a few minutes when thousands and thousands of people flooded the website.

As a web developer, I know all too well the pain of a crashed website from massive, short term, unexpected traffic. But I also have experienced firsthand the planning necessary to handle massive, short term, anticipated traffic. My team kept the Ron Paul servers up and running during his record breaking moneybombs. It takes smart thinking and clear planning.

But it wouldn't cost another $3 million dollars.

In fact, building a Superbowl-ad-blitz-crash-proof-site would cost less than it did to produce and shoot the 30 second spot.

I'd forgive your campaign if it hadn't been trying to achieve much other than raise brand awareness and sell more burgers. But as I tracked the changes to your site, I noticed how all of your clever viral marketing tools were missing last night but available today:

You'd wanted us to send you messages, share our email address, sign up for text messages and post Youtube videos. I'd wanted to give you that information, too, and insert my experience into the narrative that was emerging. But your poor servers couldn't handle the load, and my guess is your web team disabled all those database intensive tasks until the craziness died down.

Which is really sad. First, you get hit by a bus. Then, you miss the key opportunity to receive valuable info from tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of visitors. After investing $3 million to engage the lives of 90 million consumers for 30 seconds, the least you can do is invest another 5% of your budget on the technology and the expertise to support a massive influx of traffic and participation.

Buses shouldn't crash into you. Websites shouldn't crash, either. Even during the Superbowl.

Terra Eclipse loves you, Jack. We don't want your sites to fumble next time. Here are a few ways we could help ensure you servers make it through game day without a tackle, fumble, or false start:

• Rackspace
• Content delivery network
• Dynamic DNS
• Loadbalancing
• Database replication

When you're out of the hospital, we can talk about the rest.

Toward a speedy recovery,

Wyatt Hull
Creative Director
Terra Eclipse