I know nothing about football. In fact, yesterday at lunch I was even asking a friend ignorant questions about how overtime works because I happened to see the end of the Seahawks/San Francisco game on Sunday.

That’s my disclaimer for what’s going to be today’s post, because it has to do with football but then again it doesn’t.

Apparently a referee committed the sin of being (gasp) human by…making a mistake. Now I know to the team and fans his call affected, it was a huge mistake, one this Seattle copywrtier wouldn't understand. But that’s not the point of this blog.

I happened to come across this sports blog because admittedly sometimes I just let the Internet sweep me away to wherever. It’s the closest I come to keeping up with pop culture. This post is about how this ref, Ed Hochuli, is so devastated by his mistake. But what got my attention and why I want to write about it is this: He’s responding to his hate mail.

Here’s one man who has been publicly lambasted for an error, and he’s man enough to admit to the error, admit publicly that he feels bad about it, and respond to hate email. Proving that he is in fact human...and a pretty good human at that. 

If only more companies could be this human. Here's an example of what I'm talking about (and this does tie back to marketing): 

I just ordered my third power cord for a Dell laptop I’ve had for less than a year and a half. My Dell printer just died, again after less than a year and a half. You know what I’d like? I’d like Dell, and other companies, to be human enough to not produce crap first off, and to admit it when they do. (I’m only singling out Dell because they are costing me so much money right now. Plenty of other companies are equally guilty of crappy product. Not according to most companies, of course, but just ask unhappy customers and you'll get an earful. )

Okay, so why am I bringing this up...besides that fact that it shouldn't be so hard for a company to a)make good stuff and b) own it when they don't? well, there are two lessons here: First, marketing isn’t just wooing prospects so sales can convert them to customers. Marketing is the whole enchilada. It’s before, during and after the sale. Second, there’s only so much marketing can do to make up for inferior products or service.

No NFL ref in his right mind would go out and call a lazy game of football, the way Dell is being lazy in their quality control. Ed Hochuli, bless his heart, is paying dearly for a human error. And trying to make up for it by responding to people angry with him.

Imagine a company that cared that much about their product in the first place, and smoothing things over with customers when the product doesn’t live up to expectations.  That's a company that people would clammer to do business with all the time. I know I would! 

(Thanks, Mave, for copyedit of the above!)