"Either way, by far the biggest mistake we made during SMB's development was killing ourselves to get into a promotion we would gain basically nothing from."
After suffering through something similar, I will never work for a marketing deadline again. Deadlines are useful, but I have yet to see a marketing deadline live up to the promise.
I'd be curious to get the opinion of others on whether or not this was a mistake given the information they had at the time.
It's pretty useless to say "our biggest mistake was x because it turned out to be a huge failure". I'm not interested in hearing someone say "my biggest mistake was eating vegetables every day because I ended up choking on a piece of broccoli".
After suffering through something similar, I will never work for a marketing deadline again. Deadlines are useful, but I have yet to see a marketing deadline live up to the promise.