Just tried using R-Connect( a wireless internet card that can be plugged into a laptop and can be used in over 115 towns in India ) from Reliance Mobile, a leading mobilephone services company in India.
The packaging was brilliant. Lovely images of a man sitting and surfing the net on the beach etc. I opened the pack and looked at the 'how-to-use' booklet. It was completely unfriendly as it did not have any welcome message from Reliance. Set-up the demo CD and dialled-in for logging-on to the net. I encountered some starting problems on the user-id and password. I searched for the customer service number in the pack and it was not there!!!! No sign of any number where I could ask for help to get started!! I was stuck trying to locate their customer service number. With great difficulty, I called their call centre and screamed. The tele-executive was quite cool. She said "Sir, user-id and password are the same. Did'nt you know??( How the hell would I know??). And she thanked me for calling Reliance Mobile!!!".
Good design, Great product, Brilliant advertising can't take your product far, if other things in the marketing process are not right.
Marketing teams have to start thinking across the 'design chain' - product design to process design.