I've worked as an event coordinator for almost ten years, and I've never seen a product rollout go quite as badly as this. I'm sure I could get away with naming the cell phone company, and even their new celebrity endorsed product, if the rollout hadn't been a complete and utter disaster. The only saving grace, and the one that gave the event high marks on exit interviews, was the Red & Green Brazilian Steakhouse here in Atlanta. If it wasn't for a killer venue, this would have been a career ending nightmare.

The plan was pretty simple. We just needed to arrange a venue for 500 people with an open bar, a great sound system, a private entrance and any kind of food that would impress the masses regardless of the product. It's a tall order when you consider they wanted real restaurant food that would be served hot, fresh and on-demand, but we've used this place before, so we weren't worried about that.

The venue fit the bill just fine, it wasn't the problem. They had the stage, the microphone, the sound system and a staff of servers and barkeeps sufficient to keep even this soon-to-restless crowd happier than we could have expected. Good parking helped, but the food and service was what really saved it for us.

The product, which of course I'd be insane to mention by name, wasn't nearly ready to go. First of all, the company had told everyone on the VIP list they'd get a demo model to take home, and they never showed up. Right there you've got about a hundred big shots a bit irritated. The demo models they did bring weren't charged and wouldn't connect to the network.

The entire demo phase of the afternoon was a bust, dead on arrival. They brought a powerpoint presentation and hooked it up to the house sound and house projector, and it looked great. Too bad nobody had one in their hands to check out personally.

Worse still, half the key guests left, and the surprise celebrity guest flown in specially for the presentation saw how badly the phones were working and decided not to take the stage. She isn't exactly famous for her tech prowess or congeniality, but nobody could blame her, and last I heard they weren't going to ask for the appearance fee back.

So even though my company picked the right place and delivered everything expected, we found ourselves with an antsy crowd of gen-x tech junkies, and nothing to keep them happy but a forever swirling mass of grilled Brazilian meats, an open bar, and an almost countless quantity of extremely attentive wait staffers.

If we had slipped up, even just a little bit, we'd have lost this contract for life and there's no pretending otherwise. Instead, we saved the event, and I say that without reservation. As guests were leaving, some of them were asked to complete a quick survey in exchange for a $20 Applebee's gift card. Even though the product rollout was a complete and total failure, and the celebrity guest bailed out, the event still got four and five stars across the board, and the write-in comments all said that even though we didn't give them a phone, we gave them excellent food, ample drink and enough merriment to make them forget there wasn't a phone in the first place.

This wasn't the goal of our client, I'm sure, but we can only do so much to make them look great, and for as huge of a crashing tidal wave of mistakes as they made, we kept their most important customers happy in ways they couldn't. At the end of the day, that makes us successful, and we couldn't have done it without investing in a restaurant like the Red and Green Brazilian Steakhouse. They give us discounts, but not for writing articles like these. This we do because they saved our backsides when nobody knew they needed saving.

If you can find a venue that big, with a real, full-menu offering, at anywhere close to the price, I challenge you to find the catch, because these guys rock it like nobody's business, and we know the business of being in business. Thanks to them, we've still got our biggest customer, and they've still got us.

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