To promote the January 13 return of hit show "Girls," HBO tried to appeal to, well, girls, by offering free blowouts (including the tip!) to fans January 11th, 12th and 13th at every Drybar blowout salon location in the U.S. between 6 and 7pm.
Drybar currently has 25 locations in six states and normally charges $40 to blow women's hair straight, smooth, curly, big or beachy.
"At roughly 12 chairs per location, that’s 300 appointments for an estimated tab of $12,000 for the HBO promotions," as noted by Forbes.
But apparently the promotion was too much for the blow bar to bear, as the inundation of people trying to book appointments crashed the site and angered regular customers.
Drybar founder Ali Webb emailed out an apology Thursday to potential customers:
Ladies,
I know a lot of people have been unable to book appointments both online and via the phones.
Unfortunately, despite staffing up our phone receptionists for this promotion, we dramatically underestimated the response here and are terribly sorry for any inconvenience. I have read all the frustrated emails and truly feel awful.
Please know we are doing everything we can to rectify the situation as quickly as possible. And will do a better job of planning next time, I promise.
Sincerely,
Alli Webb
Webb’s cofounder and CEO (and brother) Michael Landau also addressed the promotional problems on Thursday, telling Forbes, “When HBO approached us with this idea, we thought it was a no-brainer because we love 'Girls' and loved the idea of giving our clients free blowouts,” he said, while acknowledging the company “dramatically underestimated how strong the response would be.”
In case you're still wondering, all of the appointments are booked.
But it looks like now you can try getting into a SoulCycle class instead (HBO really knows the show's demo), as we just received this in our inbox:
Something tells us HBO's next promotional partnership for "Girls" will be with a juice bar ...
SEE ALSO: The 'Girls' season 2 trailer was just released and everything is different >
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