Books
Free is Freedom
I was reading Chris Anderson’s Free: The Future of a Radical Price. It presents several good case study on pricing and a good academic look at the price “free”. The premise of the book rested in that “free” is generally not really free. There are multiple economic principles in play, but ultimately, someone is paying for it.
Today’s technology does allow us to get very close to free. The book provides numerous examples of how we proximate free, how we sample extensively for free, etc. However, even so, a business is only profitable when it charges someone for cash. For each service / product that business offers for free, it’s charging someone else for something that particular service / product ultimately powers. For example, Google search is free. The data the searches collect and sold to advertisers is not.
However, aside from the economic principle of the book, Anderson discussed the concept of the free. In fact, he briefly discussed the word “Free”. In English, “free” is a word that contains multiple meanings. Not so in other languages. What does the word “free” mean in English? Merriam Webster online dictionary listed 15 definition. The two most interesting ones are free as in not costing any money and free as in not held as a slave or prisoner. 
Free and Freedom is a powerful association that is worth exploring more.
Marketer has long played with the idea of free. Free after rebate. Free shipping and return. Both of these “free” were meant to relieve you of your feeling of obligation. It’s free, just fill out a form. It’s free to return if you don’t like it. There is a sense of freedom that’s associated with the idea of free sampling.
Then, swing the pendulum further beyond free is money back. Of course, the money back is always built into the pricing structure. However, the sense of being pay to do something gives you permission to do what you otherwise may not. Credit cards have played this game. We’ll pay you back $1 for every $10 you spend. You feel free to spend.
Such association of free and freedom is one worth further pondering. This is a gold mine for a multitude of creative expression of pricing promotions, etc.
While Freedom isn’t Free, Free is Freedom.
Photo credit: Book image via LongTail.com. Credit card image via ChaseFreedomNow.com
Related articles
- Free. How today’s smartest businesses profit by giving something for nothing. Chris Anderson. (regnordman.com)
- Editor-in-Chief of Wired Magazine Promotes Freemium Business Model on Wix Website (pr.com)
Marketing Globe: Difference in Culture
The world has gotten flat. You launch a product in the US. Put up a website. And a Arab customer may be emailing you about it. So, as marketers, would we want to build global marketing campaigns? After all, we want to be consistent around the world. We want our consumers to know our brand, our quality, our standards no matter where they are. We want them to trust us around the world. So, we want one global marketing strategy.
Hold on a second.
The world may have gotten flat, but I’d argue that the world of marketing and branding is still very much a globe. And a one-size-fits-all approach may be ill-advised.
Let’s first look at how we market products. There are two camps of marketing. One being functional, and the other one being emotional. Most successful marketing campaigns need to blend the two and lean toward emotional. After all, as anyone who have ever fell in love can attests, the brain may suggest to the heart how to feel, but the heart can definitively overrule the brain on what to do.
Clotaire Rapaille is a renounced anthologist and marketing expert. His book The Culture Code: An Ingenious Way To Understand Why People Around The World Live and Buy As They Do decoded some of our basic concepts of lives into what it really means for us on a fundamental emotional level.
It’s January, so let’s use healthy and wellness as our example. In fact, let’s use being fat specifically as our example.
Outside of having a medical condition, being fat in America is a choice. We made this choice as a result of something. It’s not simply a result of not exercising and eating poorly. We make the choice of not exercising and eating poorly. Then, the question becomes why did we make that choice? Rapaille decoded Fat as “Checking Out”. Through his research, he discovered that people “let themselves go” after they check out of their own lives. Divorce or lack of professional success can do this. Losing ones’ identity can do this. The latter is a fundamental challenges for moms. Moms lose themselves in the daily grind of raising children, and for some, they give up on their own success, their own lives, and they check out. As they stop caring about themselves, they start to get fat.
In the Arab nations though, they view fat completely differently. They view fat as a symbol of success. A skinny wife suggests that her husband is not making enough to bring home the bacon. Therefore, fat wives are a symbol of the men’s wealth, and they welcome obesity. (Of course, it’d also be foolish for us to think that this trend would never change. Every culture evolves. Even in America, how thin are the models on magazine covers changes from year to year as our opinion on being thin and being healthy changes.)
So, would you market health and wellness the same in these two cultures? And we don’t have to talk about a weight loss campaign. But simply, let’s talk about fruit cup. In America, you may want to market it as a health food, and as something you do for yourself. In Arab, you may want to market it as a sign of wealth if you can afford a commercially prepared fruit cup.
Our cultures define us. As Marketers, it’d be foolish to approach the global world in a one-size-fits-all manner. You must take your great idea, and adapt it to the local flavor. There is no such thing as a global marketing campaign.
Editor’s Note: This is the first post on Marketing Globe Series
Photo credit: Nuno Santos
New Year. New You. Be Fascinating!
2010 is about to come to an end, and it’s a good time to take a moment to examine oneself and to set goals for the new year ahead. With that in mind, let’s talk about Sally Hogshead’s latest book Fascinate: Your 7 Triggers to Persuasion and Captivation.
This book has been out for a few months now, and if you haven’t picked it up. Do so now. This book is about Sally’s research into the seven triggers that have fascinated us. As marketers, we have taken full advantage of these triggers. For example, we all know sex sells. Well, lust is one of the seven triggers. The others are power, trust, mystique, vice, and alarm. I think as we think through the seven triggers, we can immediately concur up different brand messages. Volvo uses trust. Godiva uses lust. Fedex uses alarm. Apple Computers uses several triggers, most notably prestige and power. Triggers help companies sell products off shelves, persuade shareholders to invest, and convince key employees to stay.
Of course, brand messages don’t just apply to goods or companies. Brand messages apply to people as well. Every day, intentionally or not, you’re using fascination triggers to persuade people at work and home. Whether you’re pitching a new client, or inviting a friend to lunch, or lulling a cranky toddler to sleep, you’re using triggers to elicit a certain response. Sally has designed an online test to help you find out your own fascinate triggers! So, check out her website and find out your own brand personality. Use this information to design the new you in 2011!
Sneak Peak: From the aggregate test results, the most commonly employed trigger is Lust. Apparently, many do buy into the sex sells message. But Lust isn’t just about sex, and there are many far more subtle ways to leverage lust into your brand message positively. Here is Sally’s video with more about Lust:
Happy New Year!
Jeannie Chan is a Brand Manager for a Fortune 500 consumer goods company. She considers herself a marketer, a traveler, and a foodie. Jeanne lives in NYC. 
