Continuing our discussion of Chris Anderson’s study of free stuff…
“Free” might mean “zero dollars,” but let’s not forget that their are other labor and service costs associated with free stuff. Really savvy marketers resolve this dilemma by using the free services to create something of value by harnessing collective efforts; in other words, we’ll provide the service for free, and in exchange, we”ll let you do the work.
Anderson refers to this category of free services as “labor exchange.” Ever wonder how Google can afford to offer its GOOG-411 service for free? In essence, those who use the service are doing Google’s R&D work by providing massive amounts of (free) voice data, which Google will eventually use to dominate the inevitable market for voice-driven search engines on mobile phones. (Aww, did you think they were paying for it with “don’t be evil” karma bucks?)
Speaking of karma, how about using free labor to go green? A nightclub in the UK is making headlines for its energy generating dancefloor, which generates up to 60% of the building’s power from the gyrations of the clubbers inside, while offering free admission to any attendees who arrive by bike, foot, or public transit. Letting people dance away your electric bills? Pretty smart.
And if you wanna trump that, you could be like the Purple Pedals project from Yahoo!, which combines free stuff and going green and OOC technologies and brand building… whoa, my head is spinning. Purple Pedals provided free bikes to 20 people around the globe, but these weren’t just any bikes. Each cycle’s loaded up with GPS tracking devices and a solar-powered digital camera, enabling the bike to automatically upload data at 60 second intervals to a Yahoo map. Guests who check out the site are encouraged to suggest routes, future riders, and where the project goes from here. To summarize: for the price of a few bikes, some solar panels, and some digital cameras, Yahoo! infused a spirit of innovation and creativity into their brand, and generated a ton of goodwill from pushing green technologies, while the (literal) legwork was provided for free by the fans of the project. (Thanks to Dana Dzekian for the tip on this project!)
So yeah, perhaps there’s something to this “free stuff” idea after all. More to come tomorrow…
