I finished reading Chris Anderson’s Free on Scribd for free. I thought his book was good and I am now more convinced than ever that a lot of things are going to continue becoming free. Even before I read Free I have supported the idea that certain things that we used to pay for should now be free. In fact, free might be the only price the market will bear.

I have no intention of reviewing the book. I thought it was good. That’s all.

I do want to talk about my thoughts of the price of $0. There is probably no greater incentive in all of marketing than free. How do you beat free? I guess you could pay people to take your products but, that seems highly unsustainable and perhaps stupid.

My perspective on free is one based on economics and not trends or fads or what seems popular. A price is only as good as what the market is willing to pay. I can try to sell a house for $1 million dollars but, if there are no buyers willing to pay, I will never see the $1 million dollars.

I could sit on it and wait and hope for someone to buy my house for the price I set. There are costs associated with waiting. At what point does it become counter-productive for me to continue waiting? Certainly, if I go bankrupt trying to service the payments, bills, or taxes on the house, I should have probably lowered the price.

Now, if I ran a business with a product that less and less people are willing to pay for, when should I stop trying to fight the forces of economics and find a new business model? I could try and hang on to the past and blame it on “thieves” or “pirates” stealing my product and eventually go out of business. The reality is that not enough people feel your product is worth the price you want to sell it at.

The market likes your product and will be more than happy to use it if it was at a price they feel it is worth–that price happens to be $0.

No one can run a business solely on giving things away. Businesses need to make money. The question is how do you make money if the market value of your product is $0?

The catch with all this is that no one has a concrete answer and it varies by industry and product. I work in the video game industry and it is different than the music industry or the movie industry. We are all considered entertainment but, what works for music might not work for games.

I feel it is just a matter of time before people feel that the market value of games should be $0. Right now, people still pay for big titles and games on mobile devices. When is that going to stop? There is a whole market of online games that are completely free and monetizing these games have become more and more difficult for smaller companies.

The one law of business that people tend to forget is that the consumer is the one in control. This law gets distorted with government intervention but, the main idea is still the same. Businesses exist to serve the customers. We cannot demand customers to do what we want, they are our masters. Those who don’t serve the market disappear unless a rich uncle keeps them around.

Not to long ago AT&T was trending on Twitter due to people complaining about the upgrade prices for the iPhone 3G S. I didn’t think it was so terrible. You knowingly went into a contract with AT&T when you got your other phone so this is no surprise. The low prices for the iPhone can only be achieved by AT&T subsidizing the costs and recouping it in the contract. So as far as I could tell, all is fair.

Nonetheless, the people didn’t like this and made their voice heard on Twitter. I followed the trend for a little bit that day and found that AT&T was responding to the uproar. I thought AT&T was doing a pretty good job explaining to people the pricing structure and the facts about early upgrades.

@ATTNews couldn’t make any changes to prices so they did their best job to provide information straight from the horses mouth. They also made sure to note that they were listening to what the people were saying.

Now, a few days later, AT&T informs us that they are going to offer iPhone 3G owners who have a contract expiring in July, August, or September the best upgrade price on June 18th. This is AT&T listening to its customers and responding to their concerns. I thought AT&T was doing a great job by just listening and providing clear information. Making the best upgrade price available to existing customers whose contract is almost about to end is something they didn’t need to do.

Good job AT&T! I will still have to wait until July to get my iPhone 3G S as I don’t have an iPhone 3G contract about to expire. I just assume I will able to avoid the hysteria by the time mid July rolls around.

I am an advocate of Cold-Eeze. I have been one for a long time without knowing it. On a recurring basis, some of my friends on Facebook update their statuses about being sick. I tend to assume it is a cold so I always comment and recommend Cold-Eeze. Whenever someone gets sick, I recommend them to get Cold-Eeze. If I am sick at the same time, I will share some of mine–I’m nice!

The question a marketer would ask is: how did Cold-Eeze sell me on their product? That’s the kind of thing we like to know. I did some brief research into the marketing efforts of Cold-Eeze and the financial statements of the Quigley Company–they make Cold-Eeze–to find the answer.

Get Well Sooner Campaign

I have personally never seen an advertisement for Cold-Eeze. If I have, I certainly don’t remember it. The first time that I came into contact with Cold-Eeze was at Duane Reade and their packaging touted the product’s ability to cut the length of the common cold. Who doesn’t want a cold to go away faster?! It was also the most expensive product of its kind but, I bought it anyway–I actually didn’t buy it the first time around because of the price.

Cold-Eeze has employed some advertising–I was able to locate some ads and the Get Well Sooner campaign by Merkley + Partners. The campaign was estimated to cost between $6 – $10 million. Based on the Merkley + Partners website, their Cold-Eeze work consisted of print, TV, and interactive. However, the web is most amazed with the billboards that Merkley + Partners are noted to be responsible for but, they do not take claim to it on their website.

There are other forms of print ads and commercial storyboards that I came across but, they don’t really tie to any agency or campaign. It could possibly be work that was never used. The print and TV ads for Get Well Sooner can be viewed on agency’s website–their site is in flash so I can’t directly link to the specific sections.

The interactive part of the campaign consisted of a website and some banner ads. The website is still live on a different address. It isn’t a specific online campaign or landing page. I used the Internet Archive Wayback Machine and found out that the website was the official Cold-Eeze website for a couple of years. The current website is different.

Some of the features from the old website is on the new website and on Quigley’s ColdFight360 website. Reusing parts and pieces certainly makes sense!

Read more

I called TDBank today about a NFS Fee that they charged me. I used to only use WaMu as my bank but, I had decided to open another account at TDBank–then Commerce Bank–when I heard news of WaMu bank runs in the midwest. I was just trying to be safe.

Chase eventually bought WaMu for a fraction if its worth and I was not happy about it. I still bank with WaMu and will continue to do so as long as their service is still WaMu service. Chase service is notoriously crappy. So I use my two bank accounts for different things.

My TDBank account is really where I put money to pay monthly bills and recurring expenses so I never put more money than I need in that account–at least not until I have to have a minimum balance in there! So one of my checks bounced recently because I tried buying a MetroCard at a MetroCard Vending Machine.

The machine had trouble charging my debit card but, eventually did it correctly and dispensed me a card. Great. However, TDBank then held onto the money that did not result in me getting a MetroCard. My actual account balance did not look underfunded but, my available balance did–by the amount of the money held for failed transactions.

So when the check a wrote goes to be deposited, TDBank says my account does not have sufficient funds so I get slapped with a NSF Fee. Fine. Now, I did not know that the check will continue to try clearing after a failed first attempt. So I was hit with another NSF Fee.

I called TDBank asking what that was about and found out that the check is going to try a few times before it gives up. Interesting. After discovering that, I did not expect the customer service representative to do anything but, he removed the second NSF Fee! That was an unexpected surprise.

TDBank is still no WaMu but, I am pleased with my customer service experience. They do call themselves America’s Most Convenient Bank and in this case, they delivered on their message.

I heard a radio advertisement for General Motors in the car this weekend–I drive a Nissan. The ad talked about how the sound of a car and other things about the car speaks for the quality of it. I really thought this was an ad for BMW or a comparable car company.

Once I heard the radio-voice-guy say that he was talking about GM cars, I had to laugh. I have never driven a GM vehicle so I have no first-hand experience of their quality or lack thereof. However, the general consensus amongst the car fanatics that I know is that GM does not make good cars.

Generally, they say American cars are no good compared to the Japanese or Germans. The word of mouth that I am surrounded by is that GM does not produce good vehicles. In fact, the market would tell you the same thing as people are not buying GM. There is a reason why they are on the brink of bankruptcy.

This was an ad in the late afternoon on New York’s z100 radio station–a Top 40 hit music station. I can’t imagine this being very cheap considering its reach in the New York tri-state area. I’m also sure that I’m not the only one who found this message to contradict the reality of General Motors.

GM can’t manage a car company profitably and they can’t create good advertising. I wonder how much of their bailout money went to this ad.