Under the Influence with Terry O'Reilly - Nooner Nookie: The Allure of Marketing Freebies

Episode Date: May 27, 2023

For over 100 years, “free” has been one of the most powerful words in the marketing world.And believe it or not, companies love freebies as much as their customers do.Because giving away free products generates a lot of goodwill. And goodwill generates free press.We’ll talk about a ketchup company who gave a man a free boat.A hotel who gave a couple 18 years of free stays because they had nookie in one of their rooms.And we’ll tell the story of how one company helped a teenager with huge feet – by giving him a pair of size 23 shoes.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hi, it's Terry O'Reilly. As you may know, we've been producing a lot of bonus episodes while under the influences on hiatus. They're called the Beatleology Interviews, where I talk to people who knew the Beatles, work with them, love them, and the authors who write about them. Well, the Beatleology Interviews have become a hit, so we are spinning it out to be a standalone podcast series. You've already heard conversations with people like actors Mark Hamill, Malcolm McDowell, and Beatles confidant Astrid Kershaw. But coming up, I talk to May Pang, who dated John Lennon in the mid-70s. I talk to double fantasy guitarist Earl Slick, Apple Records creative director John Kosh. I'll be talking to Jan Hayworth,

who designed the Sgt. Pepper album cover. Very cool. And I'll talk to singer Dion, who is one of only five people still alive who were on the Sgt. Pepper cover. And two of those people were Beatles. The stories they tell are amazing. So thank you for making this series such a success. And please, do me a favor, follow the Beatleology interviews on your podcast app. You don't even have to be a huge Beatles fan, you just have to love storytelling.

Subscribe now, and don't miss a single beat. This is an apostrophe podcast production. Your teeth look whiter than no nose. You're not you when you're hungry. You're a good half with all the teeth. You're under the influence with Terry O'Reilly. The word free has many implications. Someone once put an old refrigerator out on the side of the road with a sign that said free on it. It sat there for three days.

So a new sign was stuck on it that said $40. It was stolen overnight. Clearly, someone found it more valuable when it had a price tag on it. But most times, free is a magnet. In his book, Predictably Irrational, author Dan Ariely tells this story. He set up a table in a large public building and offered two kinds of chocolates, Lindt truffles and Hershey's Kisses. The sign on the table said,

one chocolate per customer. Lindt is a Swiss firm that has been blending fine cocos for over 160 years. Its chocolate truffles are extremely creamy and highly prized. Hershey, on the other hand, pumps out about 70 million kisses per day.

Ariely set the price of a Lindt truffle at 15 cents each and the kisses at 1 cent each. When customers compared both, they rationally compared the price and quality of each chocolate, and 73% chose Lindt. When Ariely added the word free to the situation, everything changed. He offered the Lindt truffles at 14 cents each and the kisses for free. In other words, he simply lowered the price of each chocolate by one cent. But what a difference the word free made. 69% of the customers chose the Hershey Kisses. So interesting.

Both chocolates were discounted by exactly the same amount of money, 1 cent. The relative price difference between the two was unchanged, and so was the expected pleasure from both. Therefore, standard economic theory would suggest the price reduction should not lead to any variation in decision making.

Yet, the notion of free kisses led to an overwhelming change of behavior. The experiment proved that free made a huge impact. The difference between

one cent and two cents is small. The difference between one cent and two cents is small. The difference between one cent and free is astronomical. Free gives us such an emotional charge, it overrules our rational thought. For over 100 years, free has been one of the most powerful words in the world of marketing. And companies love free as much as their customers do. At first glance, there appears to be no upside or profit when you charge nothing for something. But that's not always the case. Companies often choose to offer free

products in order to generate goodwill. That goodwill generates a lot of press, and press is free advertising. The Influence. At only 14 years of age, Eric Kilburn was already 6'10". And that presented a big problem. Or more specifically, two big problems. He had size 23 feet. And no shoe manufacturer in North America makes size 23 shoes. 22 was the absolute max. So Eric would squeeze his feet into size 22 sneakers to go to school.

The shoes weren't just uncomfortable, they continuously gave him blisters and ingrown toenails. It got so bad, he had to have two of his toenails permanently removed. Eric Kilburn resigned himself to a life of footwear agony. The average shoe size of men around the world is 10 1⁄2. Eric Kilburn's feet, on the other hand, were even bigger than Shaquille O'Neal's, who wore size 22. Eric's only semi-comfortable option was to wear Crocs,

which were big and loose enough to fit his big, wide feet. He would even wear them in the winter. The teenager hadn't owned winter boots for the last five years. When his family approached an orthopedic specialist to custom make size 23 shoes, they were told the price would be $1,500 per pair. The family just couldn't afford that. And the cost wasn't covered under medical insurance, even though Eric had suffered numerous foot issues and injuries as a result of wearing shoes that were either too small

or wrong for the sport he was playing. So his mom started a GoFundMe page to try and raise enough money. Meanwhile, the family started knocking on doors to appeal for help. When Nike was approached, the company said they couldn't help Eric unless he was a professional athlete. Adidas said the best it could do was size 22. That's when the story got under the nose of another sportswear company, Under Armour. Under Armour said $1,500 for a pair of shoes was ridiculous, regardless of the size. They said every kid should be able to play sports and not be in constant pain. So the athletic apparel

company stepped up and offered to make size 23 shoes for Eric. They flew out to Eric's hometown to take a 3D scan of his feet. It was the biggest pair the company had ever measured. Eric was also a football player, but had never played in proper footwear. So, Under Armour also offered to make him a pair of size 23 cleats. Under Armour said there was no shoe mold for that size. The company had to build the machinery and the tooling to make the massive shoes, a process that would take around eight weeks.

Then, an amazing thing happened. Word of Under Armour's offer ignited other offers. Puma offered to make Eric a pair of size 23 basketball shoes. Then the Cat Construction Company offered to make Eric a pair of boots. Then an Italian company called Mori Shoes offered to make Eric some snazzy dress shoes so he could go to school dances and attend his graduation when the time came. All free of charge. Eric couldn't believe it. His life was transformed. His mother was so overwhelmed with all the generosity,

she wanted to pay it forward. So she started a Facebook group called Big Shoe Network to connect big shoes with big feet. Eleven days after it launched, it had over 2,000 members. Clearly, big feet are not a small problem. One day, a Dominican man named Elvis Francois, who lived off the island of St. Martin, was doing repairs on his sailboat.

Suddenly, the water started to get rough, and the wind picked up. Before he knew it, the currents were sweeping him out to sea. The 47-year-old tried to steer his boat back to the harbor, but the roiling ocean was just too powerful. He tried to use his cell phone to get help, but there was no signal. He drifted out further and further. The waves crashed against his boat, the sky darkened,

the wind whipped. He didn't have the skills to navigate his way home. Elvis Francois didn't know it at the time, but he would be adrift for 24 days. Francois continuously bailed water to avoid sinking. He scrawled the word help on the side of the boat. He managed to collect some rainwater in a cloth to drink.

For sustenance, all Francois had to eat were some spices and a bottle of Heinz ketchup. When the spices ran out, he rationed the ketchup portions to three small meals a day for three weeks. On the 24th day, Francois spotted a plane. He used a small hand mirror and the sun's reflection to flag the plane down. The pilot radioed his location to authorities, who then contacted a nearby container ship. Elvis Francois was 120 nautical miles from land. The ship hauled him aboard and brought him to the port of Cartagena on Colombia's Caribbean coast. The Navy there performed a medical on him and, weight loss aside,

found him to be in surprisingly good health. When Francois was interviewed later, he said he had almost lost hope that he would ever be rescued. 24 days, no land, nobody to talk to, don't know what to do, don't know where you are. It was rough. Sometimes I lose hope. When Heinz heard of Francois' story and that he had survived on their ketchup, they tried to track him down.

The condiment company wanted to buy him a new boat equipped with full navigational equipment. But they had no luck finding him. So the company put out an SOS on its social media platforms, asking the public for help finding Francois. The hashtag was,

Find the Ketchup Boat Guy. The post read as follows, To whoever finds this message, we need your help tracking down an amazing man with an amazing story. You may remember Elvis Francois as the brave sailor who survived on nothing but ketchup and spices while adrift at sea for 24 days.

Well, Heinz wants to celebrate his safe return home and buy him a new boat, but we can't seem to find him. It was an incredible group effort across six continents that led to hundreds of articles and leads. The social media plea reached nearly 5 million users, and through all the various connections, it worked. Francois was eventually reached. And as promised, the company purchased

him a new boat with navigational equipment. Francois said he was stunned at the offer. He also said he had an idea. He was going to paint a Heinz ketchup bottle on the side of his new boat. Not long ago, the Hotel Zed in Kelowna, British Columbia, came up with an unusual Valentine's Day promotion. It offered what it called a four-hour nooner special, where a couple could rent a room from 10 a.m. until 2 p.m. for just $59 and get, well, cozy. The promotional tagline?

Savor your lunch hour like never before. Then the hotel added another spicy element. Any couple who had a baby exactly nine months after their nooner check-in would win free stays every Valentine's Day for the next 18 years. Nicole and Alexander Byszynski took them up on their Nooner special. The Byszynskis said they rarely ever had a chance to celebrate Valentine's Day because of challenging work schedules. Nine months later, they heard this. The Byszynskis had been trying to have a baby for the past two years without any luck.

The Nooner Special changed all that. Not only did the couple get free stays until the year 2038, the hotel also paid for a maternity photo shoot to celebrate the pregnancy. It certainly was a Valentine's Day to remember. Sometimes freebies come after nine months. Sometimes they come after nine years. When Tennessee couple Carl Z. Bibb and Caden Mills got engaged, they wanted to take photos to celebrate. They asked a longtime friend of theirs, who was a photographer, if she had any unique ideas for a photo shoot.

She said, yeah, there was something she always wanted to do. She wanted to take photos of the couple standing outside the local Olive Garden restaurant. While that may sound strange, the architecture of their local olive garden had an old-world stone exterior, wooden pergolas, and lots of lush green landscaping. Framed a certain way, it could look just like Italy. The couple were hesitant at first, but they trusted their friend and went for it. The resulting photos were stunning. If you didn't know any better, you would swear they were taken in the romantic Tuscan countryside.

The couple posted them on TikTok, saying, When you want Italy vibes for your engagement photos, but you live in Tennessee, you take your photos at Olive Garden. Almost immediately, the photos went viral. Soon, there were over 260,000 views.

The photos were flooded with comments from people who couldn't believe they weren't taken in Italy. Then, the media jumped on it. The couple was interviewed by countless news shows and TV programs. When they appeared on Good Morning America, the couple was asked about their honeymoon plans. They said they had been so wrapped up in planning their wedding,

they hadn't had any time to start thinking about a honeymoon yet. That's when Good Morning America surprised them with some news. Olive Garden was sending the couple to Italy for their honeymoon, all expenses paid. In an Instagram post, Olive Garden said, we can't wait to see you recreate these photos in Italy. The happy couple had never even been to Europe. They couldn't believe it. And Olive Garden couldn't believe the amount of goodwill it got from the press. Victor Shepard does a lot of driving.

His job required him to be on the road a lot, so he put about 200,000 kilometers, or 125,000 miles, on his odometer every year. He drove a 2007 Toyota Tundra. At the end of his ninth year driving the truck, he had clocked one million miles. Actually, the odometer said 999,999. Shepard waited for it to turn over,

but it didn't. So, he brought the truck into the dealership to have it inspected. But the mechanics found nothing wrong with the odometer. 999,999 was simply the final number it was capable of tracking. Over those million miles, Shepard had been diligent about maintenance. He had made 117 dealership visits to get regular oil changes, belt replacements, and regularly scheduled checkups. But that was it.

No special treatment or no major part replacements. When Shepard brought his Tundra in after the one million mile mark, Toyota made him an offer. They would give him a brand new Tundra free of charge if Shepard would give them his old Tundra. Remarkably, Shepard's truck still had its original engine, transmission, and paint job. Even the seats looked new.

As a matter of fact, the dealership said it looked like a pristine truck that had just passed the 100,000-mile mark, not the million-mile mark. And that's why Toyota was so anxious to get their hands on it. They wanted to tear it apart, from bumper to bumper, top to bottom, to figure out how the original components managed to achieve that kind of longevity. Victor Shepard was reluctant to part with his Tundra, which he nicknamed

The Beast. They had spent a lot of time together. But he finally agreed to let it go. Toyota held a party to celebrate, complete with a red carpet

and a live band, the press was invited, and Shepard was handed the keys to his new, free Toyota Tundra. But before he drove off in his new truck, Shepard was handed the keys to his new, free Toyota Tundra. But before he drove off in his new truck, Shepard asked to sit in his beast one last time. By his own admission, he was a little teary.

Then he got out, climbed into his new truck, and began the journey to the next million miles. A few weeks ago, we did a story on bazooka bubblegum. Well, a 70-year-old man named Darwin Day was cleaning out his house recently. In the back of a closet, he found a binder filled with a full set of Topps baseball cards from 1957. It brought back memories of collecting those cards with his brother, who had passed away not long ago. As he looked through the binder, he noticed one card said, win these swell prizes in the fourth bazooka baseball contest. Bazooka gum was owned by Topps. It was a cross promotion.

The free prizes included a chemistry set, a microscope, or a baseball glove. In order to win, you had to predict the scores of two upcoming baseball games that were going to be played on Friday, July 19, 1957. When Day looked closer at the fine print, he noticed the deadline was July 11, but no year was given. So, on a lark, he decided to send the entry in. 59 years late. The two 1957 games in question involved the Milwaukee Braves versus the New York Giants and the Baltimore Orioles against the Kansas City Athletics. He couldn't pull those scores from memory, so Day cheated a bit and simply looked them up. The Braves had won

3-1 and the Orioles 4-2. That was the easy part. The contest also stipulated the entry had to include five bazooka gum wrappers, but where was he going to find those? Darwin Day decided to send the entry in without the bazooka wrappers and hoped for the best. On the way to the post office, he spotted a store with a giant box of bazooka gum in the window. He couldn't believe his luck. When he went in to buy five pieces of gum,

the store told him he had to buy the whole bazooka box that contained 225 pieces of gum, the store told him he had to buy the whole bazooka box that contained 225 pieces of gum. They didn't come in individual packages. Except, Darwin Day didn't want 225 pieces of gum. As he stood in line at the checkout counter, there was a woman and her young daughter ahead of him. They were trying to pay for $20 worth of groceries with a $100 bill, which was too large for the corner store to accept. So Day said to the woman, I'll make you a deal. I'll pay for your groceries if you'll take all this gum off my hands. Her daughter's eyes lit up at the thought of it. So the woman agreed. They walked away with 220 pieces of gum.

Day got his five bazooka wrappers. He mailed in his entry and addressed it to Anthony Jacobs, general manager of the Topps Confectionery Company. That package arrived at Topps a few days later. The label said, Please deliver to Mr. Jacobs before July 11th, just as the contest stipulated.

Anthony Jacobs opened the package and found it contained an old contest entry form with two baseball scores filled in and an old baseball card for a player named Anthony Jacobs who used to play for the St. Louis Cardinals, which Darwin Day had included just for fun. Jacobs was stumped by the mystery package. He figured there were three possibilities.

One, it's someone who has lost touch with reality and doesn't know what year it is. Two, someone was pulling his leg. Or three, he wondered if he was in a bizarre Law and Order episode where someone was targeting him for a murder plot. Jacobs showed the package to his team, and they told him it was a Topps contest from the late 1950s. One evening, Darwin Day was home when his phone rang.

It was the Topps Company calling to tell him the company had verified his entry answers and he had won the contest. Day couldn't believe his ears. They asked him which free prize he preferred. Day was laughing so hard he could hardly answer. He chose the Louisville Slugger baseball glove. When the winning package arrived, it also included a couple of t-shirts,

some bazooka gum, and a pillow with the classic bazooka logo on one side and an old Bazooka Joe comic strip on the other. Day still couldn't believe the company had honored the contest after all those years. Somewhere, he said, his brother was smiling. In each of our stories today, a company chose to make someone happy by giving them a free product, and that act made that company happy because it led to a lot of free press. When the Hotel Z offered its Nooner Nookie special,

the Byszynski story was featured on CNN nine months later, and the Olive Garden got a lot of amore from the press. When Hines heard about a man surviving on nothing but ketchup for 24 days, giving Elvis Francois a new boat scored waves of headlines on ABC, CBS, and the Washington Post. Bazooka made a customer smile, even though he missed a contest deadline by 21,535 days and traded a free baseball glove for free coverage with NBC, the New York Times, and even Major League Baseball. When Toyota traded a new Tundra for an old one that clocked a million miles, it wasn't just an irresistible press story. Toyota wanted to tear the old truck apart to see what they could learn to make the next Tundra even better.

And when other shoe companies declined to help Eric Kilburn, Under Armour stepped up. They genuinely wanted to help the kid. Because that freebie wasn't easy. The company needed to create new machinery and tools to make it happen. The glowing press was just a nice byproduct. That's why free is such a strange and powerful potion. The difference between one cent and free can make us abandon all rational thought.

And the seemingly irrational decision to give away a product for free can make companies a lot of money when you're under the influence. I'm Terry O'Reilly. This episode was recorded in the Terrastream Mobile Recording Studio. Producer, Debbie O'Reilly. Sound Engineer, Jeff Devine. Research, Patrick James Aslan. Under the Influence theme by Ari Posner and Ian Lefevre.

Tunes provided by APM Music. Follow me on social at Terry O'Influence. This is Season 12. If you liked this episode, you might also enjoy the podcast we recorded in front of a live audience, Unforeseen Circumstances, How Companies Are Affected by Chance, Season 6, Episode 2. You'll find it in our archives. You can also find our podcasts on the new Apostrophe YouTube channel. And if you think there are too many ads

in a show about advertising, you can now listen to our podcasts ad-free on Amazon Music. See you next time. Fun fact! Victor Shepard's Toyota Tundra had driven the equivalent of 24 trips around the planet. Wow, that's out of this world. See what I'm doing there?