What can FREE do for you?

In marketing, few words are more powerful than FREE and NEW.

As consumers, of course, we love to hear both. But marketers should be careful not to confuse what consumers want a brand to do from what consumers want in a brand.

Those might sound similar, but in fact they are two very different things.

Giving your brand away poses a serious threat to its health. Alternatively, it can present an opportunity. Giving product away for FREE can either cheapen the brand or remove the barrier for trial, thereby exposing new people to the product who may not otherwise have tried it. Following this logic, FREE can help win new customers as well as help lose customers who lose respect in the process.

Case in point for Bud. That's right, Budweiser beer. If you are like most of the US population, you've tried a Bud at some point in your life. In fact, you've probably had Bud several times. Here are a short list of times and places you may have had the pleasure of drinking a Bud:

* You went to college
* You went to high school
* You have been to a low budget office holiday party
* You have been to a keg party, referred to as "keg party"
* You like to drink cheap beer

It seems Budweiser sales have slipped and people are less interested in drinking Bud today than they once were. That's an awful problem to have and I agree it needs a solution, but giving Bud away for free as an attempt to solve it?

That's just an unbelievably lame idea. By lame I mean 'lacking creativity' as well as 'highly ineffective'.

The only way I support giving product away for FREE is if the people likely to engage in the FREE sampling haven't tried the product before and giving it to them for FREE makes it more likely they will try it than not giving it to them for FREE. None of these things are true for Bud.

What makes this dreadfully worse is that Bud plans to hand out the free samples in "trendy bars and eateries" to appeal to the "under 30 crowd that has ignored the brand, but are big beer consumers".

Dear Budweiser, please get a real strategy.

Where did Bud get the brilliant idea that talking to yuppy trendoids was the right approach? This crew may gladly take the free sample, but as soon as its not free anymore, you can bet they'll go back to ordering their Stella or Palm or whatever else.

If you insist on free, what about targeting the low hanging fruit? The Busch drinkers, Pabst drinkers, Coors drinkers, Miller drinkers. Hit the construction sites, stand outside the Irish pubs, hang out at college bars that surround campuses. Give these folks a free taste, show them a good time and maybe they'll forgo the Natty Light in favor of Bud for their next kegger.

In case this needs summary....it's OFF STRATEGY.