Free Love – The Art of Buttering Bread

Recently, I had the pleasure of helping out at the Plug Awards. The production team – c/o World’s Fair & Fringe Benefits – had it all together at Webster Hall, while I was late getting there. So I got stuck (or rather, with hindsight, I should say, at the time, I thought I got stuck) with two simple tasks – (1) Get the rock stars to sign promotional giveaways for the fans, and (2) Make sure the industry people in the All Access V.I.P. (not merely the V.I.P. – that’s a different, lower priority section) and backstage get their gift bags…

Gift bags. Living online, enraptured with our brave new world, Web 3.0 (what, you still rocking version 2.0? get hip already!), it’s easy to forget our physical needs (what, me hungry?) and motivations… You gotta love getting stuff for free that you almost wanted so much you might have bought it. What happenned to all the iPod giveaways?

At Plug, there were a handful of CDs, a full week’s worth of magazine reading materials, stickers, buttons, and other miscellany in each 4″ by 13″ fully full gift bag. I, unfortunately or not, had no role in the laborious preparation of the gift bags, not to mention the solicitation of sponsorships. Yet, handing out those gift bags, I was pleasantly shocked by the reaction I received. Taste-makers turned into taste-testers, it didn’t matter how many hundreds of influential people considered them gatekeepers, they were silly putty in my hands.

“Could I please get one for my brother? He’s retarded. Su, you’re awesome!”

“Nobody steal these gift bags under the coat rack! They’re for Holy F&*k! Su, you’re awesome!”

“Yay! Gift bags! Su, you’re awesome! Want the rest of my beer?”

These people, next year, around this time, will be Plug’s evangelists. They will spout quandaries on the awesomeness of Plug, although they probably might not remember the gift bags, because truth be told, even for an indie event, the gift bag was pretty so-so. There was nothing in it that deserves OMFG! Not to me. But other than the people there who did want the stuff in that bag (enough to probably pay for it otherwise, or else to keep attempting to get it for free), which is probably a good number, for everyone else, the underserved part of the target, a very simple schema of cognitive associations is formed… Plug: Gifts: Awesome! These associations will be a catalyst when we call on them in the future for other marketing messages. It’s not rocket science.

Just a few days later, I’m working The Czars @ Delancey, giving away free Bella Union (Czars’ label, owned & operated by Simon Raymonde, ex-Cocteau Twins) samplers to celebrate the first night of the residency, and fortunately, I guess someone was doing their job well, around 80% of everyone who got the sampler was noticeably excited about it. They didn’t expect it. They love The Czars anyway. Someone told someone told them about it and then they heard the mp3 and then maybe they read something about it on Flavorpill, or maybe not… Is Midlake on this CD?

While online music, and many other media & entertainment markets, are all facing difficulties establishing sustainable equilibrium price points and the associated revenues, here we are, continuing to practice a promotional technique as old as the first product ever promoted – try it, for free. In the midst of declining “record” sales, price wars, rampant piracy, raging P2P file-sharing, CD burners and so on, are we devaluing our product at all? Where do we draw the line between giving away a CD for free and hoping that the target buzzes it a bit, and threatening a geeky 15 year-old in Mobile, Alabama, with legal action if he doesn’t stop telling his friends about all the awesome music he likes?

I was at a panel last year at Baruch College’s liberally titled New York Music Industry Association on the “Moral and Legal Issues of Downloading Music”. Obviously, there’s a compelling argument that the creators of content, and their management/marketing teams, rightfully deserve to get paid. Take it a step further, and you could even say that illegal downloading is crippling American progressives. Yet, it’s clear that even with an assumedly intelligent and fair-minded market segment as indie fans, marketers may be self-sabotaging their efforts by training customers to prefer free product, or no product. There are a few different models emerging – new stuff for free & old stuff by subscription, new stuff for free & old stuff with advertising, new stuff with advertising & old stuff for free, etc. None of which seem to be making any particular sense to consumers. Perhaps we need a whole new platform, a higher plane, to resolve this old conundrum, with new dimensions, by a business model that makes sense, and money.