Chris Anderson (editor-in-chief at Wired magazine) coined the phrase 'The Long Tail' in 2004. The subsequent book of the same name undoubtedly helped businesses to rethink the way they look at marketing niche products.In short Chris Anderson wrote a book that made a lot of people including me stop and really think about how we advised clients develop their online product catalogues.
Chris' latest project is simply called 'Free' which he intends to develop as his next book and he will, of course, give away for free.
Whilst it is normally a no-no for an author to promote the topic of their next book before it has been written Chris believes that by giving away his intellectual property and sharing the beginning of an idea the community will contribute and even help to refine your idea. More information can be read on the long-tail 'The Rise of Freecomomics'
The premise of freeconomics as I see it is that giving things away for free might give you your best shot at gaining a competitive advantage. As a consumer this of course sounds great but how can it work for businesses?
Well for a start I think we all expect something for nothing. This is not because we, as consumers have suddenly stopped wanted to consume goods or services by handing over our hard earned cash as much as we have all become used to be given things for free.
In the UK the artist now known once again as Prince gave away his latest album as a free with the Mail on Sunday newspaper. This resulted in more people owning and sharing his album and coincided with a UK tour which sold out in a matter of hours.
Radiohead allowed fans to download their last album for free. In doing so the product (album) was used to market the bands performances and merchandise. By getting the album distributed as widely as possible by giving away a download (which would cost them peanuts) was a very smart way to increase their fan base and a surefire way to fill concerts.
In other words they are changing their business model to a two-step sale. Low cost airlines are another perfect example; Ryanair gives away millions of plane tickets and today flies more passengers than most flag carriers. Whilst they lose money on the tickets they have found all sorts of innovative ways to tempt passengers to spend their money from the speedy boarding, to charing for the in flight coffee and selling scratch cards.
The internet will of course be credited with the birth of the freeconomics after all Google gave away its only services for free and built one of the largest organizations on the planet in less than 10 years. Has Google changed its business model. No. Sure it has added PPC but today Google is developing all sorts of software applications that they are set to give away.
Facebook and MySpace allow you to set up a free profile, upload your photos free, find your friends for free, upload videos, and play games with your friends for free. And the Open Source movement has given us all sorts of free software including the operating system Linux.
Some two weeks before I started reading about freeconomics I had the pleasure of being commissioned by Jean Patrique (a UK based professional cookware direct supplier) to develop a website to give away some of their leading products free (www.jeanpatriqueoffers.co.uk).
Jean Patrique had already experimented with this promotion via press advertising with some success and remain convinced that by giving away some of their products users will be suitably impressed by the quality of the product that they will turn into loyal customers.
The resulting website www.jeanpatriqueoffers.co.uk goes live tomorrow (10th March 2008) offering both a 5-piece knife set (worth over £125) and a professional 3-piece oriental knives (worth over £119) completely free.
Please make sure you check back here for the results.
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