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A (Completely Different) History of Sampling: Free Stuff · Ridiculous History

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Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
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Speaker 1: the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so much
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Speaker 1: for tuning in. Let's give a shout out to our
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Speaker 1: super producer, mister Max Williams. Oh you know him, you
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Speaker 1: love him. My one and only co hosts, mister Noel Brown.
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Speaker 1: They called me, they call me Ben Noel. We ran
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Speaker 1: into uh we ran into an interesting situation with a
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Speaker 1: lovely two part episode on the history of music sampling
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Speaker 1: last week. And at the very beginning, man, we we
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Speaker 1: did the like a classic Ridiculous History joke, right fake out, Yeah,
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Speaker 1: the fake out, and we didn't one of us always
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Speaker 1: does one of those fake outs if we can. And uh,
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Speaker 1: I think we got to our pal mat dude, Oh yeah,
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Speaker 1: it'll it'll happen. We're pretty Uh, we kind of insist
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Speaker 1: upon ourselves. We push, uh And yeah, I think we
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Speaker 1: made some toothpick jokes, tiny cubes of cheese, et cetera.
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Speaker 1: And we even I mean we literally, Yeah, we had
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Speaker 1: a little sub conversation before we got into the real
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Speaker 1: deal about the history of sampling and music, about you know,
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Speaker 1: the different types of free samples that you get, Like,
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Speaker 1: say you know, you and I like to go to
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Speaker 1: a lot of Asian grocery stores out on Beuford Highway
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Speaker 1: here we live, and they'll have little tiny cups of
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Speaker 1: noodle soups or like you said, kimchi or whatever it
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Speaker 1: might be. And then you've got you know, your run
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Speaker 1: of the mill Kroger, like some new brand of whatever.
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Speaker 1: It might be thin rice, cracker, free mac and cheese, yeah.
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Speaker 2: Exactly, or balls perhaps, And sometimes it'll be you know,
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Speaker 2: someone actually grilling some tiny portions of meats which had
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Speaker 2: a little idea. It does feel a little extra, doesn't that.
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Speaker 2: Like then just getting you know, a cold piece of
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Speaker 2: cheese or something like that, but a.
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Speaker 3: Little George Foreman some kind of hot play.
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Speaker 2: It also feels like it has a little bit more
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Speaker 2: let's just call it, I don't know, grandiosity to it.
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Speaker 2: It's a little more of an event. And then certain
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Speaker 2: grocery stores get reputations for being the one to go
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Speaker 2: to for the best free samples, like our beloved Trader
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Speaker 2: Joe's Trader.
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Speaker 1: Joe's h Mart on a Saturday, which is considered a
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Speaker 1: Korean grocery stores where you go to get a lot
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Speaker 1: of cool, fresh ingredients. You might not find somewhere else,
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Speaker 1: and they do it big with the samples. College Age
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Speaker 1: Ben Bullen owes you h Mart Empire a huge thank you,
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Speaker 1: as well as Trader Joe's Good Calinel, because you helped
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Speaker 1: me not pay for lunch for many years. I'm still
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Speaker 1: a little embarrassed when I see it, because at H
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Speaker 1: Mart they're always going to have someone cooking this stuff too,
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Speaker 1: and I have to I stand there.
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Speaker 2: Well, like I said, it's sort of a mark of
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Speaker 2: a little bit more expertise than someone just holding out
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Speaker 2: a cup, and you got to give them props where
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Speaker 2: props are doing. Last little aside about our personal experience
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Speaker 2: of the free samples, I used to work at a
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Speaker 2: guitar shop in Augusta, Georgia, and there's this cute little
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Speaker 2: lady named Miss Tabor, and she would always send us
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Speaker 2: across the street for us young young fellows who worked there.
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Speaker 2: We were like, you know, in high school. To get
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Speaker 2: She would describe, go to fresh market, give me one
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Speaker 2: of those little cups of coffee.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, you know what I'm talking about.
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Speaker 2: At the fresh market, their whole thing was sampling all
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Speaker 2: of their different coffees and these tiny little mouth wash
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Speaker 2: cups and she wanted us to fetch her one in
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Speaker 2: our car, and I mean to transport one of those,
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Speaker 2: you know, like the cup holders. I hate to tell
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Speaker 2: you are not meant for these little cups of coffee.
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Speaker 2: So we'd be lucky if we and scald ourselves, you know,
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Speaker 2: on the journey back.
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Speaker 1: And so a few days after we do these jokes,
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Speaker 1: a few days after we have recorded our two part
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Speaker 1: episode on sampling shout out to our research associate Jeff Bartlett,
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Speaker 1: Max comes back and says, hey, guys, this, Uh did
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Speaker 1: you didn't out out and out say it got to you,
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Speaker 1: but you said, hey, guys, recently when we talked about sampling,
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Speaker 1: you kept joking that the episode was not about music
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Speaker 1: but free samples. So you know what, Max, beat me here,
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Speaker 1: here's your freaking episode on free samples.
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Speaker 3: Man. Nobody directly you do this, No one did.
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Speaker 2: I want to just say I finished editing and then
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Speaker 2: I immediately sat down.
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Speaker 3: And wrote this brief out. There was no period between, like,
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Speaker 3: I didn't do anything between. It went one to one
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Speaker 3: right there. Well, I love that.
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Speaker 2: And the last thing before we really dive into this topic,
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Speaker 2: which is is a lot deeper than you might think,
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Speaker 2: I just realized we never said one thing in the
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Speaker 2: history of sampling. In music episodes, we talked about the
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Speaker 2: fair Light sampler or the fair Light you know, music
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Speaker 2: computer that a lot of luminarias used in the eighties,
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Speaker 2: big old touchscreen thing with like a light pen they
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Speaker 2: called it. That is where the term sampling came from.
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Speaker 2: Was that company. Basically the creators of the Fairlight started
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Speaker 2: using the term sample as referring to the little units
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Speaker 2: of sales.
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Speaker 3: That's good.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I rewatched the Quest Love hip Hop stuff,
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Speaker 1: and we talked about cool Hirk. But really, if you
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Speaker 1: want the full story, to check out that drunk history.
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Speaker 3: It's just a it holds up. He's such a good storyteller. Okay.
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Speaker 1: Free samples as food, everybody knows the score. I think
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Speaker 1: these days they're considered one of the most reliable tactics
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Speaker 1: you can use to bolster sales of a product, especially
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Speaker 1: if it's a new thing on the market and people
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Speaker 1: might not want to spend you know, five, ten whatever
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Speaker 1: dollars to purchase it. And Carl Small, writing for Today
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Speaker 1: I found out dot com says, quote, you see, free
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Speaker 1: samples don't just work because they give customers a chance
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Speaker 1: to try something without the barrier of cost stopping them.
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Speaker 1: But they also take advantage of the fact that humans
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Speaker 1: seem hardwired to and this is true. Guys feel like
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Speaker 1: we should do something in return when someone does something
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Speaker 1: for us. This is why if people sell you stuff
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Speaker 1: on the street, they try to hand you something and
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Speaker 1: get you to hold it. At some point, there was
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Speaker 1: a I don't maybe want to use the hard sea word,
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Speaker 1: but there was a commune that used to send operatives
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Speaker 1: out in little Five Points, kind of bohemian esque area
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Speaker 1: in Atlanta back in the day. This place was called
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Speaker 1: Zendig Farms. And what Zendic Farms would do is they
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Speaker 1: would send people that they thought were charming or attractive
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Speaker 1: and already in their organization that I'm not explicitly calling
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Speaker 1: a cult. They would talk about how great Zendic Farms
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Speaker 1: is for creatives and so on. It would hand you
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Speaker 1: a CD. They would hand you like a newsletter, zine
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Speaker 1: or something, and as you said, okay, well that's great,
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Speaker 1: I hope you have a great day. You know, super
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Speaker 1: interest I'm going to go, they would say, oh, and
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Speaker 1: it's a donation of twenty five dollars for the CD.
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Speaker 3: Right, it's not a donation.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, sort of like a in theory, a pay what
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Speaker 2: you will thing, which is even you know music, right,
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Speaker 2: Like when Radio Ahead came out with In Rainbows, they
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Speaker 2: did like a pay what you will model, and I
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Speaker 2: don't think they released the amount of money they made
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Speaker 2: on it, but I would be willing to bet that
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Speaker 2: most people, if they had it and were a fan
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Speaker 2: of Radiohead, would give a little bit, you know, chip
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Speaker 2: a little bit in just for the for the privilege
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Speaker 2: of having this basically free album.
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Speaker 3: It's also a tactic that's used pretty.
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Speaker 2: I don't know, arguably for better or for worse, spending
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Speaker 2: on you who you are with, like NPR pledge drives
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Speaker 2: the sort of make you feel like, hey, you know
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Speaker 2: that whole year of stuff we've been giving you for free, Well,
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Speaker 2: now's the time to pay it forward or to pay
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Speaker 2: back into the system.
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Speaker 3: You gotta give, You gotta.
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Speaker 1: Give, a lot of people give. So the other sith
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Speaker 1: Lord version of this would be unscrupulous actors like timeshare salespeople. Right,
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Speaker 1: they offer you a free vacation so they can get
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Speaker 1: you for four or five hours. But yeah, there's a
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Speaker 1: weird psychological thing that works pretty much across humanity. Sampling
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Speaker 1: or giving out free samples is a pretty innocuous way
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Speaker 1: to leverage that psychological phenomenon. And what's really cool here
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Speaker 1: is that there's more history to it than you might imagine.
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Speaker 1: There's quite a story. Let's go back to Carl Smallwood,
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Speaker 1: who says, Carl is arguing that our modern concept of
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Speaker 1: free samples, you know what we call free samples cheese
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Speaker 1: at the grocery store and so on, It seems pretty recent,
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Speaker 1: but the concept of free samples has been around since
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Speaker 1: what was that noll, like the fourteenth.
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Speaker 2: Century, Yeah, the fourteenth century indeed, And it is referenced
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Speaker 2: in a poem by William Langland called Peer's Plowman, which
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Speaker 2: refers to the concept of a test for a newt,
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Speaker 2: which in modern English would probably translate to something like
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Speaker 2: a taste for nought, you know, or for nothing. I
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Speaker 2: said a newt. I kind of knew it was pronounced not,
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Speaker 2: but it's spelled differently. It's spelled nou h t. And
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Speaker 2: we know in those lilting old English poems they love
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Speaker 2: a newt in a boot in the discute, you know,
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Speaker 2: and youth and youth and all that good stuff.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, so you would In the poem, there's this line
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Speaker 1: about all these all these bar fires, basically going up
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Speaker 1: to get a taste for nothing, with the idea that
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Speaker 1: if you wet your whistle a little bit, you'll say, okay,
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Speaker 1: I'll pay for the full pint or whatever. And this
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Speaker 1: shows that for a long time, salespeople throughout different cultures
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Speaker 1: have known you give a little to get a little
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Speaker 1: bit more right, And because it's so old, we as
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Speaker 1: a civilization have no idea who first came up with this.
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Speaker 1: Was there like a caveman who needed to sell some
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Speaker 1: rocks and said, I'll give you a small rock for free,
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Speaker 1: you know, like it's so basic and primal. But we
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Speaker 1: do know there is one guy who could consider kind
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Speaker 1: of one of the fathers of the modern version, Benjamin T. Babbitt,
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Speaker 1: which is a fun name, Babbitt.
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Speaker 3: It's very it's a very fun name.
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Speaker 2: He was born in the early nineteenth century, was an inventor,
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Speaker 2: a you know, forward thinker, a business type, was very wealthy,
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Speaker 2: and was you know, quite highly regarded because he was
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Speaker 2: really good at promoting his ideas, which I think, you know,
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Speaker 2: it's one thing to be an idea man, you know,
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Speaker 2: or an idea person. But it's another thing to be
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Speaker 2: able to single handedly have an amazing idea for an
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Speaker 2: innovation or whatever it is, but also then know how
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Speaker 2: to market it. And it's the rare combination of both
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Speaker 2: of us skills that lead to like luminaries in this
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Speaker 2: world like P. T. Barnum, you know, and stuff like that,
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Speaker 2: or perhaps Thomas Edison. You know, he also had a
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Speaker 2: flair for the the the grand you know, in terms
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Speaker 2: of like putting his product out there and being insisting
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Speaker 2: that he be the center of attention regarding all of
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Speaker 2: that stuff Edison that is.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, Edison also is far from a perfect guy. You
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Speaker 1: could say he's a very effective popularizer, right, and that's
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Speaker 1: those are similar observations have been made by critics of
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Speaker 1: folks like Steve Jobs. But you're right, Selling the thing
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Speaker 1: is an entirely different skill set to creating the thing,
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Speaker 1: and it's fairly rare to see somebody who can do
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Speaker 1: both of those skill sets very well. This guy Babbitt,
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Speaker 1: he's a soap boy who makes a name in the
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Speaker 1: soap industry, but he has a lot of other patents
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Speaker 1: because he's always working with a beautiful mind of his
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Speaker 1: and you can see that He's respected for a ton
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Speaker 1: of his prolific inventions, Like he worked a lot with powders.
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Speaker 1: The way Danny DeVito and Always Sunny in Philadelphia is
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Speaker 1: into sledges. This guy was into powders. He made baking powder,
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Speaker 1: soap powder, other varieties of soap.
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Speaker 2: And there was a time where powders was like the
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Speaker 2: way of the future, you know, was like, oh, it's portable,
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Speaker 2: it's powders.
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Speaker 3: You know, my god. It's sort of like the idea
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Speaker 3: of like a meal in pill form. H we should
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Speaker 3: do a history of soap.
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Speaker 1: Oh man, that's a weird one for a device, for
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Speaker 1: an invention meant to keep you clean.
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Speaker 3: Soap has a dirty past.
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Speaker 2: No questions, I mean them, not to mention, you know,
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Speaker 2: the whole how it was made. Yeah, human bodies and
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Speaker 2: stuff like that.
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Speaker 3: But we digress.
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Speaker 2: The idea here for something is so here's you make
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Speaker 2: a good point, Ben, because soap is an age old technology,
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Speaker 2: let's call it. So how does someone set their age
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Speaker 2: old technology aside from like the millions or however many
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Speaker 2: you know, many dozens at the time of other available
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Speaker 2: products that are exactly the same on the market. You know,
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Speaker 2: a lot of bluster can help you know, marketing, let's
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Speaker 2: call it right, Maybe I'm maybe How do I really
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Speaker 2: feel about marketing?
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Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a little bit.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, there's some bravado involved in, like, you know, talking
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Speaker 2: a big game about your product. But it's another thing
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Speaker 2: to literally, maybe not literally, but put your money where
13:37
Speaker 2: your mouth is say well, hey, you know I've said
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Speaker 2: these things. You can believe me or not, but the
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Speaker 2: proof is in the pudding or the tiny cube of soap.
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Speaker 1: He really did it. I think your other money he
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Speaker 1: literally did it. He is now credited as the first
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Speaker 1: person to not only sell soap in individual bars, but
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Speaker 1: to do like an ice cream truck with it. He
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Speaker 1: would make these really visually striking, bright colorful street cars
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Speaker 1: and they would drive around town and they would be
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Speaker 1: followed by these musicians who had these custom songs about
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Speaker 1: how amazing babbit soap was. And then as people would
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Speaker 1: come out into the streets to see what the hubbub was,
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Speaker 1: he would give away bars of soap, literally hand them
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Speaker 1: to people, and they had different packaging than the ones
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Speaker 1: you bought in the store. All the packaging had was
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Speaker 1: a tagline that you know, like words of Babbit that
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Speaker 1: said a.
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Speaker 3: Fan trial is all I ask.
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Speaker 1: And then you know, people aren't gonna throw the soap back.
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Speaker 1: It's free soap.
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Speaker 3: It's free soap.
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Speaker 2: And also you got to think, now we think of
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Speaker 2: these kinds of let's call it a marketing stunt, you know,
14:42
Speaker 2: as like annoying.
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Speaker 3: Oh god, you know what I.
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Speaker 2: Mean, We get it. We know what this is about.
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Speaker 2: You're trying to sell us something at the time. This
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Speaker 2: is like a free parade, you know what I mean,
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Speaker 2: like with the accompanying free stuff. I always think of
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Speaker 2: like the Joker and the Tim Burton Batman, you know,
14:58
Speaker 2: like throwing Joker bucks out to the crowd.
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Speaker 3: Of them all. See. I have a very dark view
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Speaker 3: of my marketing strategies.
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Speaker 2: But it's interesting, right because he really was you know,
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Speaker 2: he had he had a service that was readily available
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Speaker 2: in many other you know forms in terms of soap,
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Speaker 2: but he differentiated it. And he also you know, was like, here,
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Speaker 2: try it out for yourself, see what you think.
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Speaker 1: And people people loved it because he knew one of
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Speaker 1: the number one things that happens when you are shopping
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Speaker 1: is the association of familiarity. Right, we already I'm spending
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Speaker 1: my hard earned Cheddar. Maybe on some Cheddar, I want
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Speaker 1: to go with the cheese I recognize. So now he's
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Speaker 1: giving people a free experience. They're going to have a
15:43
Speaker 1: positive association or connotation with this, and he is also
15:48
Speaker 1: going to hit them. He's got to love bomb them
15:51
Speaker 1: with other advertising techniques. You know, he's got stuff like
15:55
Speaker 1: a he kind of rips off cleanliness is godliness, or
15:59
Speaker 1: puts a riff off and says cleanliness is the scale
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Speaker 1: of civilization.
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Speaker 3: On packaging.
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Speaker 1: If you're a customer, he will let you have a
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Speaker 1: tour of the factory. And guess what that tour ends
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Speaker 1: with free samples? Bro Can I just say those.
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Speaker 2: Taglines are very of their era, you know, because now
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Speaker 2: they're just I mean, they're just not pithy or zippy
16:18
Speaker 2: at all, you know, they're just they don't they seem
16:20
Speaker 2: very like I am providing a valuable service to you,
16:24
Speaker 2: you know, like that is the that's that's the selling point,
16:26
Speaker 2: that's the elevator pitch. Now you gotta dress it up
16:29
Speaker 2: and make it a lot more wow factory. But this
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Speaker 2: worked and to the point where the name t BT
16:36
Speaker 2: Babbitt became so ubiquitous that there's this you know, it's
16:40
Speaker 2: these kinds of stories or of the stuff of marketing legend,
16:43
Speaker 2: let's say, and you know very much, probably used by
16:45
Speaker 2: the company for a long time and proliferated. But this
16:47
Speaker 2: idea that Babbitt came upon a humble shoe shine lad
16:51
Speaker 2: whose name was also BT Babbitt. And the kid, apparently,
16:56
Speaker 2: when told by BT Babbitt himself that his name was
16:58
Speaker 2: also that said.
16:59
Speaker 3: Did your mama gets your name off of soapbox too?
17:02
Speaker 3: That cute story, what a cute store.
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Speaker 2: But it's also like, nope, I'm a soap mogul and
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Speaker 2: you're poor.
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Speaker 3: Now shot in my shoes. I hope you tipped them,
17:10
Speaker 3: ben Go.
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Speaker 2: Probably true, Yeah, exactly. I'm the word that's used in
17:15
Speaker 2: the in the article that we're citing. Also from today
17:19
Speaker 2: I found out article.
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Speaker 3: I do want to.
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Speaker 1: Say that anecdote we weren't able to confirm it. It
17:24
Speaker 1: does have the air of one of those off the
17:28
Speaker 1: cuff anecdotes that corporate types give when they're doing a
17:32
Speaker 1: conference or a speech, like you know, what's what are
17:35
Speaker 1: we really selling? We're selling stories, right, and I'd like
17:40
Speaker 1: to tell you, well, oh, come on, they're not all lies. Uh,
17:44
Speaker 1: let's go to another version Coca Cola. Before we get
17:47
Speaker 1: into the grocery store, we're still not in grocery store
17:50
Speaker 1: free sample days. Before we get there, we got to
17:53
Speaker 1: talk about Coca Cola, which is an absolute juggernaut in
17:56
Speaker 1: the world. And of course the hometown of Coca Cola
18:00
Speaker 1: is the fair metropolis of Atlanta, which is I think
18:03
Speaker 1: a little bit more famous for being the hom of
18:05
Speaker 1: ridiculous history. But good hustle Coke.
18:07
Speaker 2: Good hustle Man said thanks, Yes, this is all the
18:12
Speaker 2: way back in eighteen eighty six, I think many you know,
18:14
Speaker 2: we've all heard the story. It was created by a
18:16
Speaker 2: pharmacist named John Stith Pemberton, which, of course the original
18:22
Speaker 2: formula I believe contained some amounts of cocaine, if I'm
18:26
Speaker 2: not mistaken.
18:27
Speaker 3: And also, yes, you heard that correctly.
18:29
Speaker 1: It's not Sith, it's Stith st I t h exactly.
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Speaker 2: But he was definitely the lord of coke, the lord
18:37
Speaker 2: of syrup, because the recipe was syrup carbonated water. And
18:42
Speaker 2: again in the early versions of it there there were
18:44
Speaker 2: some stimulants. But like anything new, you know, people aren't
18:48
Speaker 2: immediately you know, drawn to new things. Maybe that's the
18:52
Speaker 2: case now everyone having to have the latest tech or
18:54
Speaker 2: the fastest thing or whatever. But back then there was
18:56
Speaker 2: a lot of suspicion around new things.
18:59
Speaker 3: You know, people like new things. They wanted the old ways.
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Speaker 1: Well, also, this is a new kind of drink too,
19:06
Speaker 1: with this carbonation, these these different flavors. And yes it did.
19:11
Speaker 1: It did contain a little bit of a little bit
19:15
Speaker 1: of cocaine, I believe. But the thing is, because this
19:19
Speaker 1: is so new, and because there's so many other beverages
19:23
Speaker 1: that people are familiar with, he's not able to sell
19:27
Speaker 1: a lot of this. It costs a nickel for a glass,
19:31
Speaker 1: and you know, they're much smaller than the modern cans,
19:35
Speaker 1: twelve ounce cans they would see today. But still he's
19:38
Speaker 1: only selling like nine drinks and a nickel a pop.
19:41
Speaker 1: He says, it's not sustainable. And here we see the
19:45
Speaker 1: interaction between the inventor and the marketer, right between the
19:49
Speaker 1: Tesla and the Edison, as it were. There's an eighteen
19:52
Speaker 1: eighty eight. Two years later, a guy named Aza Griggs
19:55
Speaker 1: Candler buys the Coca Cola company and he says, you
20:01
Speaker 1: know what, I remember the idea of free drink tickets.
20:05
Speaker 1: It's something Pemberton's numbers guy introduced earlier, and he says,
20:09
Speaker 1: let's run with it, and there's a cool article you
20:11
Speaker 1: can read and wired about this. Candler is believed to
20:16
Speaker 1: have created the first ever coupon, and the coupon was simple,
20:21
Speaker 1: go wherever Coca Cola is sold, hand them this little
20:25
Speaker 1: piece of script and boom, you saved yourself a nickel.
20:28
Speaker 1: You got a glass of Coca cola. We'll see you
20:31
Speaker 1: again soon.
20:32
Speaker 3: Goodwill earned ching.
20:35
Speaker 1: Just so and these like They continue this program from
20:39
Speaker 1: eighteen ninety four to nineteen thirteen. They mail out coupons
20:43
Speaker 1: to drug stores, random customers if they had their addresses,
20:47
Speaker 1: because remember this before the day of big data and
20:50
Speaker 1: Coca Cola itself estimates that during that two decades, one
20:55
Speaker 1: in nine people in the United States were given a
20:58
Speaker 1: free drink because of these coupons. And although they were,
21:01
Speaker 1: you know, sensibly losing a nickel every time, they were
21:05
Speaker 1: making so much more money because people kept buying. And
21:08
Speaker 1: you know what this reminds me of now, I don't
21:10
Speaker 1: know if they had this, because you grew up in Augusta, Ray,
21:12
Speaker 1: I don't know if they had this there. Coca Cola
21:16
Speaker 1: always in the Georgia area would do these things where
21:20
Speaker 1: you could you could twist off the top of a
21:23
Speaker 1: soda bottle, you might get a free coke, or you
21:25
Speaker 1: would get a code that you could put on a
21:27
Speaker 1: Coca Cola account that would earn you stuff in the
21:30
Speaker 1: Coca Cola co store. Online they would give you free
21:34
Speaker 1: Six Flags tickets or discolates. You've got a can. They're
21:38
Speaker 1: still doing it. It's still a coupons.
21:40
Speaker 3: They're in league.
21:41
Speaker 2: They're in cahoots the six Flags and the Cokes of
21:44
Speaker 2: the world. Not to be confused with the Coke Brothers,
21:46
Speaker 2: but it's true. I mean that idea of the coupon
21:48
Speaker 2: is also a way this is a little bit more modern,
21:51
Speaker 2: but that a lot of breweries here in Atlanta got
21:54
Speaker 2: around being able to sell beer directly of the public.
21:57
Speaker 2: They would have this little coupon s that's right, you know,
22:00
Speaker 2: And that's actually something that's still used in places where
22:03
Speaker 2: marijuana sale is like somewhat legal but not fully legal.
22:07
Speaker 3: They'll like give you a little card.
22:10
Speaker 2: And then you kind of like get the marijuana product
22:14
Speaker 2: as a free.
22:14
Speaker 1: Gift or like yeah, yeah, I remember those. There's another one.
22:19
Speaker 1: Because these kind of strategies happen all around the world.
22:22
Speaker 3: Folks.
22:23
Speaker 1: There's another one in the Netherlands where cannabis laws are
22:28
Speaker 1: a little bit less restrictive, but they still have these
22:30
Speaker 1: strange legal hoops that.
22:33
Speaker 3: Folks have to jump through.
22:35
Speaker 1: You can go to what's called a cafe where you
22:38
Speaker 1: can get drinks like coffee, alcoholic beverages, juices, whatever, and
22:43
Speaker 1: then you can also consume cannabis in that cafe. But
22:47
Speaker 1: that cafe can't sell you cannabis. You literally go across
22:51
Speaker 1: the street to this other place that only sells that.
22:55
Speaker 1: And the same guy owns both of them, right that
23:00
Speaker 1: the same staff, you know. So back to these coupons,
23:03
Speaker 1: we know they work. By nineteen thirteen, and this is
23:06
Speaker 1: again per Coca Cola themselves, eight point five million people
23:11
Speaker 1: used these coupons, eight point five million free doses glasses
23:17
Speaker 1: of Coca Cola servingst's servings. There we go and fast forward.
23:24
Speaker 1: This is a huge part of the engine that drove
23:27
Speaker 1: Coca Cola to sell one point nine billion drinks per
23:32
Speaker 1: day in over two hundred countries by twenty twenty. Geography nerds, Jeff,
23:38
Speaker 1: if you're listening, I clocked it as well. You'll find
23:41
Speaker 1: this interesting. The United Nations only recognized as about one
23:45
Speaker 1: hundred and ninety two or one hundred and ninety three countries.
23:48
Speaker 1: So Coca Cola is selling in countries that the UN
23:51
Speaker 1: doesn't recognize.
23:53
Speaker 3: That's the same.
23:55
Speaker 2: That's pretty interesting, not to mention, you know, the fact
23:59
Speaker 2: that remember how Cola kind of got around like even
24:02
Speaker 2: like war issues by making Fanta in Germany because of
24:06
Speaker 2: these like apple scraps.
24:07
Speaker 3: Anyway, we're just Coca Cola's figured it out.
24:09
Speaker 2: They cracked the code, and they did that partially with
24:12
Speaker 2: the help of free samples. Another empire, a product empire
24:17
Speaker 2: that did that is the Wriggly Empire. You may know
24:21
Speaker 2: it because of the titular field in Chicago, or you
24:24
Speaker 2: may know it from like a stick of juicy fruit.
24:33
Speaker 1: Okay, so we'll start in the late eighteen sixties. This guy,
24:37
Speaker 1: William Wrigley Junior, he's a little bit of a Denis
24:41
Speaker 1: the Menace character, Grow it up. He's a rap scallion.
24:45
Speaker 1: He runs away from home, he gets expelled from school
24:48
Speaker 1: when they pull him back, and so he gets sent
24:51
Speaker 1: to work in his father's soap factory. Soap has done
24:54
Speaker 1: a lot for free samples, and he eventually says, look,
25:00
Speaker 1: this isn't for me. He's very young at this time,
25:03
Speaker 1: by the way, he's like thirteen. So he says, look,
25:06
Speaker 1: I'm not a soapman. I don't need to be out
25:08
Speaker 1: here stirring vat's all day, old man, Wriggly Junior. I'll
25:14
Speaker 1: stay in the system, but I'm an agent of change.
25:16
Speaker 1: So he becomes a child soap salesman for his dad
25:22
Speaker 1: and he creates like he just liked Babbitt before him.
25:26
Speaker 1: He has a flair for this. He knows how to
25:28
Speaker 1: put on the show that results in the sale.
25:31
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's another one of these apocryphal kind of stories
25:33
Speaker 2: of the idea that Wrigley Junior, who started the William
25:37
Speaker 2: Wrigley Junior Company in eighteen ninety one, had a smile,
25:41
Speaker 2: you know, a song in his heart and thirty two
25:44
Speaker 2: dollars in his pocket and he founded a company off
25:47
Speaker 2: of nothing but good old fashioned you know, stick to
25:50
Speaker 2: itiveness and moxie.
25:52
Speaker 3: Right.
25:53
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean whether or not that is true, and
25:58
Speaker 1: it's probably not. He definitely had other money, right, because
26:03
Speaker 1: it's kind of like when you hear a lot of
26:06
Speaker 1: business moguls say, hey, I started from nothing, you know.
26:10
Speaker 1: As a matter of fact, I had to sell off
26:12
Speaker 1: some of the class A stock that my grandfather gave me.
26:15
Speaker 1: These were tough times. It's not quite the same, you
26:19
Speaker 1: know what I mean. Drake didn't really start from the bottom.
26:23
Speaker 1: And that's not to take away from their success. It's
26:25
Speaker 1: just the thing that needs to be acknowledged. As we found.
26:29
Speaker 1: Wrigley Junior may have had his thirty two dollars, but
26:33
Speaker 1: it was definitely added to the five thousand dollars check
26:38
Speaker 1: that his uncle gave him, which if we want to
26:41
Speaker 1: inflation calculate, runs to about dude, moot one hundred and
26:48
Speaker 1: thirty thousand dollars today.
26:50
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's like you know Trump startup money, right, you
26:54
Speaker 2: know he anyway.
26:57
Speaker 3: It's no, but but he didn't. But he made it.
26:59
Speaker 3: He made made it go, He made it go go go.
27:02
Speaker 1: No, but he didn't start with gum, right, because if
27:04
Speaker 1: you're if you're a sportsperson, you associate Wrigley with Wrigley Field.
27:08
Speaker 1: If you're not, you I always assume people associate them
27:11
Speaker 1: with the.
27:11
Speaker 2: Gum oh one hundred percent good old juicy fruit good stuff.
27:16
Speaker 2: And it's basically the same branding and I think roughly
27:21
Speaker 2: the same recipe is it's always been, you know, for
27:23
Speaker 2: a very very long time.
27:25
Speaker 3: If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
27:26
Speaker 1: In all of that, but he didn't start with gum.
27:29
Speaker 1: He started, and this is almost I wonder if his
27:32
Speaker 1: dad took it as an active betrayal. He started selling soap,
27:36
Speaker 1: and it's like, hey, come on, son, I own a
27:39
Speaker 1: soap factory.
27:39
Speaker 3: What are you doing.
27:40
Speaker 1: He followed in Babbitt's footsteps a lot, and he also said, look,
27:46
Speaker 1: I know that people might not want to carry my goods.
27:49
Speaker 3: I'm the new.
27:50
Speaker 1: Kid on the block, and I am in a market
27:54
Speaker 1: that has low profit margins, and there are a lot
27:57
Speaker 1: of other soap makers out there. There are a lot
27:59
Speaker 1: of other people and soap. So he starts giving away stuff.
28:04
Speaker 1: But he doesn't just give away like bars of soap
28:06
Speaker 1: that say, hey, give me a fair shot. He gives
28:09
Speaker 1: away baking powder. People still love powder to your point,
28:12
Speaker 1: for sure. He gives away umbrellas. Uh he's a weird turn. Yeah,
28:18
Speaker 1: I guess he just got a good deal on some umbrellas,
28:21
Speaker 1: you know. And so the thing that really helps him
28:25
Speaker 1: is that baking powder is experiencing this vogue.
28:29
Speaker 3: It's in the zeitgeist.
28:31
Speaker 1: If you're giving away free baking powder, quite by accident.
28:34
Speaker 1: Probably you're giving away something that is now seen is
28:37
Speaker 1: pretty neat and valuable.
28:39
Speaker 2: Well, he was a good way of market testing, right
28:41
Speaker 2: like you would see which giveaway was the most popular,
28:45
Speaker 2: and then ultimately figured out how to kind of pivot,
28:48
Speaker 2: as they say, you know his business, right, yeah.
28:51
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's a great way to put it. So
28:53
Speaker 1: the baking powder became a huge hit, and people were
28:57
Speaker 1: requesting the baking powder more than they requesting the soap.
29:01
Speaker 1: Like in the story about ranch dressing, how people would
29:04
Speaker 1: go to Hidden Valley and say, hey, we don't want
29:06
Speaker 1: a vacation at your dude ranch, but we want some
29:08
Speaker 1: of that special sauce. So he goes like, just like
29:14
Speaker 1: you said, man, he says, okay, we're not gonna make soap.
29:18
Speaker 1: We'll have some soap if people want it, but now
29:21
Speaker 1: we're baking powder people.
29:23
Speaker 2: Okay, So now he's making baking powder, but he's also
29:26
Speaker 2: still looking for other giveaway items. You know, you mentioned umbrellas.
29:30
Speaker 2: Chewing gum became very popular one, in fact, so popular
29:34
Speaker 2: that he decided, you know what, maybe this baking powder
29:37
Speaker 2: thing isn't quite what the hot new buzz on the
29:40
Speaker 2: street is.
29:41
Speaker 3: It's chewing gum.
29:43
Speaker 2: Now, so he flipped once again and entirely pivoted his
29:46
Speaker 2: business to chewing gum.
29:48
Speaker 3: And that's the Wrigley company that we know today.
29:51
Speaker 1: Which is a strange story, right, it's not one that
29:54
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people know when they buy
29:57
Speaker 1: chewing gum. And the gum that he was selling was
30:00
Speaker 1: manufactured by a place called Zeno Company. And Zeno was
30:04
Speaker 1: doing the typical manufacturing process for chewing gum at the time,
30:10
Speaker 1: which is they used paraffin and spruce and then they
30:13
Speaker 1: would add other ingredients. Right, he changed the game, and
30:16
Speaker 1: he changed the recipe, said let's stick out.
30:18
Speaker 3: He sure did.
30:19
Speaker 2: And I mentioned juicy fruits because that was the kind
30:23
Speaker 2: of first I mean, if you hear about you think
30:25
Speaker 2: paraffin and spruce. I guess the spruce is gonna be
30:30
Speaker 2: kind of a minty vibe perhaps, but that doesn't sound
30:34
Speaker 2: super appetizing. It sounds like to me more the chewiness
30:37
Speaker 2: of the gum was the novelty that stuck. Yeah, for
30:41
Speaker 2: you know, to leave no pun behind this, we always
30:43
Speaker 2: tried to do. The flavor was kind of secondary.
30:46
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it's more like the experience, right, Like the
30:49
Speaker 1: chew of it and this spruce sap is, you know,
30:53
Speaker 1: not super great. You don't see a lot of flavorings today.
30:56
Speaker 1: And paraffin wax was petroleum derived, so not the missile. Yeah, no,
31:01
Speaker 1: interesting story about juicy fruit. This is a TANGI I
31:03
Speaker 1: can't remeber if you mentioned on air the reason it's
31:05
Speaker 1: called juicy fruit is because that flavor does not exist
31:10
Speaker 1: in nature. Early food scientists made it up and were like,
31:15
Speaker 1: tastes like something.
31:16
Speaker 2: It's vaguely fruit flavored. It's not exactly citrusy, you know.
31:20
Speaker 2: And that's the funny thing about it, is it like
31:21
Speaker 2: it's juicy fruit. That's what it is. And I don't know,
31:25
Speaker 2: it's a very image rich kind of name too. You
31:28
Speaker 2: think of juicy, and you think of it like, you know,
31:30
Speaker 2: a nice, chewy, juicy piece of gun. It's kind of gross, actually,
31:34
Speaker 2: but I can see how it worked. A few months later,
31:37
Speaker 2: he decided to give the folks still using uh spruce
31:41
Speaker 2: sap a run for their money and came out with
31:42
Speaker 2: spear mint, a much more pleasant tree derived products.
31:46
Speaker 1: Yeah, I god, I hate spearmint.
31:51
Speaker 2: I don't know why, but it's just I mean, comparatively though, yeah,
31:55
Speaker 2: comparatively to like spruce and oil.
31:57
Speaker 3: Yeah.
31:58
Speaker 1: So from the World's Columbia Exposition eighteen ninety three, all
32:01
Speaker 1: the way of the twentieth century, William Wrigley Junior is
32:06
Speaker 1: going hard on the paint. He's traveling back and forth
32:10
Speaker 1: across the continent. He is promoting these gums, and then
32:15
Speaker 1: he's also still promoting these giveaway things. You thought umbrellas
32:20
Speaker 1: were a big deal, folks. Ridiculous the story. It's this
32:23
Speaker 1: guy's given away like pocket knives in Saint Louis, lamps
32:27
Speaker 1: in uh Poughkeepsie, fishing tackle over at Albuquerque, measuring scales,
32:32
Speaker 1: because why not.
32:33
Speaker 3: I feel like, oh, yeah, exactly, why not.
32:36
Speaker 1: Deal on something like he had newsome random wholesaler or
32:41
Speaker 1: some guy who is crooked at the ports.
32:43
Speaker 3: It does kind of feel like that to a degree.
32:46
Speaker 2: Yeah, sort of like you know, this is the story
32:48
Speaker 2: you hear about Tommy Wiso, the guy that created that,
32:51
Speaker 2: you know, cult classics, the room that he was like
32:54
Speaker 2: selling leather jackets.
32:55
Speaker 3: You know that seemingly maybe fell off a truck. Yeah,
33:00
Speaker 3: that's right. Oh, and there's still a mystery about him,
33:03
Speaker 3: isn't there? To some degree.
33:04
Speaker 1: Yeah, this guy Rigly, somewhere around this time he said,
33:11
Speaker 1: I need to know more about the mind of the customer.
33:14
Speaker 1: I know people will spend money when they feel that
33:17
Speaker 1: they have been given something and they feel a familiarity.
33:20
Speaker 1: They like stuff that they already recognize. But I'm starting
33:24
Speaker 1: to think that because it's not a huge purchase like
33:27
Speaker 1: a car or even like a stake, I think people
33:32
Speaker 1: just buy this on a whim. So he would go
33:36
Speaker 1: to the people who sell gum, and he's the one
33:39
Speaker 1: who figured out that you should put gum at the front, right,
33:43
Speaker 1: gum at the register, So as people are leaving, they've
33:46
Speaker 1: already spent money, right, and they're already paying money out.
33:51
Speaker 3: Well, that's interesting.
33:52
Speaker 2: That really is an innovation that you know, somebody had
33:55
Speaker 2: to come up with that imagine. But like all of
33:56
Speaker 2: those kind of low ticket items that are just sort
33:59
Speaker 2: of like a casual buy, you know what I mean.
34:02
Speaker 2: It could be whether it like a candy or whatever,
34:05
Speaker 2: but it's all the things that you're waiting to check out,
34:08
Speaker 2: and you see.
34:08
Speaker 3: You know, why not, why wouldn't I Why shouldn't I
34:10
Speaker 3: have it? You know, I've done well today.
34:13
Speaker 1: M h.
34:14
Speaker 3: I'm gonna give me a package juicy fruit.
34:16
Speaker 1: And it's funny because you know what This makes me
34:19
Speaker 1: wonder a question for everybody listening, for the three of us,
34:25
Speaker 1: how frequently or how rarely do you go into the
34:29
Speaker 1: grocery store and just get the one thing?
34:31
Speaker 2: Now, you know, we know the psychology of the layout
34:35
Speaker 2: of the grocery store, and knowing it and grappling with
34:39
Speaker 2: it psychologically are two different things, because you know, I
34:43
Speaker 2: am a sucker for just passing the Oh look at
34:46
Speaker 2: that dinosaur shaped sippy cup, you know, like look at that,
34:50
Speaker 2: or like, oh, look a foam football with a little
34:53
Speaker 2: fin on the back that you can I'll throw that to,
34:55
Speaker 2: you know, the the neighbor kid. You know, sure, I know,
34:59
Speaker 2: it's just why not, It's just silly, goofy stuff like that,
35:02
Speaker 2: or you know, some cereal or snack innovation item.
35:07
Speaker 1: I'm bad with produce that I've never tried before. I'm
35:10
Speaker 1: the guy walking through and saying, dragon fruit. I bet
35:13
Speaker 1: I could do something with it. I can figure that out.
35:17
Speaker 2: Well, we've kind of come back around full circle to
35:20
Speaker 2: the supermarket.
35:21
Speaker 3: You know.
35:21
Speaker 2: That's sort of how we that's how we all in
35:24
Speaker 2: the in the modern day. I guess experience free samples
35:28
Speaker 2: is a lot of times it's like, you know, because
35:29
Speaker 2: We don't go that many places, and we certainly won't
35:32
Speaker 2: have door to door salesman coming knocking on our door
35:35
Speaker 2: trying to offer us a free sample of some you know,
35:38
Speaker 2: wild new product.
35:39
Speaker 3: Not typically.
35:40
Speaker 2: Usually it'll be like maybe at a trade show or
35:43
Speaker 2: like some like a you know, a con of some kind,
35:46
Speaker 2: or maybe you know a fair, perhaps you might or
35:49
Speaker 2: you know. Another example is at the mall. You ever
35:52
Speaker 2: see those free orange chicken samples?
35:54
Speaker 1: You know, I'm thinking, yeah, for through courts to come
35:57
Speaker 1: in because what our office was in a different part
36:01
Speaker 1: of Atlanta is very close to a mall that had
36:04
Speaker 1: a heck of a food court, and I would just
36:06
Speaker 1: go to the food court sometimes for lunch, which is
36:11
Speaker 1: an experience. It's an experience I wouldn't do every day today.
36:14
Speaker 1: But yeah, free samples are important. Before we wrap up
36:18
Speaker 1: this story, let's shout out some of the other crazy
36:20
Speaker 1: stuff Wrigley did. He put all of his money into
36:25
Speaker 1: this in nineteen oh seven when the economy was dodgy,
36:28
Speaker 1: so he made a real gamble and it did pay off.
36:32
Speaker 1: Between nineteen eleven and nineteen fifteen, he bought out Zeno,
36:36
Speaker 1: the folks who have been making the gum. He was selling,
36:38
Speaker 1: and then he did some He did some absolutely bonker stuff.
36:42
Speaker 1: He mailed free gum to every address in the US
36:46
Speaker 1: telephone books. He sent every kid two sticks a gum,
36:51
Speaker 1: not on their first but on their second birthday. Like
36:54
Speaker 1: the specificity of that is brilliant. Wait, why on their
36:58
Speaker 1: second birth the kid?
36:59
Speaker 3: How does this?
37:00
Speaker 2: He's trying to make a lifelong like gum shoer. I
37:04
Speaker 2: guess that's more for the parents, really, right.
37:06
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think you're right.
37:07
Speaker 1: But then also he probably was thinking two years old
37:10
Speaker 1: might be old enough to establish a sense memory, even
37:12
Speaker 1: if he didn't use that language.
37:15
Speaker 2: Well, that's interesting, Ben, because we you know, the same
37:18
Speaker 2: year Ringley Actually, you know, he did some kind of
37:20
Speaker 2: benevolent stuff. He offered stock back to his employees, which
37:25
Speaker 2: was a pretty interesting thing to talk about, free samples
37:28
Speaker 2: to help make somebody feel committed to your brand, right, Yeah.
37:32
Speaker 1: And that's why he took the company public. He became
37:35
Speaker 1: chairman of the board. He did like a succession thing,
37:38
Speaker 1: and turned the presidency over to one of his children.
37:42
Speaker 1: In this case, it was son Philip in nineteen twenty five.
37:44
Speaker 1: He passed away in nineteen thirty two, seventy years old.
37:49
Speaker 1: He was worth about thirty four million dollars at that time,
37:52
Speaker 1: so he's quite successful and he is definitely studied in
37:58
Speaker 1: sales and marketing classes. Is today right because people want
38:02
Speaker 1: to be that kind of maverick, that pioneer of the
38:05
Speaker 1: hearts and minds and uh now you know, now we
38:09
Speaker 1: come to it like the lesson if lesson there be
38:13
Speaker 1: is that free samples absolutely one hundred percent do work. Oh,
38:19
Speaker 1: Costco guys, we should get a group Costco card.
38:23
Speaker 2: I've always thought it was too exclusive, Like don't you
38:25
Speaker 2: have to like, you know, have some clout or something
38:28
Speaker 2: to get into Costco?
38:29
Speaker 3: Can anybody join? Anybody can join?
38:31
Speaker 1: And just got Tony up the capitol and I guess
38:33
Speaker 1: you got to need like twelve pounds of uh, you know,
38:37
Speaker 1: Vegas at.
38:38
Speaker 3: A time or vegas. Yeah, what even is a root
38:41
Speaker 3: de bega? Is my question?
38:42
Speaker 2: So yeah, I mean, throughout this whole thing we're talking
38:44
Speaker 2: about psychology, We're talking about I give you something, You
38:48
Speaker 2: give me your money.
38:49
Speaker 3: For the rest of your life, you know what I mean.
38:51
Speaker 2: But you're getting something in return, and there is this
38:53
Speaker 2: sense of goodwill that comes along with that exchange. And
38:57
Speaker 2: again we see it every day in modern times it's
38:59
Speaker 2: stuff like a money back guarantee maybe, or like these
39:03
Speaker 2: mattresses that you get online, like you know, Casper or whatever,
39:08
Speaker 2: not a sponsor that you know offer you, you know,
39:11
Speaker 2: no questions asked return policy. That is sort of an
39:14
Speaker 2: equivalent of a free sample. We're giving you the thing.
39:17
Speaker 2: Obviously the barrier of entry there becomes you have to
39:20
Speaker 2: package it back up and send it, you know, and
39:23
Speaker 2: do that. That for some people is going to be
39:25
Speaker 2: too much trouble and they'll just end up keeping the
39:27
Speaker 2: thing that may they maybe didn't love. But if people
39:29
Speaker 2: do it right, they'll make it really they'll make it
39:32
Speaker 2: so easy for you just to try it that you're
39:34
Speaker 2: not going to be worried they're trying to put one
39:36
Speaker 2: over on you. That's sort of the bargain or the
39:39
Speaker 2: agreement where you're like, I trust you because you've given
39:42
Speaker 2: me the opportunity to decide for myself and to not
39:45
Speaker 2: feel like I'm being tricked, but also to kind of
39:47
Speaker 2: maybe be tricked a little bit too.
39:49
Speaker 1: You have manipulated me by making me feel as though
39:53
Speaker 1: I have agency, which I do or do I Uh,
39:57
Speaker 1: there's I think we could wrap up your It's a
40:00
Speaker 1: great point something cool that Max found from a trade publication.
40:04
Speaker 1: Sampling also is a tide that carries all vessels. If
40:11
Speaker 1: you're giving away cheese samples, you know, like brie or
40:15
Speaker 1: maybe like a Bagel's little smear cream cheese on them
40:20
Speaker 1: by the dairy cheese ales, then not only will that
40:23
Speaker 1: brand experience higher sales, but all the other cheese around
40:28
Speaker 1: there will.
40:29
Speaker 3: So you're kind of just raising the steaks for everyone.
40:32
Speaker 2: And also it's a really good play for the store itself.
40:37
Speaker 2: You know, they don't necessarily care which cheese you buy
40:41
Speaker 2: as long as you buy it from them. So if
40:44
Speaker 2: a place like we were saying with Trader Joe's great
40:46
Speaker 2: strategy with free samples, also it's always free samples of
40:49
Speaker 2: their own stuff that they make, so they're you know, yeah,
40:53
Speaker 2: it's super smart. So you're like, you've got this brand
40:55
Speaker 2: loyalty to Trader Joe's the store, and then you have
40:58
Speaker 2: this brand loyalty within Trader Joe's to Joe's own products.
41:01
Speaker 2: They also sell some some non Treader Joe's products, but
41:04
Speaker 2: you know that that place is really designed to buy
41:06
Speaker 2: the stuff that they themselves make. We've got a pretty
41:10
Speaker 2: cool perspective on this from Todd hollings Head from Brigham
41:14
Speaker 2: Young University.
41:15
Speaker 3: He had this to say.
41:17
Speaker 2: Eating free samples at big box stores like Costco has
41:20
Speaker 2: become a weekend tradition for many shoppers. For adults with children,
41:24
Speaker 2: it's often the only way to get shopping done while
41:26
Speaker 2: maintaining sanity. But just how effective are free samples when
41:28
Speaker 2: it comes to actually attracting purchases and loyalty? After all,
41:31
Speaker 2: marketers spend more than two billion dollars annually on sampling.
41:35
Speaker 2: New BYU Research discovers the answer is a definitive yes.
41:39
Speaker 3: Just just in case you.
41:40
Speaker 2: Needed non anecdotal you know, kind of we know it
41:45
Speaker 2: works because it works on us, right, Well.
41:47
Speaker 1: We know it works because it doesn't. I mean, this
41:49
Speaker 1: is a good segue. We know it works because it doesn't.
41:52
Speaker 1: Just stay in the realm of food. You can get
41:54
Speaker 1: free test drives right for at car companies. Tesla will
41:58
Speaker 1: give you a free time drive. All you have to
42:00
Speaker 1: do is sign up at their website. You can get
42:03
Speaker 1: all kinds of free stuff, especially if you're if you're
42:06
Speaker 1: scamming like I was back in the day. Because companies
42:10
Speaker 1: want first off, usually have to give them your email
42:14
Speaker 1: or mailing address. They'll send you stuff, They'll keep sending
42:17
Speaker 1: you stuff, you know what I mean, offers, sales and
42:20
Speaker 1: so on. This is I used to have a pretty
42:22
Speaker 1: big system for this, but at this point, maybe we
42:25
Speaker 1: ask people to visit us at Ridiculous Historians and give
42:28
Speaker 1: us some of their favorite free sample.
42:31
Speaker 3: Stories, that being the old Facebook group.
42:34
Speaker 2: One last thing from the BUYU study though, and I
42:36
Speaker 2: think this is the good kicker here is. You know,
42:39
Speaker 2: companies spend tons of money on marketing of all varieties,
42:42
Speaker 2: whether it be like billboards or you know, ads on
42:44
Speaker 2: bus stops or whatever, like displays in the grocery stores.
42:48
Speaker 2: The BYU research indicated that not only do free samples work,
42:53
Speaker 2: but the positive associations that you get from getting a
42:58
Speaker 2: free sample linger much longer than those in.
43:01
Speaker 3: Store displays, however elaborate they might be.
43:04
Speaker 2: You know, we've seen like stacks of Coca Cola cans
43:08
Speaker 2: spelling out go dogs or whatever, you know, and that's
43:11
Speaker 2: really impressive and everything, but that's not going to linger
43:14
Speaker 2: nearly as long as if they gave you a free
43:16
Speaker 2: can of coke.
43:17
Speaker 1: Well, it's because the sense memory is so much it
43:21
Speaker 1: is a much more powerful pathway for encoding long term association. Right,
43:27
Speaker 1: A display is visual and maybe sound, but if you
43:30
Speaker 1: can get like not for nothing did Proost become famous
43:35
Speaker 1: in literature for a taste of things remembered. It's all
43:38
Speaker 1: about how eating a madeline puts him in this crazy,
43:43
Speaker 1: crazy past experience. So yeah, when you're eating, when you're drinking,
43:47
Speaker 1: when you're consuming, remember, that's the way a memory can
43:50
Speaker 1: stay with you. You can also have your own memory
43:53
Speaker 1: by doing this, folks, So play along at home, tell
43:56
Speaker 1: us how it goes, big, big, thanks to super producer
43:59
Speaker 1: mister Mac Williams.
44:01
Speaker 3: Also thanks for the.
44:02
Speaker 1: Thanks for the surprising deep dive into free samples, and
44:06
Speaker 1: and of course thanks to Jonathan Strickland aka the Quist.
44:11
Speaker 3: Do you think he likes free samples? I don't know.
44:13
Speaker 3: Of course he does. He does. Who doesn't.
44:16
Speaker 2: If he doesn't, then he's even more of a reptilian
44:19
Speaker 2: creature than I give him credit for.
44:22
Speaker 1: And thanks all suit to Chris rossiotis Eve's Jeff Coat,
44:26
Speaker 1: all the hits, Gabriel Lucier are Research associates, doctor Z
44:30
Speaker 1: and Jeff.
44:31
Speaker 3: B and Noel. Thank you to you. I guess a
44:34
Speaker 3: podcast is always kind of a free sample? Is it is?
44:39
Speaker 3: It really is?
44:40
Speaker 2: You get the match, we will give you the podcast.
44:43
Speaker 2: You got to buy the mattress. We'll see you next time.
44:46
Speaker 1: Books.
44:53
Speaker 2: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
44:57
Speaker 2: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.