Commentary: What does “FREE” Mean?
Issue: The current debate over FREE ignores the one thing that is priceless: TIME
Commentary by: David Vinjamuri
The online marketing community is caught in a kerfuffle over Chris Anderson’s new book FREE: The Future of a Radical Price. Malcolm Gladwell fired a salvo from The New Yorker and Seth Godin jumped in to defend Anderson. Even John Gapper of the Financial Times has entered the fray, with a spirited interactive book review of FREE.
Anderson, in a straightforward extension of his thinking in The Long Tail, argues that with distribution costs declining radically (and marginal distribution costs on the Internet approaching zero), content wants to be free. He points out that Free is a powerful concept, much more appealing than ‘cheap’. As marketers have known for years, an offer of something for ‘Free’ fundamentally alters consumer psychology and decision-making. He suggests that content should be free, that newspapers, record labels and other content providers should just get over it and find other ways to make money.
Gladwell makes a solid economic argument that content is not free, it’s almost free. And that the only thing really approaching zero is marginal cost. An airline might be able to put you in a seat for almost nothing, but someone still has to pay for the plane, just as someone still has to pay for all that bandwidth and infrastructure.
Godin makes the argument that Free is already here and that it’s good because it democratizes marketing and allows everyone to play.
Nobody, however, seems to consider the implication of all of this free stuff. It is consuming the most precious resource in human history: Time.
For Anderson, Godin and perhaps even Gladwell, the Internet and all of the Free stuff is a goldmine. As writers, they can spend their time panning the streams until they sift out enough precious dust to sate themselves.
For the rest of us, the new media world is rapidly giving us a headache.
Ask yourself the question, why do brands exist at all? Because consumers are willing to trade something they make more of (money) for something they can’t (time). Brands save us from the paralyzing indecision that we’d have every time we stood in front of a hundred kinds of toothpaste, or forty kinds of brown bread.
Yes, that’s right, we’re willing to pay more money for brands we know so we don’t have to spend Time deciding what’s good.
The fundamental problem with this world that we’re finding ourselves in is that consumers and marketers alike find ourselves drowning in free information. It’s great that it’s free. But we now spend more time than ever sorting and choosing and less time consuming.
The argument doesn’t matter, of course. Godin correctly points out that what is happening will happen. But the thought that newspapers will go away and their place will be taken forever by unpaid bloggers seems unlikely. All of the good blog models on the Internet rely on people contributing ideas cheaply or for nothing. Advertising hasn’t paid the freight for anyone.
So when this phase is done, when we no longer feel obligated to sort through 1000 meaningless, self-promotional Tweets on Twitter to get a good idea, what will exist? Probably some big brands that charge us for stuff we all like and some small brands that charge some of us for stuff a few of us love. And yes, some free stuff, too.
Of course it’s ironic that the one thing that’s clearly not FREE among all of this noise is Chris Anderson’s book. That still costs $17.91. To be fair, Anderson has said that Hyperion is going to let him make the book available for FREE online, but he can’t tell us just how. We’re guessing that it will take us some time to figure that out.
July 4th, 2009 at 1:39 pm
surely brands must be providing something other than a time-saving decision heuristic. Perhaps in your example of toothpaste, I'd have to agree. But what about all of the self-expressive benefits that brands are beginning to play, something outside of opportunity cost?
July 15th, 2009 at 12:00 pm
You nailed it! We're drowning in free information. And unfortunately, free often equals worthless. So we spend all that time sifting, scanning, and hoping for something worthwhile, and when it doesn't pan out we go back to the branded content that we know and trust.
August 13th, 2009 at 11:17 pm
I definitely agree. You can tell when making sales calls too. The customers are beginning to get more skeptical and less impulsive everyday. Our sales techniques have had to adapt.
I read the blog a lot keep it up!
October 22nd, 2009 at 1:55 am
And what happens to those evil oil company profits? ,
October 27th, 2009 at 1:48 pm
Interesting point. But some stuff IS free and useful. Like free SEO giveaways (www.searchschwag.com). These are super popular right now and some of them are sort of awesome like uber useful iPhones.
November 5th, 2009 at 1:34 pm
Whenever something seems like a good deal in many cases it really isn’t a good deal. And yes the brand and free technique work and they work very well which is why a lot of companies have been using it for years. A consumer would much rather hear free offer instead of a cheap offer. A consumer in some cases much rather buy that expensive brand label instead of a replica. There is something about the word cheap that turns some people off having to explain to someone that an item is cheap may lower his or her ego. Now if you say I bought this inexpensive table that sounds better. It’s really all about how you use words in ways that people find comforting.
December 6th, 2009 at 8:26 am
in my book free means 100% without charge, not like e commerce websites, they will show in big and bold letters that its free but when you will register then they will forget what they said on their home page.
January 20th, 2010 at 12:10 am
Highly recommend this book to anyone interested in Marketing. I think its brilliant that Chris put his money where his mouth is and released the audio free.