Nooner Nookie: The Allure of Marketing Freebies

Under the Influence with Terry O'Reilly

Apostrophe Podcast Network

Business, Marketing, Under The Influence, Cbc, Society & Culture, Terry O'reilly, Pop Culture, Advertising

4.8 • 627 Ratings

🗓️ 22 November 2025

⏱️ 28 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

For over 100 years, “free” has been one of the most powerful words in the marketing world.

And believe it or not, companies love freebies as much as their customers do.

Because giving away free products generates a lot of goodwill. And goodwill generates free press.

We’ll talk about a ketchup company who gave a man a free boat.

A hotel who gave a couple 18 years of free stays because they had nookie in one of their rooms.

And we’ll tell the story of how one company helped a teenager with huge feet – by giving him a pair of size 23 shoes.

We know you want to listen to all the ads in this show. On the off-chance you don’t, subscribe ad-free here.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	This is an apostrophe podcast production. Your teeth look lighter than no, no.
0:29.0	You're not you when you're hungry.
0:33.9	You're in good hands with all. You're under the influence with Terry O'Reilly.
0:42.3	The WRIEy.
0:44.3	The WRIEy The word free has many implications.
1:02.0	Someone once put an old refrigerator out on the side of the road with a sign that said free on it.
1:07.4	It sat there for three days.
1:09.7	So a new sign was stuck on it that said $40. It was stolen
1:14.2	overnight. Clearly, someone found it more valuable when it had a price tag on it. But most
1:21.6	times, free is a magnet. In his book, predictably irrational, author Dan Ariely tells this story.
1:33.3	He set up a table in a large public building and offered two kinds of chocolates, Lint Truffles
1:39.4	and Hershey's Kisses. The sign on the table said, one chocolate per customer. Lint is a Swiss firm
1:47.0	that has been blending fine cocoa's for over 160 years. Its chocolate truffles are extremely
1:53.7	creamy and highly prized. Hershey, on the other hand, pumps out about 70 million kisses per day.
2:02.3	Ariely set the price of a lint truffle at 15 cents each, and the kisses at one cent each.
2:09.5	When customers compared both, they rationally compared the price and quality of each chocolate,
2:16.2	and 73% chose lint.
2:21.4	When Ariely added the word free to the situation, everything changed.
2:27.6	He offered the lint truffles at 14 cents each and the kisses for free.
2:32.8	In other words, he simply lowered the price of each chocolate
2:35.9	by one cent. But what a difference the word free made. Sixty-sixthicent of the customers
2:42.3	chose the Hershey kisses. So interesting. Both chocolates were discounted by exactly the same amount
	...

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