The Power of “Free”

In marketing of all stripes, you learn that certain words are just more powerful than others.  And no word is more powerful than “free”.

We were reminded once again last week of this fact when KFC teamed up with Oprah to offer a free meal for their new grilled chicken.   The response was off the charts for KFC, which is owned by YUM Brands.  There were places in the country where the police had to be called to handle the traffic, and many restaurants were so inundated that they had to offer rain checks on the offer because they ran out of grilled chicken.  I got to experience all of this first hand when I visited a KFC last week with my son, and the line was out the door.

For entrepreneurs there are three messages here:

1. If you want to grab attention, few things ever beat the word “free”.  You can use this for a loss leader or as a limited time offer to get your story out there.
2. Have great channels for delivering your message.  KFC used Oprah, and she had the audience and reach to really drive the message.
3. You need to have a great product to pull off the “free” play.  Offering something gratis will only get you so far, you also need to deliver when you get the attention.  This is the only way you will get people to come back and spend money.