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