Free, we will miss you.  I wish you still meant something because in these dark times, we need you more than ever.  It’s sad how often I need to put you in quotes to signify your empty meaning.

Even in the early days of the Internet, the rise in affiliate marketing led to “free” giveaways of expensive items.  The catch there was that you needed to complete a great number of offers, at substantial cost, to receive the so-called free item.  The affiliate marketer made more revenue than the cost of the item, and the rube customer received a number of products and services.  Certainly not free, but if a person were actually interested in all of the offers they did get the product for free.

The idea of the free trial was another big blow.  The idea was for a person to try out a web service for a short time at no cost to them.  Of course they had to enter their credit card for the free trial which was mercilessly charged if the service was not canceled in time.  The “adult” industry made this practice an artform and free was kicked hard yet again.

Credit reporting services brought both of these together to deliver a deadly blow to free.  Rather than go to the government’s weakly promoted annualcreditreport.com, where a consumer can truly download a credit report from every agency once every year for no cost; the credit reporting firms promoted their own “free” solutions which require a trial of a credit monitoring solution.  No matter what it says in the url, if a consumer doesn’t watch out they will end up with a monthly bill for their zero cost credit report.

Free had a bit of resurgence with peer to peer downloading, but getting something for free that you are supposed to pay for is just as wrong as thinking you are getting something for free and then paying for it.  The big difference is the lawsuits that were directed at the biggest users of free downloading.   The legal bills made this anything but free.

I’m certain that you have been hurt many more times than I could ever chronicle.  I feel for you.  Once such a noble word.  Now people assume you are part of a deception.

People have tried to revive you by adding 100% in front of your forsaken name, but to no avail.  Even the words completely and totally have no effect on you anymore, my poor lost free.

It is time that we move on and agree that you mean nothing now.

So how can we marketers tell people we won’t be charging them?   I have to admit I’m a bit lost without you free.  Could someone send me a free hug?

It’s important to remember that as a business owner, you are a part of the representation of your brand.  There are restaurants that I no longer frequent because the owners were rude or arrogant to others even outside of the restaurant.  I’m sure that there are plenty of examples that anyone else can think of where a senior business person’s personal behavior affected your opinion of their products.

My simple rule of thumb is to assume that whatever you do gets published to the Yahoo homepage.  I used to use the newspaper, but they seem to lack the cultural relevance anymore.  That goes for everything from business deals to personal attitudes.  Consumers want to have a real relationship with their brands.  Make sure management behavior isn’t a reason they could choose to leave.  Living your brand is an important axiom.

Part of the answer is to think like small business or startup.  Use resources that are cheap or free that can still tell you about what people think of your produce.

Go to google or yahoo.  Search for your brand and the word “sucks.”  Compare that to your competitors.  “McDonalds Sucks” gives 1.77M pages, while “Burger king sucks“  delivers about 700K.  Your detractors may not be eloquent, but its likely thay have something interesting to say and have taken the time to do so in a very public forum.  If you find one or two insights out of a search engine tour, you’ve just saved the $50K you might have spent on a formal market research report to tell you the same thing.

I will say it takes a bit of a strong stomach to endure the vitriol of so many angry customers, but in the end it will make you and your brand better in the long run.

At the newspaper, our receptionist was not very friendly, even to employees.  However she was very efficient at screening individuals and visitors to make sure they are in the right place.  For a business like a newspaper that could have any number of people approach with less than pure intentions, she was the right choice.

However, if you are in the business of pleasing customers in your place of business a completely different approach is important.  I recently needed service on my car after a belt broke.  When we called to schedule an appointment with service the first person that we talked to was the dealerships receptionist.  She was unfriendly to the point of being rude, but at least she could connect us to the service department’s voice mail.

We left a message and had our car dropped off in the morning.  The service department did everything right.  We had our car repaired very quickly, for less than we had expected, and they told us we could pick up our car after the service department had closed.

We arrived around 7:30, straight from work with two kids in the car.  The sales people on the floor acted as if we were asking for a miracle to retrieve our car.  But at least they seemed sort of willing to help.  Then we saw our friend the receptionist.  She curtly reminded me that the service department closed at 6:00.  In the sort of tone that let me know that I was clearly an idiot.  She also told me that the two departments (sales and service) were different businesses.  Eventually the sales people found my keys and ran my credit card to have me pay.  I was certain they had done it several times before, but they made me feel like they had done me a favor.

Here’s my criticism of the dealership.  To me, the customer, there is only one dealership.  If I wanted I could very easily take my car to an independent repair shop.  Even if they run to a different P and L, to the customer service department and sales are the same.  It’s pretty likely that I’ve chosen to pay the higher price a the dealership because I believe that I will get better service.

Second.  If the receptionist is there to bridge the gap between the two sides of the dealership she should be empowered to do so.  It would have taken her just as much time and effort to express sympathy and concern as her consternation for my daring to show up after hours and expect my car.   Even though the service department had told me it wasn’t an issue and they did it all the time.

Third.  I know that sales people don’t make money helping people for service.  Not directly at least.  I was the only soul in the place and that was apparent to me.  They could help me or surf the Internet for the next 20 minutes.  Only one of those two has any chance of a future sale.  Their obvious lack of consideration for the long term ramifications of treating me like I was bothering them made me far less likely to be that purchaser.  If they did their homework they would have realized that I have owned three cars by this same manufacturer, and this one was about 7 years old.  It just had some sort of problem, so it’s pretty likely that I’m at least beginning to consider what my next car will be.  They missed a golden opportunity to leave me with a positive impression for a future sale.

The brand in this case is the sum of the experience.  I’ve been very happy with my car.  The service department performed quite well.  The receptionist and sales department’s condescending attitudes and general snobbishness left me with such a bad taste that its quite likely that I’ll stop with this brand at 3, as they are by far the nearest dealer.  Two in the pro column and two in the con isn’t likely to engender loyalty.

The brand in this case is Subaru.  The type of quirky brand that needs good word of mouth to succeed.  The tow truck driver had never driven one, and was impressed by how nice it was, to illustrate my point.  They have had it in the past with reliable cars that fill unique needs.  They lost it for me this week with a rude receptionist and shortsighted salespeople.