I think Les Schwab is doing something right. If case you haven’t seen the ads on TV, Les Schwab is giving away free beef with the purchase of new tires. Free Beef! Are you hearing me people? Buy tires, get free beef. It’s marketing genius, and they’ve been doing it for years. After all, when it comes to closing a tire sale, nothing sweetens the pot like red meat.
I can only imagine how this promotion came to pass:
Customer (hesitantly): “Well, the warranty is good, and the price is right… but I’m just not sure…”
Salesman: “Alright, you’re twistin’ my arm here, but how ’bout I throw in a big hunk of raw meat and we call it a deal?”
Customer: “Sold!!!”
The marketing team at Les Schwab apparently studied their key tire-buying demographic and reached this conclusion:
1. Let’s face it, vegetarians don’t buy tires.
2. The tire-buying public are all bloodthirsty carnivores.
With this in mind, they knew that offering “Free Salad!” with every tire purchase would get them nowhere. And thus, the free beef campaign was born.
To fully appreciate the brilliance of this promotion, we need to understand their use of two seemingly unrelated products. They combined tires and beef into complimentary goods. First of all, this promotion could never succeed with other products. Can you imagine: “Buy a Home Pregnancy Test, Get Free Beef!” or “Buy Tires, Get a Free Nipple-Piercing!” Because of this campaign, beef and tires now go together like peanut butter and jelly. You almost can’t imagine one without the other. And therein lies the genius.
Finally, speaking as a man that eats six servings of red meat per day, this is a dream come true. How many times do I find myself making two special trips for both tires and beef? This promotion by Les Schwab is one stop shopping, at it’s best.
This has nothing to do with free beef. I completely agree with the marketing logic.
However, I am just curious why there is a “pinballin” category when you haven’t created a posting for it?
RE: pinballin’ category
As soon as I double-check all my facts, locations, and sources, I am going to post some entries in the pinballin’ category that will ignite an inferno in the world of pinball enthusiasts the likes of which you haven’t seen since they replaced the old, easily chipped, wooden pinballs with the new steel ones. Get ready to have your hair blown back!
What you are missing about the free beef concept is the beef itself. Les Schwab is not sitting atop the Forbes five hundred. So obviously the gimic of giving away free beef, sparked into some dirty tire dealers mind one day as he watched a McDonald’s shipping truck break open in front of him in a major accident. As he saw that low grade beef flying through the air along side pieces of tire the thought hit him like a double shot of 151. Americans love to gorge themselves on meat products refused by the pet food industry. As an expert on all things edible I would rather grill up some snow treads than the month old carcass that is provided to me by a hairy high school drop out who is covered in oil head to toe.
The point of giving away free beef is to say “thanks” to all of its farming accounts by promoting their beef. And for the record, it is not low grade beef.