1 Year of Free Crap

Over the years I've seen a lot of free products handed out in the business district of Toronto, entire cases of bottled water, bars of cheese, bagged breakfasts, pop, juice, milk, gum, candy, one bag frozen dinners and pizzas. Its not just food either, I've been given hardback books, magazines, reusable shopping bags and the daily deluge of newspapers from companies trying to artificially pump up their distribution numbers. I suppose its because this area contains both a relatively affluent demographic and a target rich environment with tens of thousands of potential customers herding themselves into and out of the core every week day.

Over time I've seen people run, line and push up for some bit of free food like they've never seen any before when just seconds earlier they ignored real poor people asking for food/money on the street. I've seen same people hover about, circle around and visit more than one lineup in order to fill up every pocket they have with free crap.

Occassionaly in great acts of stupidity companies have given out the same product in the same location, several times a week for several weeks. Coming into work the next I would find people who had 7 or 8 bottles of Frank's Red Hot sauce on their desks. I'm not talking about little tiny Tabasco sized sample bottles but 3-4 ounce bottles of both wing sauce and straight Frank's Red Hot sauce.



The entire thing just irks me!

The insanity of giving people frozen Thai food containing chicken just before they commute for an hour is only slightly less than that of the people who took the Thai food, knowing they faced a one hour commute in 32 deg celcius weather.

The inhumanity of giving out an entire truckload of free frozen food to employed people without bringing a couple lousy submarine sandwitches for the people who live on that street corner day in day out.

Its quite bizzare that I constantly see new products for the first and last time when they offer it to me free. I don't know much about marketing but considering how many of these products seem to fail I don't think handing it out free is really that effective. Never have I received something so good that I rushed out and asked my local store to stock it. "Not bad for the price" is about the average for these products.

At this moment I'm unsure if I should act insane for the sake of the blog and see how much stuff I can accumulate in a 1 year period or just photgraph each occassion I see a give away. Let me know what you think.