I usually don't give away anything for free, but I have to give props to the marketing team of Chick-Fil-A.
According to the radio yesterday, and as talked about at work by nearly everyone I spoke with, there is a new "free-standing" Chick-Fil-A opening in Camden (a town five minutes south of Dover) near the super Walmart. While that isn't that interesting, this certain is: part of their "grand opening" was to offer free meal combos once a week for a year for the first 100 people that showed up when it opened today at 6 AM. And what is even more quirky is that people started camping out around 8 am yesterday morning. I drove by the place last night to get a frame of reference and I counted 15 or so tents. I would say that their marketing ploy worked like a charm.
Now, the trick was that you would get 52 combos of choice, or one per week for one year. I'm assuming they are only good at that Chick-Fil-A. So on its face, this would cost the national office/local chain (assuming a $5/meal average) around $250 person (assuming they used up all 52 coupons). Multiply that for 100 people and the total incurred cost (less advertising and other related marketing expenses) is roughly $25,000. I would guess the actual cost will be about half that, if not less, for a number of practical reasons. Regardless, this free-combo-a-day-giveaway is marketing cleverness worth mentioning and a relatively inexpensive campaign for the buzz they created by this gimmick.
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