Morrie the Toupee Salesman

Chris Anderson’s latest pontification  - that the key to marketing is that a lot of stuff is mostly given away now - has produced a lot of discussion on the web. He gives the example of giving away the razors in order to sell the blades (clearly he hasn’t bought a razor recently, though given the way he looks that seems hard to believe). One of the funnier observations I found out there on the web is someone wondering if he’s going to give away his book.

Anyway, someone extolling the value of “free” is, it seems to me, one of the key harbingers of imminent bubble bursting apocalypse.  And Mr. Anderson’s piece seems to suffer from a really bad case of bad timing. With the continued drop in the US $, forget free, because it sure seems like the era of cheap is coming to an end.

On that note, Canadian bookstores are just fascinating places to be these days. With giant signs at the entrances announcing how hard they’re working to reduce prices, they truly seem to be suffering - having  a “gouge factor” permanently labelled on their products is not good for business. They mostly seem to be holding out for the economist-predicted rebound of the US $.

I have bad news for them. There’s basically two kinds of economic forecasts - the extend the line to the right method, and the “wishful thinking” method. I think predictions of a rebound in the US currency are definitely in the wishful thinking category.