As a follow-up on my internet access in hotels/hostels post, here’s a thought:

When access to the Internet is free, most people regulate themselves: they’ll check their mails and facebook, maybe have a whiff of what’s going on in the world, and that’s about it. If someone is waiting around, the current user will let them take over.

When people are paying for their Internet access though, it’s different. You don’t want to throw money away (after all ,you paid for that time), so you want to make the most of it, and end up checking the special offers on Amazon. While others are waiting.

Take me for instance: I’m smack in the middle of a 3-week vacation in Japan, and here I am blogging about internet access and hostels, just to make sure I’m not throwing 20￥away.

Wow, long time without a post! I need to get more serious about posting frequency.

So here I am, back from a road trip across California, with yet another example of dusty business models that make you want to shake your head. In a little more than two weeks, I’ve seen more than a dozen hotels, hostels and motels. In each and everyone of them, my friend Steven tried to access the Internet through WiFi, and,  finding myself without anything better to do at those times, I started noticing the following trend: Full fledged hotels want to make you pay for WiFi access, while youth hostels and model don’t. Without any kind of insider information, I can only guess how this came:

When the new and expensive wireless technology became available, large hotels were the only/first ones able to afford it. Smelling the possibility of adding value to their customers’ experience, they proposed a service that clients liked and were glad to pay for.

Fast forward for couple of years to a world were wireless Internet technology is much more affordable. Smaller businesses (motels, youth hostels), in an effort to stand out, decided to offer the very same service, except for free. Now that it cost almost nothing, it wouldn’t impede their margin much, and would make for a nice gesture for their clients; after all, nobody likes to stay away from news and mail, nowadays. And sitting all the way across the ring are the hotels, used to take that money from their customers, who still don’t see why it would ever change.

Too bad for them of course, as they are now comparatively under-serving their customers. All of this just because they were busy looking the other way (voluntarily or otherwise) while free internet access became the norm.

I thought I’d take a minute out of my sitting and watching the recording industry drown itself to talk about a band doing the right thing to stand out. As music is a pretty subjective topic, I’ll do so in the perspective of marketing only, even though you gotta love what they’re doing.

TRV$ DJ-AM is a duo with Travis Barker, drummer, and DJ-AM, well, DJ. Travis Barker is a world-renowned drummer who happens to be at the center of a polemic on whether he f*cking s*cks at drums or if he is the Drum God. I keep explaining naysayers that nobody outside the relatively small cast of drummers really cares whether he can beat faster or better than others (whatever that means), and that he’s appreciated for his style and musical choices, but this has so far fallen on deaf hears. Anyway.

Because both of them are pretty famous, they probably could have sold this music, but chose instead to put their whole mixtape for download on their website. Since I heard it from the first time, I’ve been addicted. To support them further, I decided a week ago to buy a T-Shirt from them. But the box I received yesterday just so happened to be filled with stickers and a CD of their mixtape.

“Under-promise and over-deliver” is a golden rule of business. Here, by sending me substantially more than what I asked (and payed) for, the band exceeded my expectations. Before that, I had gone around and mention this band quite a lot, but only to those I usually talk music with. But now the band’s given me another reason to tell friends about them: “Did you know that when you order a just a T-shirt, they send you their mixtape AND 12 stickers in various sizes?”

Additionally, what comes on top of my order are not products that are just for me to enjoy. Both the stickers and the CD help me advertise the band: stickers I’m going to stick all around, and as I already have the music, I’m going pass the CD to people who might not be able to download it from Net. Seth Godin did something similar with his latest book, Tribes: I pre-ordered the book but received two copies. This kind of initiative delivers a powerful message: “You bought a T-Shirt from us / preordered my book,  so I’ve identified you as a fan. Now here’s your mission: spread the word”.

And spread the word I will.