On Sunday, I was jogging around False Creek in downtown Vancouver, and stumbled upon Wake West 2004, a wakeboarding competition. If you, like me, are fuzzy on what wakeboarding is, consider the follow equation: wakeboarding is to water-skiing as snowboarding is to skiing. Clear?
As I approached the event location, I passed a bunch of people walking the other way with orange popsicles. Sure enough, I came upon several orange-clad reps from ING Direct, a Canadian virtual bank. They had a cart, and were giving away popsicles and ING Direct brochures to anybody who wanted them.
I jogged by, and had to come to a stop because of the crowds along the waterfront. There I spotted two Clubzone guys with a cart. They were selling Clubzone-branded bottles of water for a buck apiece. I heard somebody nearby say to his friend, with a hint of biterness in his voice, “I can buy those bottles at CostCo for 25 cents…that’s pretty good margin.”
Clearly, Clubzone had had a negative impact on this potential consumer, and his friend. What’s the lesson? If you’re promoting your company, give stuff away.
On a related note, I’ve seen Clubzone’s branding everywhere–on posters, stickers and a million discarded brochures outside nightclubs. The last point already put a bad taste in my mouth.
DarrenBarefoot.com 
A few weeks ago on a rare night out at Crush (?) on Granville, they gave away Clubzone water bottles at closing. A pretty good idea, I thought, to dispense water to potential dehydration victims.
I wonder about the meaning behind giving water away to drunks and charging sober people…
ING is actually an international bank based in the Netherlands. ING stands for ‘Internationale Nederlanden Group’. They are completely web based and are very good at appealing to the many countries that they offer services in. Personally, I think they are the wave of the future.
On a side note, I HIGHLY recommend ING Direct.
i love my ing account.
Just so you know, the “free popsicles” are not all they are cracked up to be. While rollerblading with my girlfriend and a buddy a few weekends ago, we came across the ING guys, and in our attempts to stop and get the popsicles, there was a bit of a rollerblade crash.
So “free” has turned into $150/hour therapy.
Kidding kidding… it wasn’t that bad. The popsicle was good. And my girlfriend uses ING and recommends them to me. Mostly cause I think she gets $13 or something 😉
If anyone wants to get in on the $13 deal from ING, let me know. Unless things have changed in the past 2 weeks, I still have the option to give people access to a deal where ING deposits $13 in your account.