"Give sh*t away and everyone shows up..."

We had an employee event today where the Mobile team was doing a dog & pony show. I got there towards the end and noticed it was very crowded. I was pretty impressed until I found out they were raffling off an iPhone every hour which is the real reason why everyone was there. Soon as they had the drawing, the room thinned out and got crowded again an hour later for the next drawing.

It used to be iPod giveaways that drew the crowd so it's natural that we start giving away an iPhone. While it's really great to win an iPhone, it kinda sucks since you have to sign up for $2K of service fees from AT&T to get the device activated.

I sometimes wonder what percentage of iPods sold were part of giveaways to draw interest.

As one senior exec put it "Give sh*t away and everyone shows up..."