A Gift with Conditions
Is a gift with conditions still a gift?
Cineplex emailed me a few weeks ago to offer me an "anniversary gift" for being a loyal Cineclub member: a free small popcorn.
"That's a nice surprise," I thought, "I'll use that when I go to see my next movie."
Except I wouldn't. Because the gift came with conditions: the voucher was only valid from August 12th to August 16th. The email was sent on August 11th, meaning the gift had to be redeemed almost immediately to be useful.
It's both perfectly normal and perfectly acceptable to attach conditions to offers. Those conditions are usually necessary to clearly outline the terms of the deal and to protect the company from those who would seek to abuse it.
But an offer isn't a gift.
And you shouldn't call it as such, because as soon as you do, you change what your consumers expect from you.
Once you give a gift, what happens to it is up to the recipient.
Is it used? Appreciated? Cherished? Discarded? None of that should matter to you, the gift-giver, once the exchange has happened.
If you present me with an "offer" for a free small popcorn only on certain days, that's fine. If I can redeem that offer, great! And if I can't, that's okay too: it was my choice not to go to the theatre on those days, and the fact that I was able to make that choice likely means I won't begrudge you in any way.
But if you "gift" me a free small popcorn, then I want to be able to use it whenever I want. Because as soon as you make that gift expire, you're making me suffer from loss aversion.
As my friend Ben Wise stated so well in one of his Captivate newsletters:
The moment [it] becomes theirs, losing it feels twice as painful as gaining it. Our brains are wired to protect what we have, not chase what we want. The “ouch” of a loss is way bigger than the “hey, cool” of a gain. Evolution made us hoarders, not gamblers.
(To wit, I don't usually get popcorn at the movies: I'm more of a nachos-tray kind of guy. I only cared about the popcorn when I realized I couldn't have it. Loss aversion!)
So, is a gift with conditions still a gift?
No, it isn't.
Make an offer, or don't.
Give a gift, or don't.
Just don't confuse the two, or expect your customers not to notice the difference.
