[btilly]

When you have a new product, sometimes people need to be given it to figure out how to use it.

A classic example is Post-It notes. It sounded like something that nobody wanted. And it wasn't until 3M gave it to companies for free and found that 90% of them reordered that it began to see adoption. So the fact that a company hands out samples for free may just be a good marketing technique, and not bribery.

See https://www.ideatovalue.com/insp/nickskillicorn/2017/04/true... for a random link verifying the Post-It story.

[slipframe]

3M's target audience for post-it notes was offices, so they gave them away to offices.

Amazon's target audience for Ring is homeowners, so they gave them away to... not randomly selected homeowners. It sounds like they specifically gave them to police.