Would you tattoo the Domino's logo on yourself to get free pizza?
Machine translation from the original post. Not reviewed by a human translator. Historical claims may no longer be current.
Would you tattoo the Domino's logo on yourself to get free pizza?
One morning in 2018, Domino's Pizza did something really unexpected.
They offered **free pizza for life** (100 pizzas a year for 100 years) to anyone who got a tattoo of their logo.
They thought maybe 3-4 crazy people would go for it.
But within just 5 days more than 350 people tattooed the Domino's logo on their bodies! The campaign was so crazy that they had to stop it early.
That's what's called free, but with a twist - get something completely free, but only if you do something ridiculous (and a bit crazy) for it.
Most marketers are sure that "free" is powerful.
But the truth is that free is something that gets forgotten.
What really works is getting people to **earn** something through an extraordinary, challenging, funny experience.
The weirder the challenge, the greater the chance it goes viral.
Here are 15 more examples of "get it free" challenges that went viral and became stories:
1. 🏴☠️ Krispy Kreme gave free donuts to anyone who talked like a pirate.
2. 🩸 HBO gave Game of Thrones branded merchandise to people who donated blood.
3. 🧑🏻💻 Amazon gave smart speakers (Echo Dot) to anyone who developed an Alexa Skill.
4. 📱 OnePlus sold phones for $1 to anyone who smashed their old phone and documented it.
5. 🍕 Domino's gave free pizza for life to anyone who got a tattoo of the logo.
6. 🖲️ Google gave a Home Mini to anyone who played a silly game in their store.
7. ✨ The Broadway musical "My First Time" gave free tickets to anyone who proved they were a virgin (with a human lie detector).
8. 📵 Vitaminwater offered $100,000 to anyone who would give up a smartphone for a year.
9. 🎨 Canva gave free access to advanced features to anyone who took part in a design contest.
10. 📡 T-Mobile covered the early termination fee for anyone who wrote a breakup letter to their previous mobile carrier.
11. 🌮 Taco Bell gave free tacos if a player managed to "steal a base" in the US baseball league (the World Series).
12. 💻 Inventr gave huge discounts to anyone who found a secret password in a Facebook group.
13. 🍔 Burger King gave Whoppers to their TikTok followers if BK followed them back.
14. 🐈 Meow Mix gave cat food to anyone who listened to their jingle for 12 hours.
15. 🚕 Lyft gave free rides to anyone who deleted the Uber app.
It's amusing, and it works. But why does it work so well?
Because people value what they worked for much more than what they got easily.
It's a known psychological phenomenon called the IKEA effect - if you built it yourself, you become attached to the product because you invested in it.
And the bonus?
📢 The media covers it
📸 People share the experience
💰 The marketing budget barely moves, and the attention is sky high
👇 What funny free challenge did you take part in recently?
Source: Tom's Marketing Ideas newsletter
