It’s the whole chicken and egg thing. You know, which came first: the public’s perception that nothing is free or a marketer’s ingenious message-disseminating techniques? (Ok, ingenious or devilish? I went back and forth here. Devilish nearly won, but I felt like a magician telling tricks of the trade, and I just couldn’t sink that low.) Today I had the honor of helping the Honda Dealers of San Diego County offer free* waterless car washes to visitors at Plaza Bonita mall.

I know, you want to know what the catch is. So did everyone else– even those visitors standing in front of the two-sided sandwich board with the word “FREE” written in one-foot tall letters.

Marketers have overused the four-letter word to a degree that we have actually altered its definition. It no longer means “at no cost;” it means “at no cost as long as you do what the little asteric at the bottom of the pages tells you to do.” At the car washes today, I enjoyed watching partakers walk through the process of elimination until they felt safe that something can truly cost nothing.

And with no catch.

And a truly free gesture, even one as simple as a waterless car wash, makes people genuinely happy. That’s a sight rarely seen these days.

* If those 100 people can just each tell ten of their friends about the free car wash from the Honda Dealers, then…