It’s always interesting to see the different ways people use to change behaviour, and there’s often a lot to learn from a marketing perspective. I just read about the Romanian  city of Cluj-Napoca where an initiative called Travel By Book was launched this summer.

Passengers reading a book on the cities public transport system get to travel for free. The idea is to promote literacy and eco-friendly travel simultaneously and is a collaboration between a literacy advocate and the cities major.

When you have a product which you’d like people to try (in this case, the public transport system) you often have to come up with a reason that people can try it for free. Otherwise existing customers will get annoyed. So the ‘read a book’ proviso serves a double purpose.

Hopefully this will spark an idea – how could you get people to try your product or service without devaluing it by giving it away without conditions?