The best marketing is the kind that provides a company huge bang for no buck at all.
Tell everyone you'll give your product away for free if something impossible happens--like the Giants winning the Super Bowl--and then sit back confidently that you'll never have to pay up.
The only problem is if the impossible becomes possible.
Dr. Pepper is promising everyone in America a free can of soda if Axl Rose completes and ships his 17-years-in-the-making epic album "Chinese Democracy" in 2008. See the whole spiel at www.chinesedemocracywhen.blogspot.com.
DP spokeswoman Jaxie Alt (which looks like an anagrm of Axl Rose) says the soda maker can relate to the artistic process, "and fully understands that sometimes you have to make it through the jungle before you get it right."
But if Rose gets the job done, the company, a division of Cadbury Schweppes , risks losing money on 300 million cans of soda (minus two: disgruntled former GNR guitarists Slash and Buckethead are not eligible).