Yeah, you heard right - free tickets…. but only if you’ve got clout and status on Twitter (and of course certain dates / locations apply)

Virgin America ariline, in collaboration with Twitter analytics service Klout, is now offering a free flight to anyone who has serious influence on the micro-blogging site. Klout determines a user’s influence by analyzing several variables — including an individual’s followers, tweets and retweets — in order to calculate a Klout score from 0 to 100. According to Mashable, the offer includes a free, Wi-Fi-equipped round-trip flight between Toronto and either San Francisco or Los Angeles, and is valid any time between June 23rd and August 23rd. Selected influencers will also be invited to Virgin America’s Toronto Launch Event on June 29th, even if they decline the free flight.

After Virgin extends the offer, however, it won’t require users to tweet about the company or their experience. “We do not want to ‘buy’ your tweets. You are receiving the product because you are influential and have authority on topics related to the product,” Klout explained in a recent blog post. “This is a more targeted form of receiving a sample while shopping at the grocery store. You are welcome to tell the world you love the product, you hate the product or say nothing at all.”

Read more here

Tomorrow is national donut day, and in celebration of this glorious holiday, Dunkin’ Donuts is offering every guest a free donut of their choice, with the purchase of any beverage.

Also on National Donut Day, Dunkin’ Donuts will announce the winner of its second annual “Create Dunkin’s Next Donut” contest. From nearly 90,000 donut creations submitted online, a dozen finalists traveled to Dunkin’ Donuts University inBraintree, Massachusetts earlier this month to compete in a bake-off competition before Dunkin’ Donuts’ culinary team and company leaders.  One of the 12 finalists will win a $12,000 grand prize and have their winning donut sold in participating Dunkin’ Donuts restaurants throughout the country.

Today’s little history lesson: National Donut Day, held the first Friday of June each year, was founded by the Chicago Salvation Army in 1938 to honor the women who served donuts to soldiers in World War I.

So be sure to hit up DD on your way to the office tomorrow morning. (Double chocolate with sprinkles is the way to go).

Source: PR Newswire

FreeAllMusic.com, which began a test version for invited users on Dec. 22 and plans to open to the public in January, will allow users to download songs, which may be copied and shared — unencumbered, in other words, by digital rights management restrictions.

In return, instead of paying 99 cents a song as on iTunes, users must first watch a 15- to 30-second advertisement.

“It’s iTunes meets Hulu,” said Richard Nailling, chief executive of FreeAllMusic.

Two of the four major labels have signed with the service and will provide their full digital catalogs, said Mr. Nailling, who declined to name the labels. Six advertisers are on board for the site’s debut, he added, including Coca-Cola, Warner Brothers Television and Zappos.com.

Source: New York Times

Riding on the coat tails of highly successful wi-fi give-a-ways from Google and Microsoft, Yahoo is now joining the club. In support of their promise “to be in the center of people’s online lives”, they will be providing free wi-fi in New York City’s Times Square for the next year. Everyone loves free stuff, so it’s no surprise this has become a popular tactic for online search engine providers.

Read more at paidcontent.org

Some local McDonald’s franchisees are making friends with computers in busy cities by giving them free rail tickets and coupons for its burgers. In Denver, street teams met commuters headed to the Denver Broncos game and handed them free round trip, one-day rail passes, along with coupons for a free Angus Third Pounder, a new menu item at McDonald’s. Denver is the third stop on the firm’s national “Try Free, Ride Free” tour.

The promotion continues throughout the month with additional stops in busy metropolitan cities aimed at people riding the rails, including Chicago, Dallas, Baltimore and Washington, DC. In Atlanta, for example, riders are offered complimentary one-way Breeze tickets and free Angus Third Pounders.

Source: Promo Magazine

Today, July 21, 2009, the coffee chain giant Starbucks is offering a free pastry with purchase of a coffee drink from opening until 10:30 a.m. local time—or until the pastry supply runs out. All you need to do is bring in the printed coupon, available for download from their brand site, Twitter page or Facebook page. If you don’t want to print, the Facebook page contains a URL for a mobile version of the coupon so you can simply show a barista your cellphone screen and qualify for the free goodie. 

Print and enjoy ! (Even though it is bagel Tuesday….)

Denny’s is at it again…. they’re offering another free breakfast to their loyal consumers. This time, there’s a bit of spin to it. The fast food chain is asking customers to bring in a friend who could use a free meal. The promo is being positioned as a “random acts of kindness campaign”, that the chain hopes to spread across the country. So, bring a friend to a Denny’s near you on April 8th, between 6am and 2pm and treat them to a Grand Slamwich for free, when you purchase a Grand Slamwich of your own.

The free breakfast for friends campaign will be promoted with a TV spot, airing tomorrow, and having prime placement during the NCAA final championship game on Monday. This is very similar to how they promoted their first free Grand Slam Breakfast giveaway. Hopefully, it will work again for them and they will have lines around the block at their restaurants.

There’s nothing like giving away something for free to grab attention, especially in today’s economy! Last week Denny’s first aired that they would be running a promotion to give away free Grand Slam breakfasts ($5.99 value) at their restaurant on February 4th between 6am and 2pm, and people listened. Lines snaked around the nationwide restaurant chain all morning the day of the promotion, and Denny’s estimates they served approximately 1,400 Grand Slams at each of their 1,541 locations (a whopping 2,157,400 breakfasts!).  This was FIVE TIMES their normal patron volume. Check out the following article from CNN to see why the SuperBowl ad touting a free breakfast may help increase Denny’s overall market share in the fastfood segment - Denny’s free breakfast grand slam