America Online (AOL) Disc

In the early 1990s most Americans had little awareness of the internet, and no experience using it. America Online (AOL) brought the internet to a mass market through a vast and famously aggressive direct mailing campaign that sent free trial discs to millions of homes.

Jan Brandt became Chief Marketing Officer at AOL in 1993. She wagered that the best marketing for such an unfamiliar service would let people experience the internet firsthand. More than ten percent of the recipients of AOL’s first direct mailing campaign signed up. This 3.5-inch floppy disk was mailed around 1995. It included fifteen hours of free AOL access.

AOL went on to spend hundreds of millions on what was known as its “carpet bombing” strategy, though the exact number and cost of the discs given away is unknown. As the number of AOL users swelled to around eight million by 1996, AOL discs became ubiquitous in America’s mailboxes and the log-on greeting “You’ve got mail” permeated the cultural consciousness. In addition to direct mailing, AOL eventually began distributing free discs through Blockbuster video rental stores, Barnes & Noble bookstores, banks, and other businesses that served broader markets. They even bundled floppy discs in packages of frozen Omaha steaks. The campaign eventually transitioned to giving away CDs, which had gradually replaced floppy discs as the preferred medium for home software installation. Brandt has claimed that at the campaign’s height, fifty percent of all CDs produced globally were AOL demo discs.