A lot of crazy promotions are. Jordan's Furniture (in Massachusetts) ran a promotion where if the Red Sox won the world series, all furniture purchased in the month before would be free. Their radio ads actually answered "How are you doing this? With an insurance policy. That way, if the Red Sox win, we can be happy too." And the Red Sox
did win the pennant, and lots of people got free furniture.
http://abcnews.go.com/Business/PersonalFinance/Story?id=3771...A bunch of crazy dot-coms were also funded with insurance policies, eg. treeloot.com (the infamous punch-the-monkey ads). Berkshire Hathaway annual reports often describe a bunch of them, as they're often the ones underwriting them.
