Author: Seth Godin
Publisher: Portfolio Hardcover
Year Published: 2004
Rating: 
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Free Prize Inside is marketing guru, Seth Godin’s newest book, released in May 2004. The book is a persuasive (and self motivational) argument for how you can lead your company to a competitive advantage with soft innovations and what he calls the ‘free prize.’ Here are the quick definitions in his words:
A soft innovation is what you, the marketer, see. If it catches on and becomes something the consumer wants, it is now a free prize.A free prize is the essence of a Purple Cow. Generally, a free prize has two key characteristics. First, it’s the thing about your service, your product or your organization that’s worth remarking on, something worth seeking out and buying. (Alas, most soft innovations never become free prizes, because most soft innovations aren’t remarkable.) Second, a free prize is not about what a person needs. Instead, it satisfies our wants. It is fashionable or fun or surprising or delightful or sad. It rarely delivers more of what we were buying in the first place. It delivers something extra.
A product or service that carries a free prize is a Purple Cow.
Purple Cows were the subject of Seth’s last book – about how you never drive down the road and see a purple cow. Some are white or black or brown, but if you were to see a purple cow, it would stand out from all the others and get your attention.
The way to do that is to offer a free prize. Remember when you were a kid and you bought the box of cracker jacks or cereal for that special toy that was really cool? That’s the free prize. Stuff like “25% more” and “now in purple” aren’t innovative to make people stand back and say wow – that’s cool! But the teenie beanie babies in McDonald’s happy meals were all the rage a few years back – so much so that people told cashiers they didn’t even want the food – just give them the free prize. And some people even collect cereal boxes, not to mention the free toy!
While to some, the “free prize” may seem like just another marketing gimmick – until it becomes part of your product, that is. When people start to find it remarkable, that’s when it transforms into the free prize.
The trouble with “free prizes” is not coming up with the ideas but selling them to others in your organization. Ideas are free, and Godin points out Idea-A-Day.com to show that anyone can come up with an idea. Ideas are all around us. And that site will even email you an idea every day. Sure, not all are great ideas, but the point is to get you thinking about what’s wrong and how you might go about fixing it.
But selling ideas to your organization is where the problems come into play. Once you tell others about your idea, they immediately ask three questions:
1) Is it going to be successful?
2) Is it worth doing?
3) Do you have the ability to champion the project?
If your co-workers can’t honestly say “yes” to all three of these questions, they won’t back you up and your idea will die a quick death. Godin explains the correct way to reveal an idea is to first champion and complete something easy – like lunch. If you can convince people that the restaurant of your choosing is a good choice, then take all the orders, buy all the food, and distribute it appropriately, you’ve made a great first step towards demonstrating your capabilities. The next step would be to champion something a bit more complex and so forth until you’ve won the respect of your co-workers and think they’re ready to support you in other areas.
Finally, the third part of the book is a broad overview of what makes a great “free prize.” He quickly dismisses three of the common answers people give: price, value, and quality and explains his concept of “edgecraft” – how to find an edge (or slant) that makes your product or service remarkable and then have the courage to follow it through.
You must go all the way to the edge. Accepting second best doesn’t make sense. Running a restaurant where the free prize is your slightly attractive waitstaff won’t work – they’ve got to be supermodels or weight lifters or identical twins. You only create a free prize when you go all the way to the edge and create something remarkable.
Godin then goes on to explain a number of different edges and companies that used that edge to create a “free prize.” I won’t list them all because there are quite a few – if you pick up the book, I’m sure you’ll find at least one that will fit your company.
Overall, Godin’s book is a great resource for those looking to make their products and services remarkable. One of the best things about this book is that it provides the framework for how to pitch any idea you might come up with – because whenever you try to get others on board behind your idea, you’re marketing!
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