Free Prize Inside

The next BIG Marketing Idea

Seth Godin

 “A Free Prize isn't a gimmick. Its a game-changing soft innovation; a cool twist that does not cost a fortune but that transforms the way people think about your product or service.”

 Building on the concept of the need for Remarkable businesses and products discussed in Purple Cow, Seth Godin digs deeper into how to create and promote 'remarkable' products in Free Prize Inside. For the most part, people are looking for more than just the product they say they need, and it is the added features or design, or style that will set you apart from the competition.

 A Free Prize is the thing about your product or company that is worth remarking on – worth seeking. It is not about needs, it is about wants – fashion, fun, etc. Selling a company or organization on doing something new is best not done ad-hoc, and Free Prize goes through a methodology on selling and idea internally.

 One key way to innovate is “Edgecraft”- finding the thing about your product that people really want to buy – taking any parameter of your product, and pushing it to the extremes. Some of the many “edgecraft” examples included for thought here are: Creating a conversation, address overlooked senses, making a product very safe or very dangerous, minimize or maximize packaging, bundle or unbundle, micro-size or macro-size it. The obvious edges don't usually work.

 Other Nuggets

• Embrace amazing design. Build a way to communicate your product into your product.

• Your new idea or innovation does your marketing for you.

• One of the biggest challenges is always selling the innovation idea. Most companies do not do it easily, and are not set up to be innovative.

• Ideas need Champions, Having Champions can be more important than innovating.

• It is important innovations do not get watered down my mediocrity.

• One study: 4 people working on their own come up with twice the output of 4 people working together.

• This book also included the classic “Really Bad PowerPoint”

• If all you do is lower your price, you have not created a free prize, but have initiated a price war.

• If people are not blown away, they will not talk about it.