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Summary: Get the book and get an edge...
Review: Godin scores another marketing masterpiece. In Free Prize Inside he gives solid examples to support his theories and ideas. Find out what edgecraft is and how it can help you succeed! Once you buy the book, visit the site (http://www.freeprizeinside.com) for some helpful and amusing thoughts on powerpoint.
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Summary: Lost faith in Seth Godin as a marketing guru after this book
Review: GODIN wrote about the new way of customer and prospect communication in PERMISSION MARKETING -- a must read. He then got bold and told us about differentiation by creating something completely out-of-the-ordinary such as a PURPLE COW -- agreeable airplane literature. Now there's really nothing else to talk about and he tries to push the envelope talking about how Cracker Jack's prize is the product.
Your product's soul is not only about the extras.
I would have preferred he kept to his excellent job in PERMISSION MARKETING and not losing his focus as he did in FREE PRIZE INSIDE.
I am not going to read a 4th GODIN book.
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Summary: The 'how t'o for becoming a purple cow
Review: Godin's previous book, Purple Cow, presents examples of how to stand out from the herd. Free Prize Inside shows how to make that happen. It answers questions of "How do you create a Purple Cow?" "How do you make something sell itself?" When we buy cereal, especially kiddie cereal, what's the best part? The free prizes inside, of course! That's the thinking behind the book. Free prizes aren't just the stuff you find in cereal or Cracker Jack. Does your credit card offer free airline miles or money towards the next car you buy? That counts. What about an online store offering free shipping? What I remember the most about some tradeshows and expos are the drawings for free prizes, the goodies I received, and the shirts I still have. This book has impeccable timing. As an editor of a newsletter, I have been struggling to find ideas to pep it up and draw in more subscribers since new subscriptions have slowed down. I cheat and go straight to page 131, the start of the list of "Edges" and look for a spark of creativity to create an "Edgecraft" (book's buzzword) to find a free prize. The goal is to find something to reel people in, to give them something they want like the previously mentioned examples. I learn from examples and Godin lists plenty of them using Edgecraft in action. He is not saying you have to invent something new to make something happen. It's about taking what you already have going and how to make your product, service, head, blog, whatever worth talking about and watching the results. With three kids, a spouse, two jobs, a house, and volunteer work, finding time to read a book is a challenge. Even if I weren't a book reviewer, getting through this book would be a breeze because (a) it's 183 pages (the rest are detailed endnotes with references and explanations), (b) it highlights plenty of key points for easy scanning, and (c) each section or idea is short. Getting bite-sized pieces of information is enough to get going with the concepts gleaned from the book and make something happen.
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Summary: Another Great Seth Godin Book
Review: I first got hooked on Seth Godin books when he wrote Permission Marketing which is one of the best primers on effective e-mail marketing. Free Prize Inside is as equally good as Permission Marketing and is an easy read that is perfect for reading on planes, trains and automobiles. It introduces the concept of edgecrafting to help you get a competitive edge by adding a "Free Prize" to yor product or service. I love the special cereal box packaging too, it is a real conversation piece. Now if I could just get my hands on a Purple Cow Milk Carton to go with it ; - )
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Summary: Seth Godin's De-Coder Ring
Review: I have fond and vivid memories of badgering my mother at the grocery store to buy the box of cereal with the De-Coder Ring buried inside. Seth Godin, in his inimitable style, invites us to bring that same sense of wonder and excitement to our clients and potential customers by offering soft innovations that make our products or our services "Purple Cows," and that offer to our market the equivalent of a "Free Prize Inside." In its content and in its packaging, "Free Prize Inside" is a logical extension of the ideas that Seth put forward in his 2003 best seller "Purple Cow." I recently presented a review of FPI at a recent staff meeting at my recruiting firm, and the response was electric. Even members of the staff who are usually slow to adopt new ideas became excited about applying the principles of "Free Prize Inside" to their individual recruiting practices. The result was that we made the decision to purchase several dozen copies of the book to offer as gifts - as a "Free Prize" - to clients and potential clients.
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Summary: Good marketing ideas come to the patient
Review: I picked up the book recently and think it is great. Having a focus for finding good marketing ideas is essential and the framework and suggestions in the book are really helpful. I also picked up another title recommended on Amazon called The Emotional Intelligence Quickbook. Different in that it's not directly focused on marketing, yet I found the two to be a good combination because the Quickbook helped me to be focused and not so impulsive in finding my purple cow!
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Summary: On-the-edge is far safer than status quo!
Review: I'm a big fan of Seth Godin. His books Permission Marketing, Unleashing the Idea Virus, Purple Cow, and The Big Red Fez continue impact me on an almost daily basis. One thing I love about Seth is that he persuasively argues that in today's economy thinking on-the-edge is far safer than maintaining the status quo. In Purple Cow, Seth argued that businesses and nonprofits need to be remarkable in order to survive. Being remarkable means that people will tell their friends about your product or service. Purple Cow was a thought provoking book but was lacking in helping readers implement the ideas. Free Prize Inside takes it the next step and shows us how to market and create remarkable changes in our organizations. Free Prize Inside is divided into three sections:
• Why You Need a Free Prize
• Selling the Idea
• Creating the Free Prize A "free prize" is a soft innovation. Seth builds the case for the urgent need of people in all organizations, including nonprofits, to be championing soft innovations. Soft innovations are the "clever, insightful, useful small ideas that just about anyone in an organization can think up." A free prize may seem like a gimmick at first but it actually becomes an essential part of your product or service. We all know what our favorite cereal tastes like, but it becomes irresistible when we see we can get a free prize inside the box. To illustrate his point, Seth is selling the first printing of this book in a special-made cereal box! You can pre-order a copy at Amazon.com. He's convinced that anyone can come up with a free prize inside. The problem comes when we share it with others. Seth says our co-workers or boss, ask three basic questions:
1. Is this idea doable?
2. Is it worth doing?
3. Are you the one able to do it successfully?
If they aren't able to answer "yes" to all three questions, they won't join you, and the idea will die. The second section of the book is dedicated to specifically showing us how to keep our innovations alive by championing them and winning the support of others. After all, creating a free prize isn't important if we can't sell it to our organization. The last section is dedicated to creating the free prizes. What would make your organization remarkable? Here Seth introduces his new concept of "edgecraft." He explains, "You're...caught in the center of a web of boring. The goal of edgecraft is to pick an edge (there are hundreds to choose from) and go all the way with it-even a little further than that if you can. Moving a little is expensive and useless. Moving a lot is actually cheaper in the long run and loaded with wonderful possibilities." Donuts are boring but Krispy Kreme found an edge and made them sensational. Netflix did the same with movie rentals. They created a free prize by transforming the rental experience and created a very loyal customer following. The United Way found free prize when they discovered the concept of payroll deduction. Pushing that edge has helped them raised a lot of money! Free Prize Inside is an inspiring and practical way for us to find our organization's edges and push for a free prize. It comes with extensive endnotes that cite Seth's sources, expand on points, and point you to great information on the web. I particularly appreciate Seth's constant attention to the nonprofit sector throughout the book. I highly recommend getting a copy. And, if you order it before it's published in May, you can still get it in a cereal box!
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Summary: Free Prize Inside delivers the Prize
Review: Okay, I hadn't been a big fan of Seth Godin, author of Purple Cow and Permission Marketing. Mostly because I'm not a marketing person, and I felt that Purple Cow was mostly a book that pointed out successful companies and tried to explain their success with a simple "They're remarkable". In short, it's easy to say they're good and here's why. The hard thing, I thought, was to show people the way to become the Purple Cow, if say, you were merely a brown and white one.
In Free Prize, he does recycle the idea that good companies do remarkable things, but instead of giving the reader lofty, intangible platitudes about successful companies, he explains a more basic concept of giving the consumer something to desire beyond the actual product, such as the toy in the cereal box. If he had stopped there, he wouldn't have written much more than Purple Cow 2, but fortunately, he didn't. He outlines tips and strategies for how to create the Free Prize from both a product marketing perspective and personal growth perspective. Actual usable, realistic, practical tips and strategies.
Free Prize goes beyond its title, as it's not just a primer on how to market effectively, by showing the reader how to get noticed in the much smaller, but more important, realm of his life.
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Summary: Not Just for Marketing Department
Review: Over the years, McDonalds has had lots of gimmicks (game pieces for Monopoly, Olympics, Beanie Babies) to get people to visit their restaurants and has spent millions more ad slogans that no one remembers. But the message that sticks is the Happy Meal which comes with the free prize inside. Word of Mouth (especially from my children) made us a frequent customer. Free Prize Inside is about finding the edge that makes a product worth talking about. It is not about prices charged, it is about finding what makes your product or service "remark-able." Push the envelope -- stretch the boundaries. What if grocery stores had lines for people with 40 items or more (their best customers)...or if a restaurant gave out free meals randomly... Marketing is no longer for the marketing department. We all are responsible for the experience of our customers.
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Summary: The Best Things in Life are Free
Review: Seth Godin has another hit with his latest, Free Prize Inside. As the old adage goes, the best things in life are free. Godin emphasizes that the common consumer is more influenced by the promise of something free rather than an advertisement that interrupts our time and that we did not really want to see anyway. As a consumer, I think this is extremely accurate. I am always enticed by the thought of a free gift, and I don't think that an ad has ever impacted me as much regarding my desire to buy an item or try a new restaurant. His example of amazon.com is a great one. Since amazon.com started offering free shipping, their sales have increased by 37%. I know from personal experience, that free shipping is always a great way to get me to purchase anything from an online site. Godin also goes through many ways of selling the idea of the free prize and deciding what that free prize should be. This is a great book for any entrepeneur or any existing company, for it explains how to reel in the consumer and spend the money allotted for marketing in an efficient and effective way. Godin really knows the hearts and minds of the American consumer, and this book is a great read for anyone interested in making a buck.
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