Free Prize Inside!: The Next Big Marketing Idea

Purple Cow was the #1 bestselling marketing book on Amazon in 2003. Now in Free Prize Inside, Seth Godin is back with practical advice on how to put Purple Cow thinking to work inside your organization (big or small, profit or non) to MAKE SOMETHING HAPPEN. The next big marketing idea is a proven strategy for making your products or services so remarkable that they practically sell themselves.

Purple Cow taught marketers the value of standing out from the herd, which is how companies like Krispy Kreme and JetBlue made it big. But it left readers hungry for more: How do you actually think up new Purple Cows? And how do you get them adopted by risk-averse Brown Cow companies?

Free Prize Inside delivers those answers and much more. I‛s a fun guide to doing innovative marketing that really works when the traditional approaches have all stopped working. Thirty years ago, the best way to sell something was to advertise it on television. But toda‛s consumers are cynical, and your product or service had better be more than just hype and clever advertising. Even better, it ought to come with a market-changing innovation—a free prize inside.

You do‛t have to spend a fortune to create something cool that virtually sells itself. Think of simple but powerful innovations like the Tupperware party, Flintstones vitamins, G.I. Joe (a doll just for boys), Lucille Roberts (a gym just for women), and frequent flier miles. Free Prize Inside will teach you how to create those kinds of blockbusters at your own company without a bunch of MBA-brainwashed marketers. You do‛t have to be a genius—you just need curiosity, initiative, and a strategy for overcoming resistance when you champion your idea.

W‛re all marketers now, no matter what our job titles. With Godi‛s help, we can find the free prize that will transform our companies.

"A slapdash mix of insight, jargon, common sense, inspiration and hooey, Godin's follow up to last year's Purple Cow argues that the way to make any product a bestseller is to couple it with 'a feature that the consumer might be attracted to' whether or not she really needs it or wants it. 'If it satisfies consumers and gets them to tell other people what you want them to tell other people, it's not a gimmick,' he argues. 'It's a soft innovation.' An entrepreneur, lecturer and monthly columnist for Fast Company, Godin knows his business history, and his book bursts with interesting case studies that define 'free prize' thinking: e.g. Apple's iPod, Chef Boyardee's prehistoric pasta, AOL's free installation CDs. One of the problems with the book, however, is that its insistent use of needless jargon ('free prize,' 'purple cow,' 'edgecraft') clouds complicated issues and lumps dissimilar processes together. 'Fix what's broken,' Godin advocates on one page. 'Inflame the passionate,' he declares on another. Both of these ideas could certainly lead to business improvements, but they hardly use the same methods. Like Godin's last book, this volume reads like a sugar rush — fast and sweet — and this may propel the author back onto the bestseller lists. To help jumpstart his sales, Portfolio will be packaging the first few thousand copies of the book inside cereal boxes. Now that's quite a gimmick — er, soft innovation." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

This book gives examples of market-changing innovations - the free prizes that worked like GI Joe (a doll just for boys) and 'frequent flier miles'.

From the bestselling author of "Purple Cow, a fun guide to creating blockbuster products that sell themselves.

Seth Godin may be the best intuitive marketer alive today. (Randall Rothenberg)