Free Prize Inside Book Review

I’ve been doing a lot of reading lately. One of the books I finished was Free Prize Inside by Seth Godin. Seth is a well known marketer here in the Blogosphere, but I’ve only read one other book of his: Permission Marketing. I thought it was good, but I already understood what he was talking about. I thought this meant I knew everything Seth was talking about, boy was I wrong.

Free Prize Inside goes to another level for me. It talks about how because of more noise, traditional marketing is failing. And because of that, remarkable products are the only ones that succeed. Stop spending money on marketing and start making your products remarkable. A remarkable product markets itself.

He then goes into the idea that having a remarkable idea is not enough. You need to champion your idea so that it catches on. He talks about a number of ways to do this–but he emphasizes how important this part is.

The last part of the book talks about how to find remarkable ideas by going to the edge. Being a fast company doesn’t get you talked about, being the fastest does. Having good customer service doesn’t get you talked about–remarkable customer service does. He stresses that going 90% of the way isn’t enough, you need to go all the way to the edge.

This is a short summary of what the book talks about–but I found the idea of "going to the edge" fascinating. He argues being good in multiple areas is worse than being phenominal in one.

Pick an edge and get as close to it as possible.

Food for thought. That Godin knows what he’s talking about. He runs a great blog.