Book review: Free Prize Inside

I was excited to read this book, authored by Seth Godin in 2004 (ISBN 1-59184-041-4). I have read other books on marketing and the deception and creativity of the marketers fascinated me.

I was a little disappointed at first. The book starts with advice regarding promoting one's idea in an organization. He notes that the ideas that stand out are often orthogonal to the product or service they are attached to. Think of the plastic toy in the cereal box. While many of us like to think of ourselves as hard-headed, rational consumers, few of us follow the advice of Consumer Reports. We like, in Mr. Godin's words, "design", "style" and "extras". Ideas along these lines will not necessarily appeal to the senior leaders in an organization because it is nearly impossible to prove they will be successful. The ideas that will appeal, such as more or better of the thing the organization already delivers, are unlikely to be blockbusters because promotional efforts are so expensive.

Then, like so many business-oriented books, Mr. Godin highlights several recent ideas that have been successful: PowerBar, a bakery for dogs, endless pools for swim training, fast barbershops in Japan. All were remarkable, and successful. After reading these examples, however, I can't help but think of the probably thousands of remarkable ideas that failed and never make it into a book. How does one predict which will succeed. It reminds me of the Butterfly Effect: predicting where hurricanes will land and how strong they will be is useful. Why not track these atmospheric disturbances back to their origin of the Easter coast of Africa to determine what characteristics can be used for prediction. What happens, though, is all disturbances look the same at birth: the Hurricane Hugos and the storms that never disturb a blade of grass are indistinguishable. It is said that a single flap of a butterfly's wing inside one of these systems might be the trigger. So it might be with these business ideas: one simply cannot predict which will succeed.

I mentioned I was disappointed at first, but the book finished strong with a guide for developing remarkable products and services. Again, not that he or anyone can predict which will be successful, but in the early parts of the book he compellingly explains why mere improvements to existing products or services will lead to success.

His guide is Edgecraft: take any existing thing and take one or more aspects of it to the furthest edge. For example, some people find braces on teeth to be unattractive. What if you could make them less visible? Mr. Godin would say the proper question is: what if you could make them invisible? Merely answering the first question will not get you very far. He gives a long list of traits to follow to the edge. A sampling:
* Products that are very safe (antibacterial wipes for children) or very dangerous (heli-skiing).
* Make things that are typically disposable permanent, such as a $2,000 pen, or make disposable things that are typically permanent, such as disposable digital cameras.
* Variety: a record store with tens of thousands of choices, or a record store with only a few dozen choices.

Finally, the unintentionally humorous. He cites Moore's Law when discussing how one might leverage technology and says further,

Think about this: Within a few years, we'll be able to predict the weather -- accurately -- two months ahead of time.

This was 2004 and we are on the eve of 2011. I guess in fairness to him, it depends on the definition of "a few years".