Seth Godin, editor of the book, has collected 33 inspiring ideas and they become The Big Moo. The Group of 33, as the book references these successful business people, includes Mark Cuban, Dave Balter, Malcolm Gladwell, Tom Peters, and Guy Kawasaki. The aim of the stories or ideas is to show what it takes to become remarkable.

The book’s title comes from Godin’s previous best seller, Purple Cow which shows how to stand out in a world of brown cows. According to the book’s synopsis, “… sometimes you need something even bigger than a purple cow. You need a big moo — an insight so astounding that people can’t help but remark on it.”

While Purple Cow focuses on standing out, it lacks the second and very important step — getting others to talk about your business. Standing out alone doesn’t lead to business. How do people find out about you? That’s what The Big Moo is about — sharing ideas and real-life examples of how to get people talking.

“Some Things Just Don’t Translate” points that the way we see our products may not be the way customers see them. Sounds obvious, but it isn’t. An Italian in the house ware business opened a store in the U.S. His foot traffic wasn’t match by sales. He observed his customers and remained baffled as to why they were looking and taking an interest, but not buying.

He asked a customer how she liked the store and merchandise. It turned out that what Americans considered vases, Italians saw as glasses — and vice versa. The owner, of course, was selling glasses of six in a case and vases as singles. Americans didn’t want to buy six vases — they could’ve bought six glasses with ease, though. This type of valuable advice appears throughout the book.

Most essays clearly get the point across although a couple aren’t as strong. The book does what it sets out to do: motivate the reader to get out there to put ideas to work to develop a remarkable organization that gets everyone buzzing.

Though the book explains the contributors gave up their by-lines for the book, I would’ve liked to know who wrote each story. There’s no way to guess who wrote which story as few of them relate to the businesses associated with the people. What does knowing who wrote it do for me? It tells me who made the observation or how the person thinks. It’s like sharing a quote without the author’s name.

It’s an easy, gratifying, and fast read. I read the whole thing in about an hour. Each essay is about two pages on the average. All the proceeds from the book go to three charities.

Title: The Big Moo
Author: group of 33, Seth Godin
Publisher: Portfolio Hardcover
ISBN: 1591841038
Date: October 2005
Format: Hardcover
Pages: 208
Cover Price: USD: $19.95 Amazon: $13.57

If the book were titled, All Marketers Are Storytellers, would you consider looking at it? Godin brought up this point in the book and it clearly explained what he means by “liars.” Of course, he didn’t insult marketers as he belongs in that category. But “storytellers” would be nothing new.

Though he didn’t use “storytellers,” the book addresses how to use stories to help the business succeed. The book grabbed me at the start, but then it got slow in different parts. What I appreciated most were the examples of storytelling or “fibbing.” Godin did point out that fibbing doesn’t mean the same thing as fraud. He provided two examples. Can you tell which Godin identifies as a fib and which is fraud?

*A wine glass maker claims wine tastes better in his glasses.

*A company says you can call anytime to hear the president of the company’s voice and the voice introduces himself as such. It turns out the voice is an actor as the president died over 50 years ago.

The second would be the fraud. It’s a story that turns out not to be true and customers feel tricked when they find out. No one can prove the glasses don’t make the wine taste better; therefore it’s good storytelling because it leads people to believe the claim might be true and the product is worth trying.

John Stossel of ABC News did a report on bottled water and discovered people are convinced that tap water is bad while bottled water is cleaner, safer, and tastier. The news report conducted a taste test of four brands and tap water. Tap came in third while the most expensive, Evian, came in last. And in first place? The cheapest bottled water, K-mart’s brand.

Telling a story doesn’t guarantee everyone will be fooled into believing what you hope they’ll believe, but the bottled water example proves many bought into that story.

Godin goes deeper because telling any ol’ story doesn’t equal great results. Other factors come into play even before your product or service comes to life. Have you noticed cereals have new labels such as “100% whole grain” or “15% less sugar than the original”? What do you think drove the cereal manufacturers to change the labeling in some cases and to create a new formula in others? The low-carb craze. It was their way of staying in the game when much of the world changed its view on what foods to eat and what to avoid.

Godin quotes Malcolm Gladwell whose best seller, The Tipping Point, no doubt led the way for his second book, Blink, and even recommends the latter work. Everyone I’ve talked to who has read both books has little good to say about Blink and some didn’t think much of The Tipping Point. This praise is the only quarrel I have with this fine and thought-provoking book, but it makes me leery of the rest of the book recommendations (only 13 in all) because of this point. Technically his praise of the book could be called “fibbing.”

The book provides examples of how small businesses, large businesses, and service-oriented businesses succeed with the storytelling approach. Any business can learn from the book’s concept. It took little time to read and gave a good overview about how businesses create and sell their stories.

Title: All Marketers Are Liars
Author: Seth Godin
Publisher: Portfolio Hardcover
ISBN: 1591841003
Date: May 2005
Format: Hardcover
Pages: 208
Cover Price: USD: $23.95 Amazon: $16.29

Book review of Seth Godin‘s newest book, Free Prize Inside, is posted. Man, he is good. The book has not even reached shelves and look how well it ranks in Amazon from pre-orders.

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! He walks the talk by packaging this book in a cereal box. Though the book is not free, it’s a catchy and unusual way to package a book. Wait! There IS a free prize inside. It’s a copy of This Is Not the Journal newspaper. It may not be as fun as the toy cars or game CDs that come in cereal boxes these days, but hey, it’s free! (Note: the cereal box packaging and newspaper are limited, so they won’t always be available).

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? Every year there is a huge technical tradeshow in Washington, DC for government agencies. What I remember the most about it is 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.

My dad follows the guys from the radio station and meets them wherever they set up shop. Not only has he made a friend or two, but he has picked up cool stuff like movies on DVD and tickets to events. The radio station obviously has a faithful listener in him otherwise how would he know about these events?

As for the newsletter idea, I am trying two things. One is adding a “gotcha” section where I post a graphic of a typo, bad grammar, or something demonstrating a content blooper. Readers are encouraged to find the blooper and send it in to be entered in a drawing for a… free prize!

The other idea is called Extreme Makeover: Bad Copy Edition. Readers submit examples of bad copy to be torn apart, made over, and reported in a future issue. Of course, we’ll mention the reader’s name and company to give her credit and company recognition.

Guess what? This isn’t the first free prize offered in the newsletter. Existing free prizes do fade away and we have to create new ones to revive interest. After all, my son wouldn’t want multiples of the same cars he got from the cereal. The cereal company puts in a new car and he is after poor mom to buy it again. Thankfully, he actually eats the cereal.

Back to the book and the purpose of this write up. 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.

VITAL STATISTICS:
TITLE: Free Prize Inside
AUTHOR: Seth Godin
PUBLISHER: Portfolio
PUBLICATION DATE: May 2004
ISBN: 1591840414
FORMAT: Paperback
PAGES: 256
PRICE: US$19.95