I have just finished reading Free Prize Inside by Seth Godin and as I sit here reflecting on his words I find my self inspired. Free Prize Inside is a follow up to Purple Cow, a book that called for businesses to be remarkable and different in what they do. Free Prize Inside takes this concept one step further by teaching us how to create a purple cow.

 In the book, Godin defines soft innovation as “what you, the marketer, sees. If it catches on and becomes something the consumer wants, it is now a free prize.” Godin also proclaims that soft innovation is innovation that anyone can do and that soft innovation is almost never complex. Soft innovation is not reinventing the wheel, but rather taking tools and ideas that are out there and using them to make your product or service better.

 The more I think about this the more I think most companies are over thinking innovation. A recent article in Business Week (http://bit.ly/19tHFy), talks about Coke and a “tidying up exercise, stripping Coke back to its iconic essentials.” This may be an extreme example of soft innovation; and you have to strip away the corporate bureaucracy and R&D that went into this exercise to appreciate what Coke did, but if you look at the overall result, it is soft innovation. Coke “has stripped away the extraneous clutter”, and returned to its roots with a simple positioning statement “that drinking a Coke is a small moment of happiness—no big deal, just something that might make you feel good.”

 Now you can ask yourself what is so remarkable about that? How is this soft innovation and where is the free prize? If we consider the difficult times and challenges marketers are faced with these days, I think too often we see companies trying to be creative just for the sake of being creative. They forget the big picture and misconstrue what could be a simple message. They forget about being relevant and ignore the customer experience. Coke realized this and took action by basically saying our customers know Coke and love Coke, so they drink Coke because it is so good. It is that simple.

 I think more companies should listen to their customers, remove the clutter and bring back the idea of the ‘free prize.”  Your customers will appreciate it and buy more because of it.

 Read the book, which is filled with other great examples of soft innovation; read the article, and I would love to know what you think.