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Purple Cow, Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable (Hardcover)
by Seth Godin
| Category:
Marketing, Intuitive marketing, Product development, Innovative strategy |
| Market price: ¥ 218.00
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¥ 208.00
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| MSL Pointer Review:
Speaking from a pretty novel perspective, this little book serves as an excellent challenge to existing notions of marketing. |
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Author: Seth Godin
Publisher: Portfolio Hardcover
Pub. in: May, 2003
ISBN: 159184021X
Pages: 160
Measurements: 7.4 x 5.3 x 0.6 inches
Origin of product: USA
Order code: BA00116
Other information: ISBN-13: 978-1591840213
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- Awards & Credential -
For marketing professionals, bestselling author Seth Godin is always insightful and interesting. There's always something to take away from his books. |
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Following the traditional rules of marketing just isn't enough anymore. In today's competitive economy, companies that want to create a successful new product must create a remarkable new product. According to bestselling author and marketing guru Seth Godin, such a product is a Purple Cow, a product or service that is worth making a remark about.
The impact of advertising in newspapers and magazines is fading - people are overwhelmed with information and have stopped paying attention to most media messages. To create Purple Cow products, Godin advises companies to stop advertising and start innovating. Godin recommends that marketers target a niche, and he describes effective ways to spread your idea to the consumers who are most likely to buy your product.
Godin claims there isn't a shortage of remarkable ideas - every business has opportunities to do great things - there's a shortage of the will to execute those ideas.
For many years, marketers have used the five (or more) Ps as guidelines for selling their product and achieving their company's goals. Some of the Ps include: Product, Pricing, Promotion, Positioning, Publicity, Packaging, Permission, and Pass-along. According to the popular theory, if these elements aren't all in place, the marketing message is unclear and ineffective. Making the right marketing moves does not guarantee success, but the prevailing wisdom used to be that if your Ps were right, you had a better chance of succeeding in the marketplace.
But at a certain point in the evolution of marketing, it became clear that following the Ps just isn't enough. This book tells about a new P - Purple Cow - that is extremely important to marketers in today's fast-paced, highly competitive business environment.
Purple Cow refers to a product or service that is different from the rest and somehow remarkable. Purple Cow tells about the why, the what, and the how of remarkable. Remarkable marketing is the process of building things into your product or service that are worth noticing. Not adding marketing to your product or service at the last minute, but understanding that if what you're offering isn't remarkable, it is invisible in the marketplace.
Whether you are marketing a product or service to consumers or corporations, the sad truths about marketing are that:
- Most people can't buy your product - they don't have the money, don't have the time, or simply don't want it.
- If consumers don't have enough money to buy what you are selling at the price you are selling it for, you don't have a market for your product or service.
- If consumers don't have time to listen to and understand your marketing pitch, your product or service is invisible to them.
- If consumers take the time to hear your pitch but decide they don't want what you are selling, you are not going to be successful.
TV commercials are the most effective selling tool ever devised. A large part of America's economic success in this century is due to the fact that our companies have perfected this medium and used it extensively. Cars, cigarettes, clothing, food - anything that was advertised well on television was changed by the medium. Marketers not only used television to promote products, but television changed the way products were created and marketed. Because of this, the marketing Ps changed to take advantage of the dynamic between creating products and capturing consumers' attention on television.
The impact of advertising on television and in newspapers and magazines is fading too, just like any form of media that interrupts any form of consumer activity. Individuals and businesses have just stopped paying attention.
The old rule was: Create safe, ordinary products and combine them with great marketing.
The new rule is: Create remarkable products that the right people seek out.
There isn't a shortage of remarkable ideas - every business has opportunities to do great things - there's a shortage of the will to execute them. Since the old ways of doing things have become obsolete, it's actually safer to take the risk inherent in trying to create remarkable things. Your best bet is to take the steps necessary to create Purple Cows.
Until an actual product or service is created, a brand or new product is nothing more than an idea. Ideas that spread rapidly - "ideaviruses" - are more likely to succeed than ideas that don't.
"Sneezers" are the people who launch and spread an ideavirus. These people are the experts who tell all their colleagues and friends about a new product or service that they are knowledgeable about. Every market has a few sneezers - finding and seducing these sneezers is essential to creating an ideavirus.
To create an idea (and a product or service) that spreads, don't try to make a product for everybody, because that is a product for nobody. Since the sneezers in today's huge marketplace have too many choices and are fairly satisfied, an "everybody" product probably won't capture their interest.
To connect with the mainstream, you must target a niche instead of a huge market. In targeting a niche, you approach a segment of the mainstream and create an ideavirus so focused that it overwhelms that small section of the market and those people will respond. The sneezers in this niche are more likely to talk about your product, and best of all, the market is small enough that just a few sneezers can spread the word to the number of people you need to create an ideavirus.
(From quoting Soundview Executive Book Summaries)
Target readers:
Executives, managers, entrepreneurs, marketing and product development professionals, ad agency people, MBAs and anyone else interested in marketing and communications.
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- Better with -
Better with
The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit (and When to Stick)
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Seth Godin is the worldwide bestselling author of Permission Marketing, Unleashing the Ideavirus, and Survival Is Not Enough. He is a renowned public speaker, has started several successful companies, and is a contributing editor at Fast Company Magazine.
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From Publisher
You're either a Purple Cow or you're not. You're either remarkable or invisible. Make your choice.
What do Starbucks and JetBlue and KrispyKreme and Apple and DutchBoy and Kensington and Zespri and Hard Candy have that you don't? How do they continue to confound critics and achieve spectacular growth, leaving behind former tried-and true brands to gasp their last?
Face it, the checklist of tired 'P's marketers have used for decades to get their product noticed - Pricing, Promotion, Publicity, to name a few-aren't working anymore. There's an exceptionally important 'P' that has to be added to the list. It's Purple Cow.
Cows, after you've seen one, or two, or ten, are boring. A Purple Cow, though... now that would be something. Purple Cow describes something phenomenal, something counterintuitive and exciting and flat out unbelievable. Every day, consumers come face to face with a lot of boring stuff-a lot of brown cows-but you can bet they won't forget a Purple Cow. And it's not a marketing function that you can slap on to your product or service. Purple Cow is inherent. It's built right in, or it's not there. Period.
In Purple Cow, Seth Godin urges you to put a Purple Cow into everything you build, and everything you do, to create something truly noticeable. It's a manifesto for marketers who want to help create products that are worth marketing in the first place.
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For years, marketers have talked about the "five Ps" (actually, there are more than five, but everyone picks their favorite handful): product, pricing, promotion, positioning, publicity, packaging, pass along, permission. Sound familiar? This has become the basic marketing checklist, a quick way to make sure that you've done your job. Nothing is guaranteed, of course, but it used to be that if you dotted your is and paid attention to your five Ps, then you were more likely than not to succeed.
No longer. It's time to add an exceptionally important new P to the list: Purple Cow. Weird? Let me explain.
While driving through France a few years ago, my family and I were enchanted by the hundreds of storybook cows grazing in lovely pastures right next to the road. For dozens of kilometers, we all gazed out the window, marveling at the beauty. Then, within a few minutes, we started ignoring the cows. The new cows were just like the old cows, and what was once amazing was now common. Worse than common: It was boring.
Cows, after you've seen them for a while, are boring. They may be well-bred cows, Six Sigma cows, cows lit by a beautiful light, but they are still boring. A Purple Cow, though: Now, that would really stand out. The essence of the Purple Cow - the reason it would shine among a crowd of perfectly competent, even undeniably excellent cows - is that it would be remarkable. Something remarkable is worth talking about, worth paying attention to. Boring stuff quickly becomes invisible.
The world is full of boring stuff - brown cows - which is why so few people pay attention. Remarkable marketing is the art of building things worth noticing right into your product or service. Not just slapping on the marketing function as a last-minute add-on, but also understanding from the outset that if your offering itself isn't remarkable, then it's invisible - no matter how much you spend on well-crafted advertising.
This is an essay about what it takes to create and sell something remarkable. It is a manifesto for marketers who want to make a difference at their company by helping create products and services that are worth marketing in the first place. It is a plea for originality, for passion, guts, and daring. Not just because going through life with passion and guts beats the alternative (which it does), but also because it's the only way to be successful. Today, the one sure way to fail is to be boring. Your one chance for success is to be remarkable.
And that means you have to be a leader. You can't be remarkable by following someone else who's remarkable. One way to figure out a great theory is to look at what's working in the real world and determine what the successes have in common. With marketing, it's puzzling though. What could the Four Seasons and Motel 6 possibly have in common? Other than the fact that both companies have experienced extraordinary success and growth, they couldn't be more different. Or Neiman Marcus and Wal-Mart, both growing during the same decade? Or Nokia (bringing out new hardware every 30 days or so) and Nintendo (marketing the same Game Boy for 14 years in a row)?
It's like trying to drive looking in the rearview mirror. Sure, those things worked. But do they help us predict what will work tomorrow? The thing that all of those companies have in common is that they have nothing in common. They are outliers. They're on the fringes. Superfast or superslow. Very exclusive or very cheap. Extremely big or extremely small.
The reason it's so hard to follow the leader is this: The leader is the leader precisely because he did something remarkable. And that remarkable thing is now taken - so it's no longer remarkable when you decide to do it.
Stand out from the herd I: Going Up!
Elevators aren't a typical consumer product. They can easily cost more than a million dollars, they generally get installed when a building is first constructed, and they're not much use unless the building is more than three or four stories tall.
How, then, does an elevator company compete? Until recently, selling involved a lot of golf, dinners, and long-term relationships with key purchasing agents at major real-estate developers. No doubt that continues, but Schindler Elevator Corporation has radically changed the game by developing a remarkable Purple Cow.
Every elevator ride is basically a local one. The elevator stops 5, 10, 15 times on the way to your floor. This is a hassle for you, but it's a huge, expensive problem for the building. While your elevator is busy stopping at every floor, the folks in the lobby are getting more and more frustrated. The building needs more elevators, but there's no money to buy them and no room to put them. Walk into the Times Square offices of Cap Gemini Ernst & Young, and you're faced with a fascinating solution to this problem.
Schindler's insight? When you approach the elevators, you key in your floor on a centralized control panel. In return, the panel tells you which elevator is going to take you to your floor. With this simple presort, Schindler Elevator Corporation has managed to turn every elevator into an express. Your elevator takes you immediately to the 12th floor and races back to the lobby. This means that buildings can be taller, they need fewer elevators for a given density of people, the wait is shorter, and the building can use precious space for people rather than for elevators. A huge win, implemented at a remarkably low cost.
Is there a significant real-estate developer in the world who is unaware of this breakthrough? Not likely. And it doesn't really matter how many ads or how many lunches the competition sponsors: Schindler now gets the benefit of the doubt.
The Sad Truth About Marketing Just About Anything
Forty years ago, Ron Simek, owner of the Tombstone Tap (named for a nearby cemetery) in Medford, Wisconsin, decided to offer a frozen version of his pizza to his customers. It caught on, and before long, Tombstone Pizza was dominating your grocer's freezer. Kraft eventually bought the brand, advertised it like crazy, and made serious dough. This was a great American success story: Invent a good product that everyone wants, advertise it to the masses, earn billions.
That strategy didn't just work for pizza. It worked for most everything in your house, including aspirin. Imagine how much fun it must have been to be the first person to market aspirin. Here's a product that just about every person on earth needed and wanted. A product that was inexpensive, easy to try, and promised huge immediate benefits. Obviously, it was a big hit.
Today, a quick visit to the drugstore turns up lots of aspirin and aspirinlike products: Advil, Aleve, Alka-Seltzer Morning Relief, Anacin, Ascriptin, Aspergum, Bayer, Bayer Children's, Bayer Regimen, Bayer Women's, BC Powder, Bufferin, Cope, Ecotrin, Excedrin Extra Strength, Goody's, Motrin, Nuprin, St. Joseph, Tylenol, and, of course, Vanquish. Within each of those brands, there are variations, sizes, and generics that add up to more than 100 different products to choose from.
Think it's still easy to be an analgesics marketer today? If you developed a new kind of pain reliever, even one that was a little bit better than the ones that I just listed, what would you do? The obvious answer, if you've got money and you believe in your product, is to spend everything you've got to buy tons of national TV and print advertising.
There are a few problems that you'll face, though. First, you need people who want to buy a pain reliever. While it's a huge market, it's not for everyone. Once you find people who buy pain relievers, then you need people who want to buy a new kind of pain reliever. After all, plenty of people want the "original" kind, the kind they grew up with. Finally, you need to find the people who are willing to listen to what you have to say about your new pain reliever. The vast majority of folks are just too busy and will ignore you, regardless of how many ads you buy. So you just went from an audience of everyone to an audience a fraction of that size. Not only are these folks hard to find, they're picky as well.
Being first in the frozen-pizza category was a good idea. Being first in pain relievers was an even better idea. Alas, they're both taken. Which brings me to the sad truth about marketing just about anything, whether it's a product or a service, whether it's marketed to consumers or corporations: Most people can't buy your product. Either they don't have the money, they don't have the time, or they don't want it.
And those are serious problems. An audience that doesn't have the money to buy what you're selling at the price you need to sell it for is not a market. An audience that doesn't have the time to listen to and understand your pitch treats you as if you and your product were invisible. And an audience that takes the time to hear your pitch and decides that they don't want it . . . well, you're not going to get very far.
The old rule was this: Create safe products and combine them with great marketing. Average products for average people. That's broken. The new rule is: Create remarkable products that the right people seek out.
As I write this, the top song in France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and a dozen other countries in Europe is about ketchup. It's called "Ketchup," and it's by two sisters you've never heard of. The number-two movie in America is a low-budget animated film in which talking vegetables act out Bible stories. Neither is the sort of product you'd expect to come from a lumbering media behemoth.
Sam Adams beer was remarkable, and it captured a huge slice of business from Budweiser. Hard Manufacturing introduced a product that costs 10 times the average (the $9,945 Doernbecher crib) and opened up an entirely new segment of the hospital-crib market. The electric piano let Yamaha steal an increasingly larger share of the traditional piano market away from the entrenched leaders. Vanguard's remarkably low-cost mutual funds continue to whale away at Fidelity's market dominance. Bic lost tons of market share to Japanese competitors that had developed pens that were remarkably fun to write with, just as Bic had stolen the market away from fountain pens a generation or two earlier.
Stand out from the herd II: Mail Call
Very few organizations have as timid an audience as the United States Postal Service. Dominated by a conservative bureaucracy and conservative big customers, the USPS has an awfully hard time innovating. The big direct marketers are successful because they've figured out how to thrive under the current system, and they're in no mood to see that system change. Most individuals are in no hurry to change their mailing habits either.
The majority of new-policy initiatives at the USPS are either ignored or met with nothing but disdain. But "zip + 4" was a huge success. Within a few years, the USPS was able to diffuse a new idea, making the change in billions of address records in thousands of computer databases.
How? First, it was a game-changing innovation. Zip + 4 makes it far easier for marketers to target neighborhoods and much faster and easier to deliver the mail. The product was a true Purple Cow, completely changing the way customers and the USPS would deal with bulk mail. It offered both dramatically increased speed in delivery and significantly lower costs for bulk mailers. That made it worth the time it took for big mailers to pay attention. The cost of ignoring the innovation would be felt immediately on the bottom line.
Second, the USPS wisely singled out a few early adopters. These were organizations that were technically savvy and that were extremely sensitive to both pricing and speed issues. These early adopters were also in a position to sneeze the benefits to other, less astute, mailers.
The lesson here is simple: The more intransigent your market, the more crowded the marketplace, the busier your customers, the more you need a Purple Cow. Half-measures will fail. Overhauling the product with dramatic improvements in things that the right customers care about, on the other hand, can have an enormous payoff.
Why There Are So Few Purple Cows
If being a Purple Cow is such an effective way to break through the clutter, why doesn't everyone do it? One reason is that people think the opposite of remarkable is "bad" or "poorly done." They're wrong. Not many companies sell things today that are flat-out lousy. Most sell things that are good enough. That's why the opposite of remarkable is "very good." Very good is an everyday occurrence, hardly worth mentioning - certainly not the basis of breakthrough success. Are you making very good stuff? How fast can you stop?
Some people would like you to believe that there are too few great ideas, that their product or their industry or their company simply can't support a great idea. That, of course, is absolute nonsense. Another reason the Purple Cow is so rare is because people are so afraid.
If you're remarkable, then it's likely that some people won't like you. That's part of the definition of remarkable. Nobody gets unanimous praise - ever. The best the timid can hope for is to be unnoticed. Criticism comes to those who stand out.
Playing it safe. Following the rules. They seem like the best ways to avoid failure. Alas, that pattern is awfully dangerous. The current marketing "rules" will ultimately lead to failure. In a crowded marketplace, fitting in is failing. In a busy marketplace, not standing out is the same as being invisible.
In Marketing Outrageously (Bard Press, 2001), author Jon Spoelstra points out the catch-22 logic of the Purple Cow. If times are tough, your peers and your boss may very well point out that you can't afford to be remarkable. There's not enough room to innovate: We have to conserve, to play it safe. We don't have the money to make a mistake. In good times, however, those very same people will tell you to relax, take it easy. There's not enough need to innovate: We can afford to be conservative, to play it safe.
So it seems that we face two choices: Either be invisible, uncriticized, anonymous, and safe or take a chance at true greatness, uniqueness, and the Purple Cow. The point is simple, but it bears repeating: Boring always leads to failure. Boring is always the riskiest strategy. Smart businesspeople realize this and work to minimize (but not eliminate) the risk from the process. They know that sometimes it's not going to work, but they accept the fact that that's okay.
Stand out from the herd III: The Color of Money
How did Dutch Boy Paint stir up the paint business? It's so simple, it's scary. They changed the can.
Paint cans are heavy, hard to carry, hard to close, hard to open, hard to pour, and no fun. Yet they've been around for a long time, and most people assumed that there had to be a reason why they were so bad. Dutch Boy realized that there was no reason. They also realized that the can was an integral part of the product: People don't buy paint, they buy painted walls, and the can makes that process much easier.
Dutch Boy used that insight and introduced an easier-to-carry, easier-to-pour, easier-to-close paint jug. "Customers tell us that the new Twist & Pour paint container is a packaging innovation that was long overdue," says Dennis Eckols, group vice president of the home division for Fred Meyer stores. "People wonder why it took so long for someone to come up with the idea, and they love Dutch Boy for doing it."
It's an amazing innovation. Worth noticing. Not only did the new packaging increase sales, but it also got them more distribution (at a higher retail price!).
That is marketing done right. Marketing where the marketer changes the product, not the ads.
Why It Pays (Big) to Be a Purple Cow
As the ability to be remarkable continues to demonstrate its value in the marketplace, the rewards that follow the Purple Cow increase. Whether you develop a new insurance policy, make a hit record, or write a groundbreaking book, the money and satisfaction that follow are extraordinary. In exchange for taking the risk, creators of a Purple Cow get a huge upside when they get it right.
Even better, you don't have to be remarkable all the time to enjoy the upside. Starbucks was remarkable a few years ago. Now they're boring. But that burst of innovation and insight has allowed them to expand to thousands of stores around the world. Compare that growth in assets to Maxwell House. Ten years ago, all of the brand value in coffee resided with them, not with Starbucks. But Maxwell House played it safe (they thought), and now they remain stuck with not much more than they had a decade ago.
Once you've created something remarkable, the challenge is to do two things simultaneously: One, milk the Purple Cow for everything it's worth. Figure out how to extend it and profit from it for as long as possible. Two, build an environment where you are likely to invent an entirely new Purple Cow in time to replace the first one when its benefits inevitably trail off.
These are contradictory goals. The creator of a Purple Cow enjoys the profits, accolades, and feeling of omniscience that come with a success. None of those outcomes accompany a failed attempt at a new Cow. Thus, the tempting thing to do is to coast. Take no chances. Take profits. Fail to reinvest.
AOL, Marriott, Marvel Comics, Palm, Yahoo - the list goes on and on. Each company had a breakthrough, built an empire around it, and then failed to take another risk. It used to be easy to coast for a long time after a few remarkable successes. Disney coasted for decades. Milton Berle did too. It's too easy to decide to sit out the next round, rationalizing that you're spending the time and energy to build on what you've got instead of investing in the future. So here's one simple, tangible suggestion. Create two teams: the inventors and the milkers. Put them in separate buildings. Hold a formal ceremony when you move a product from one group to the other. Celebrate them both, and rotate people around.
What It Means to Be a Marketer Today
If the Purple Cow is now one of the Ps of marketing, it has a series of big implications for the enterprise. In fact, it changes the definition of marketing. It used to be that engineering invented, manufacturing built, marketing marketed, sales sold, and the president managed the whole shebang. Marketing, better called "advertising," was about communicating the values of a product after it had been developed and manufactured.
That's clearly not a valid strategy in a world where product attributes (everything from service to design) are now at the heart of what it means to be a marketer. Marketing is the act of inventing the product. The effort of designing it. The craft of producing it. The art of pricing it. The technique of selling it. How can a Purple Cow company not be run by a marketer?
Companies that create Purple Cows, such as JetBlue Airways, Hasbro, Poland Spring, and Starbucks, have to be run by marketers. Turns out that the CEO of JetBlue made a critical decision on day one: He put the head of marketing in charge of product design and training as well. It shows. JetBlue sells a time-sensitive commodity just like American Airlines does, but somehow it manages to make a profit doing it. All of these companies are marketers at their very core.
The geniuses who managed to invent 1-800-COLLECT are true marketers. They didn't figure out how to market an existing service. Instead, the marketing is built into the product - from the easy-to-remember phone number to the very idea that MCI could steal the collect-call business from the pay-phone companies.
But isn't the same idea true for a local restaurant, a grinding-wheel company, and Citibank? In a world where anything we need is good enough and where just about all of the profit comes from the Purple Cow, we must all be marketers.
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| View all 8 comments |
A reader (MSL quote), USA
<2006-12-26 00:00>
I am businesswoman building what I hope will one day become a successful company with millions of loyal clients. Starting a business, for me, is riddled with fears of self-doubt touched by moments of feeling, "Hey, maybe I'm doing something right here".
I found Seth Godin's Purple Cow a comfort as a small business owner. Sometimes in the mist of listening to business advisers, accountants and loan officers you can forget why you even started. This forgetfulness puts distance between you and the beloved customer.
Godin's Purple Cow is purple not only because it is different, but because it has a heart. The examples of companies mentioned in this book succeed because they stopped looking at "the numbers" for a moment and started asking deep questions about their customers such as: What do our customers need; who really is our customer, not who we think he or she is, but really who are they and why should they bother with us in the first place?
While Godin's principles may not fly in Blue Chip corporations, I aim to build a substantial corporation nevertheless. So reading that you don't have to spend a ton of money on marketing is comforting. This marketing decision, by the way, is a personal one. Intimately knowing your customers, and potential customers for that matter, will tell you how to reach them. Otherwise, you will do textbook market testing to try to figure out what works.
I've come to find word-of-mouth works best for me. Granted it's slow, it's what my customers and I are comfortable with and want. Reading that I should stay true to my passions and take the time to create something remarkable, not just marketable, inspires my creative energy and helps me remain calm and confident about my business outlook.
In brief, I recommend this book to young entrepreneurs with radical ideas and a sizzling passion for what they do. Additionally, I'd recommend Purple Cow to anyone who feels they are disconnecting with their clients. |
Kathy Stucker (MSL quote), USA
<2006-12-26 00:00>
In Purple Cow, Seth Godin makes the point that to get the attention of customers, products have to be remarkable. That may seem obvious, but that doesn't mean that most companies understand it.
My favorite part of the book is "The Problem with Compromise." As a marketing instructor and consultant, I've seen way too many businesses try to appeal to everyone, and as a result they appeal to no one.
Godin uses the example of vanilla ice cream. Inoffensive and bland, vanilla ice cream may be acceptable to most people, but vanilla ice cream is boring. The boring, vanilla slot is filled in most industries, so Godin says that success and growth come with products that annoy, offend, don't appeal, are too expensive, too cheap, too heavy, too complicated, too simple - too something. That means that while many people will not be attracted to your product, it will be absolutely perfect for others. They will be your customers.
Although Godin's advice is intended for companies of all sizes, it is especially important to small businesses. Most small companies can't afford to compete with the big guys on the big guys' terms. Instead, shake up the industry with a creative innovation and capture the niche you want to serve, while your competitors are busy making compromises to try to hold on to what they have.
This book will remind you of the importance of breaking away from the herd. Dare to be different, follow your passion, and the customers who share your passion will be drawn to your product.
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A reader (MSL quote), USA
<2006-12-26 00:00>
I first became a fan of Seth Godin's books when he came out with Ideavirus, a study of viral products and ideas. Ideavirus was marketed very cleverly. (...) Seth's bet was that the book was so good that you would end up buying a printed copy and buy products from him for years to come. His bet worked with me.
Seth's latest book is Purple Cow: Transform your business by being remarkable. The book is an easy read. Entertaining and informative, its message is even more critical now than ever for companies that want to create winning products. With all of the half-baked products and broken product promises that customers endured during the boom, this book preaches that it's time to get back to creating products and services that are truly remarkable.
Purple Cow advocates that in order to stand out, in order to have your marketing and all of your other efforts make any impact, you must go beyond "good enough". For me, Seth was preaching to the choir, having been a Product Management professional for most of my career working on breakthrough products like the Macintosh Human Interface, Symantec Caf and the Whistle Interjet. I've always been convinced that what makes a product phenomenally successful is taking care of the little details that add up to something customers can't stop talking about. Seth's book is somewhat of a manifesto on this topic.
One of my favorite parts of the book is where he discusses the concept that "The opposite of very good is remarkable". Companies like Microsoft make products that are very good (or in many cases their products are just good enough to sell). But look at products that have become phenomenons - the Macintosh, the Palm Pilot, Hotmail, IBM Thinkpads - these are products that truly shined (at least when they were first released). They went far beyond "good enough".
Seth also argues that your marketing needs to be just as remarkable. Combine it with great products and you have the recipe for cutting through the noise and having your product be noticed. As he says in the book, "Safe is risky".
Full of case studies, including Krispy Kreme, Jet Blue, and many other tech and non-tech companies, Purple Cow is a must read for anyone involved in product development and product definition. Every entrepreneur, CEO, general manager, product manager and marketing professional interested in creating industry-changing products should read this book. |
Bill Murphy (MSL quote), USA
<2006-12-26 00:00>
Seth Godin is the most astute marketer of the last 10 years. His latest book, Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable arrives at just the right time to save the corporate world from ruin.
Hyperbole? Not at all.
As an adjunct professor in a nearby university, I have the privilege of teaching the principles of direct marketing and advertising to the next generation of adcats and DM pros. I base a lot of my class lectures on both personal experience (I've been a direct marketing guru for nearly 15 years) and cutting edge books - especially those from Seth Godin.
What I like most about Seth Godin (in addition to his witty, insightful style of writing) is that he walks his talk... and doesn't bother to sugar coat what's going on in the world today. He tells it like it is. Or, more accurately, how it should be.
Seth is right: This is the most challenging time in history to be part of the American workforce.
Recent news reports reveal the unemployment rate (at 6.4%) to be the highest in nine years. But the fault doesn't lie with The White House.
Companies these days are actually more interested in playing it safe than in reaching for the stars. Ditto for employees. Remarkable ones aren't getting hired any more. Ones that "fit in" are. (Remarkable ones are routinely shown the door.)
The result is an endless parade of boring products, services, and employees.
And let's not overlook Hollywood. Or the whiney music industry.
Both churn out such bland tripe that they seem bent on drowning the world in a sea of mediocrity. So they have no one to blame but themselves if sales are down.
Enter the Purple Cow.
Seth's message is simple: Be Remarkable.
That's it. He calls on companies to be unique and exciting. He calls on employees to be extraordinary, to think big thoughts, to stand out.
Here's a personal example. I put the principles of Seth's book to work in my own advertising agency. When I started PurpleCrayon Direct earlier this year, I aimed for a target audience roughly the same as every other agency... and got literally zero reponse.
So I stepped back, rethought my strategy, and relaunched PurpleCrayon Direct to a completely new and unique audience: Artists. We now work with painters, musicians, actors, writers, sculptors, dancers, poets -- anyone who makes his or her living (or would like to) as an Artist with a capital "A."
And it worked. Big time. The buzz has been amazing.
So I know from observing society (and talking to friends out of work and looking for jobs) that America is in trouble. Forced sameness is crippling the human spirit and destroying hope.
But I know from personal experience what the answer is: BE REMARKABLE.
Thanks to Seth Godin's latest book, I'm more excited than ever before about my professional life. I may still go down in flames with my agency. But at least I'll go down giving it my best shot, being true to myself and to my clients.
I highly recommend Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable.
It worked for me. It'll work for you, too.
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