Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable by Seth Godin

The world has changed. There are far more choices, but there is less and less time to sort them out.” pg 13

Seth Godin, prolific author of business blogs and books, shares his insights about why a product must be remarkable to cut through the noise and get an audience’s attention. He opines that this remarkable “Purple Cow” quality is the only way a business can succeed in the modern world, as the old methods of mass marketing through expensive television ads is going the way of the dodo.

“Something remarkable is worth talking about. Worth noticing. Exceptional. New. Interesting. It’s a Purple Cow. Boring stuff is invisible. It’s a brown cow.” pg 3

The trouble with this remarkable stuff is that there is no clear method to create it. It is a “I’ll-know-it-when-I-see-it” type situation. For businesses looking to up their Purple Cow-factor, there are very few directions in this book, other than, it’s important to be a purple cow. I could see that unclear quality being frustrating for some readers.

“The old rule was this: Create safe, ordinary products and combine them with great marketing. The new rule is: Create remarkable products that the right people seek out.” pg 21

The “right people” being the influencers or the early adoptors of whatever type of product it is that you’re selling. Marketing to the niche, rather than mass marketing to the crowd, is, according to Godin, the best strategy for the new world of marketing.

Take Goodreads, for example. Publishers want to get their advance reader copies into the hands of those who talk to their friends about what they’re reading and are passionate about books, the readers who exhibit “otaku”. Godin defines “otaku”: “Otaku describes something that’s more than a hobby but a little less than an obsession.” pg 94

The obsessed, passionate readers talk about what they’re reading to the extent that they start an “ideavirus”, which Godin talks about in another book. In this way, Godin says, you build momentum for whatever remarkable product you’re selling. They can’t help but talk about it because of its fascinating qualities. As this movement builds, the books end up on readers’ favorite shelves, eventually becomes a Reader’s Choice pick, and then the book sells itself.

The products that aim for the largest audience are bland and have had their remarkable edges filed off. And, that’s bad, according to Godin.

“The system is pretty simple: Go for the edges. Challenge yourself and your team to describe what those edges are (not that you’d actually go there), and then test which edge is most likely to deliver the marketing and financial results you seek.” pg 101

There are definitely dated portions of this book and, as I said, it is nebulous. To get meaning out of it, readers need to distill the underlying ideas and apply them to your unique business. But, I still learned things.

The reason I read Godin is he encourages readers to think differently. He gets my creative circuits firing. I like that.

Recommended for readers who may need a creative jump-start for whatever remarkable product they’re creating. This book isn’t a road map, but it could be a compass.

Thanks for reading!

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