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

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

books:

Purple Cow: Transf...

	Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable Seth Godin Portfolio Hardcover, 2003 - 160 pages average customer review:based on 189 reviews view larger image
	for more information click here

highly recommended

Seth is the master!

Easy to read, no nonsense. I love this book and it makes so much sense. I would recommend it to anyone in business... not just the marketers or the executives... everyone. We can all find the Purple Cow in our business or create one!

Purple Cow

Very good read for why a business or service should develop new ideas to promote your product or service.

Have a Cow

Twenty years ago, Tom Peters shared the same notion in "The Pursuit of Wow." In "The Purple Cow" Seth Godin explains and expands this "wow factor."

In the new marketing age, consumers are too busy and too flooded with marketing to listen to the typical pitch. So, if your product is not remarkable, if it doesn't stand out by itself (with or without marketing) like a purple cow in a herd of Holsteins, then it will be lost in the proverbial shuffle.

Today's consumer is consumed by attention deficit. So how do you get busy people who have everything they want and who are constantly bombarded with sales pitches to listen to you? The confluence of available choices (high) and available time (low) conspires against today's entrepreneur.

Since consumers today ignore you and insist on permission marketing, the old rule is out: create safe, ordinary products and combine them with great marketing. The new rule is in: create remarkable products that the right people seek out. Be the outlier--the company that's different, that thinks and acts outside the box.

Smashed down and compacted, Godin's whole message is: it's safer to be risky, to pursue the truly remarkable, different product, rather than to try to market a safe, boring product remarkably. Create a fascinating product that stands out from the crowd rather than creating a fascinating ad campaign for your ordinary product.

So what to do? Create idea viruses that spread from the early adopters to the general public. How do you create an idea that spreads? Don't try to make a product for everybody, because that product is for nobody. The everybody products are all taken. The way you break through to the mainstream is to target a niche instead of a huge market. As Godin says in a later book, "small is big."

But here's the key--the product must be built virus ready! The intention of the invention must be niche novelty. You must develop products and services so useful, interesting, outrageous, and noteworthy that your niche market will want to listen to what you have to say.

You can't make people listen. But you can figure out who's likely to be listening when you talk. And when you talk, you're either remarkable or invisible depending on how purple your cow is (not how much purple you use in advertising your cow). So, create a product that dominates a niche. Think small.

But why is the purple cow so rare? Fear. Create something unique and people will criticize it. Criticism comes to those who dare to be different. The timid fit in and go unnoticed--lost in the shuffle of the shuffling herd. Be different. Give the marketing budget to the designer. Innovate a product and introduce it to your sneezers. Launch a new product, not a new slogan. Explore the limit. Ask, "Why not?"

But what if you've already invented? Then redefine what you sell. Go for the edges (niche influencers) and describe in fresh ways what those edges are. Be edgy--the edgier the better, the edgiest the best.

Thus, none of this means that the "slogan" is bad. It just means that the slogan is good for a different reason. It used to be the slogan was good because it fit the 30 second commercial sound bite. Now the slogan is good because the virus can be passed more easily, more succinctly. Your product should shout: "Remarkable boast that's true!" Then it will be worth passing on. The slogan is the story that influencers pass on like a virus.

Where does remarkable originate? From passionate people who make products first for themselves.

But . . . how purple is "The Purple Cow?" True, it's not that novel. But, people bought it. The book itself practiced what it preached. Yes, the savvy entrepreneur already gets this. But Godin's niche is the wanna-be, not-yet-savvy innovator. There are plenty of those out there (to date--250,000 who have bought "The Purple Cow").

Reviewer: Bob Kellemen, Ph.D., is the author of "Beyond the Suffering," "Soul Physicians," and "Spiritual Friends."

for more information click here

Not very engaging, but leaves lasting impressions.

Although books like The Tipping Point, Blink, and Freakonomics are a bit more entertaining, Purple Cow does change the way you look at marketing. My only real issue is its repetitive nature and the relentless critique of current advertising. Perhaps Godin could spend more time inspiring and less time bashing big corporation's TV spots.

Easy to read introduction to 'new marketing'

If you're anything like me, you've probably heard of Seth Godin, maybe picked up some of his big ideas or read some of his writing online. But there's no substitute for reading a book to get into the head of an author, to follow his train of thought, to work though those big ideas and start figuring how they might apply to you and your business.

That's certainly how I felt after reading Purple Cow. It's an enjoyable, easy read but with some big ideas about marketing, innovation and the value of the loyal customer that will challenge the way that you think, and the way you do business.

A book that deserves to be on every business bookshelf.

for more information click here