Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable

Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable by Seth Godin. First published in 2003, and again in 2005, and again in 2019, The Purple Cow resonates with aspiring and seasoned marketers alike for it’s timeless message; BE REMARKABLE. Seth Godin is a champion of the marketing industry, making a name for himself by selling his marketing firm to Yahoo for 30 million dollars and then becoming their vice president of direct marketing. At the same time he began writing marketing books, to which Purple Cow in only one of many. Yet, its message is worth the three hours it will take to read it. Whether new to marketing or refreshing your ideas, you’ll want to consider the bullet points Godin has to offer within these pages. When Godin speaks, people listen. This book is primarily base on his personal opinion and therefor scrutinized, yet it holds major weight for those individuals about to jump into the melting pot of marketing that Godin so wittingly has mastered. Out with the old, in with the new. Marketing has evolved, according to Godin, and innovation is the key to success. He believes it would be a waste of energy to focus on products and services that already exist for the masses. Developing new products or services for a market that is not saturated but small and specific is the new key to success. His message is throttling innovators forward with the idea they must put extreme amounts of effort into standing out from the crowd. He provides multiple case studies of companies that have done so, such as Starbucks, and Dutch Boy Paint. His examples shed light on a different way of thinking that is so inspiring! It will spark you to try harder, search deeper, and expand your reach much farther than you had originally anticipated. If you are dealing with attempting to re-spin an old idea into a new one, he uses the example of Dutch Boy, the painting company who changed the idea of the paint can, making it so much more user friendly than the old one that the companies’ sales went up, their distribution broadened, and their retail price instantly increased. Godin’s approach to advertising leaves some weary of his methods. He believes television ads are in the stone ages and Internet banners are a complete waste of time. He has the statistics and the experience to back it up. His ideas stray from the typical mass media approach and hone in on investing in an idea and then spreading that idea to particular individuals that will find it remarkable, interesting, and a must have. This foreign concept seems like the long game to me, finding people to like a product, try it and then tell their friends, takes time. Yet Godin offers streamlined examples of how this can be done. Influencers on Instagram suddenly made much more sense. The entire format of Instagram and how it caters to like-minded individuals who feed off of each other’s ideas and inspiration is an absolute gold mine for what Godin proposes. It makes perfect sense. I would also gather, that the folks disagreeing with the value of this book may not be fluent in the social media formats younger generations have now grown accustom. Godin sheds light on subjects not otherwise considered unless you’ve already read some of his other books in which case his ideas are similar and reiterated. He’s a master of marketing, and this book contains keys you might not otherwise have considered. Learn as much as you possibly can to succeed, explore every option at your disposal, and the remarkable will be within reach! 5 stars, and a quick easy, concrete, authentic read. In fact, I read it twice.

Red Pill-MGTOW- Rugged Individualists Reread: 2 of 7 Game. Beware of Popcorn brain advertising with a dash of amygdala hijack. Be remarkable. Who cares about dubious opinions from zombies? Assert your ideas. Be sure to avoid eating too many Krispy Kreme donuts. Slogan, business cards, South Park appeal to women, irresistible to certain tiny groups, complicated sells, word of mouth vs. TV ads. Bonus part of book is not worth reading. Self-publish Research: Decline of Maxwell house vs. Starbucks Curad band- aid – collectible product Otaku – Japanese passionate hobbies Bloomberg terminal- learned and not going to give up that expertise Monkey Branch: Joel Spoelstra – Marketing Outrageously Crossing the Chasm – Geoffrey Moore Quotes: The world has changed. There are far more choices, but there is less and less time to sort them out. 217 Boring is always the most risky strategy. 698 – learn game It’s fairly obvious who the big losers are—giant brands with big factories and quarterly targets, organizations with significant corporate inertia and low thresholds for perceived risks. Once addicted to the cycle of the TV-INDUSTRIAL complex, these companies have built hierarchies and systems that make it awfully difficult to be remarkable. 829 – be fluid, ship it. The Opposite of “Remarkable” is “very good.” 904 – go full throttle, share the game Pearl Jam knows that once they have permission to talk to someone, it’s much easier to make a sale. 965 - warmth Reinvest. Do it again. With a vengeance. Launch another Purple Cow (to the same audience). Fail and fail and fail again. Assume that what was remarkable last time won’t be remarkable this time. 1189 – fail and work 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? 1203 Cheap is a lazy way out of the battle for the Purple Cow. 1337 – invest and share, game South Park, it set a record, scoring just 1.5 out of 10 points with women. Three of the women in the group cried, 1485 – not appealing to the feminine imperative Remember, it’s not about being weird. It’s about being irresistible to a tiny group of easily reached sneezers with otaku. Irresistible isn’t the same as ridiculous. Irresistible (for the right niche) is just remarkable. 1488 – attraction through polarization When I wrote Purple Cow all those years ago, it was groundbreaking. People said I was nuts. The publisher of my earlier books refused to publish it, saying it would never sell. By leaving it as is, I want you to see what it was like then, sort of like a musician not resinging his old songs every time the album moves to a new format. 1739 – boldness, ship it, resistance, game

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."

Where do I start? I am all for being unique and standing out! In today's business climate, most businesses look exactly the same. The problem is that more and more businesses are popping up and unless you are unique, you can be left behind. This book is from 2007, but the message is still very loud and clear. Stand out and get noticed! There are so many products out there these days and many are pretty the same. What makes them different? It's the COW, they are creating, planning and milking that baby to the bank. There are many ways to stand out, I like how this book has a few case studies and explains how these companies stood out and dominated a sometime saturated market. I read a lot of business books and marketing books and this one for sure is a must have. The information contained in this book provides lots of value and it can help any business do better. I almost done with the book, but had to give kudos to the writer for writing such a great book that WILL help businesses IF they WANT to help themselves!!!! Buy the book!!!!

The essance of this book is quite simply to make your business unique, make it stand out, and start people talking about it --- recommending it to others. The idea isn't new but it's good to read it again. Simply put, Seth reminds the reader to not be boring. To not be invisible and not even to be "very good" but rather to be remarkable. He says that people don't talk about or recommend "very good" products or services; that they expect very good. But people do talk about "remarkable" products or services. That's probably true and I tend to endorse that thought. Furthermore, Seth claims that television marketing (among other types of advertising) is quite dead, thank you. He says that the old, established companies like P&G and General Mills made their names and sold their products with television advertising and that we still buy from old ads we saw thirty years ago. In other words, the Wheaties we bought because Billie Jean King was on the box still keeps us buying Wheaties today. (Whether BJK was on a box of Wheaties or not I don't know. But I can dream that a woman made the cover of the great cereal at least once in those days.) Well, there's a dab of truth in that. But just a dab. Television still sells a ton of stuff. Granted, some of the ads are very bad. Some are cute and win awards but they don't win customers for the ad agency's clients. Television and radio and Internet advertising are not dead, however. Now having said all that, I do agree with Seth when he says that to succeed today most businesses must be remarkable. But, unfortunately, that doesn't mean you can't have a bad product and still succeed. Microsoft is known for its poor products and shoddy security but it's a rich, successful company while software companies with far finer products are struggling. Ah, but a Microsoft is admittedly the exception. Seth knows how to market his books and this one is no exception. It will do well. Is this book better than the many other books on marketing? Is it unique or does it give new information? Not really. One of the books on advertising that was a hot seller a number of years ago said that a product or service didn't have to be great to be a success. It just had to be "good enough". So who is right? Do you have to be remarkable or just good enough? Well, you tell me. This book will make Seth some nice change. Maybe he'll go to France again on what he earns from it. Is it remarkable or just good enough? Well, it's good enough that it interested me sufficiently to buy it. It's good enough that I got a few ideas from it. But it's not remarkable enough that I'll give it five stars and suggest you run out and buy it. Susanna K. Hutcheson Executive Copy Director and Owner Powerwriting.com LLC

There seem to be two camps reviewing this book. One say that is brilliant and their favorite book of all time. The other says the book is shallow and void of original ideas. Both are right...and wrong. The main idea of the book is spot on. If your business is not unique, it will be invisible. Marketing an invisible business is tough. To the critics who say the basic idea is simple and therefore not ground breaking, I agree. But Godin manages to clarify a simple, very important idea that most business owners overlook. There is an elegance to his clarity. Godin writes books that have a single core idea. He writes in a conversational tone. His books are short and readable. By the way, all of Godin's books make great audio books because they are in his conversational voice. There are two categories of business books. There are the big serious tomes about how somebody saved ABC Corporation from disaster and made billions in the process. And then there are books for the rest of us. Purple Cow is a "rest of us" book. Years after reading the book, I still struggle with developing my own purple cow. It isn't easy. Add this to your library. Chris Reich Business Consultant

This book does make you think about what your selling and making changes to what you're doing. I recommend it with the caveat that it was originally written in 2002 and the products and companies that are shared have changed, Best Buy being one of them. They achieved success, but the local Best Buy near me is now an outlet and I don't expect it to survive the current economy.

"The Purple Cow" by Seth Godin is a refreshing and thought-provoking read for anyone looking to stand out in a crowded marketplace. Godin's metaphor of the purple cow is a powerful reminder of the importance of being remarkable and differentiating yourself from the competition. The book is filled with insightful examples and practical advice on how to create products and services that are truly unique and memorable. Godin challenges readers to embrace their inner purple cow and strive for excellence in everything they do. Overall, "The Purple Cow" is a must-read for entrepreneurs, marketers, and anyone looking to unleash their creative potential. Highly recommended!

There is a fair amount of hype surrounding the author of this book, and that actually turned me off reading his stuff until now... I admit it, I was wrong! This is without doubt one of the best marketing books I've read. Every business owner will benefit from reading this book, and anyone with even a passing interest in marketing will enjoy it! Well written with lots of great case studies. A little dated but the underlying message is still rock solid. A remarkable book Mr Godin - you may well be a Purple Cow - Mooooo

Easy to read as all Seth Godin's books are, not always easy to implement. So many of his other books are references to this book. a must read if you market any service, product or business. Look past when it was published and see the gems that are still relevant in 2013.

I liked the book it had what I was looking for it aligned with what I've been thinking for a long time so it reaffirmed my beliefs and hence I liked it due to confirmation bias, and yet I found the case studies present in the book to be very less explanatory,

Before buying it, I have been overwhelmed by the people who strongly advice to read this book, and after reading it I figured it out why: this book is a total kickstart guide for every marketer/entrepreneur who wants to create something remarkable. So, if you're deciding whether or not to buy, I surely know that you've already read on the internet what kind of knowledge you'll find inside this book and how greatly it will influence your future works.

The main issue with the book is that it uses US brand examples that may feel unfamiliar to some readers, which can make parts of the message harder to immediately relate to. However, the core idea is still clear and works if you translate it into your own context. The book is more about explaining a principle of differentiation than giving direct, practical steps.