I’m probably rather late to this party, but nonetheless I thought it worth providing an overview of Seth Godin’s book Purple Cow.
In a nutshell Godin tells us to be remarkable! To stand out from the crowd, and make yourself noticeable. There are too many products that have already had thousand and thousands, if not millions and millions of marketing spend for you to come along be the same or very similar and hope to force a sizeable profitable part of that market.
The book is full of examples of companies and their products or services and how they have been or could be remarkable. Below is an excerpt of the key points; they provide food for thought…..
• Experiment with inviting the users to change their behaviour to make the product work dramatically better.
• Your ads and your products shouldn’t cater to the masses advertise to your advocates.
• If you could pick one underserved niche to target (and to dominate), what would it be?
• In a busy marketplace, not standing out is the same as being invisible.
• We often respond to our aversion to criticism by hiding, avoiding the negative feedback, and thus (ironically) guaranteeing that we won’t succeed.
• If you acknowledge that you’ll never catch up by being the same make a list of ways you can catch up by being different.
• How could you modify your product or service so that you’d show up on the next episode of Saturday Night Live or in a spoof of your industry’s trade journal.
• You’re probably guilty of being too shy, not too outrageous. Try being outrageous, just for the sake of being annoying. Its good practice. Don’t do it too much because it doesn’t usually work. But it’s good to learn what it feels like to be at the edge.
• 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.
(* otaku is a Japanese term for people with obsessive interests)
We could all do with being remarkable I don’t think it is a bad exercise to consider what Purple Cows you have grazing in your business.