Purple Cow: Transform your business by being remarkable

Seth Godin
Penguin Books 2003
144 pages, paperback
www.sethgodin.com

Reviewer: Neha Nagin

The Purple Cow, by Seth Godin, is a classic in marketing literature! Having been voted a bestseller by both, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, together with a launch marketing stunt that clearly indicated that this book practiced what it preached, The Purple Cow certainly started life on a high note! Advocating the necessary evils of owning a Purple Cow, the book, in summary, dares the average marketer to release themselves from the confines of marketing tradition, expectation, and safety precautions, by being totally remarkable, and wholly purple.

Of course, Godin has since written several bestselling marketing books, so there's no denying his authority on the topic. Forbes refers to him as the expert marketer who "is a demigod on the Web, a best-selling author, highly sought after lecturer, successful entrepreneur, respected pundit and high-profile blogger".

Written to captivate even the dumbest of audiences, The Purple Cow inspires one to be different in every instance. The easy transition of the written, preaching from the marketing domain, into every day life and living allows the book to appeal to a much broader reader base than the content would originally suggest. Its advice is revolutionary and vital for success in every aspect of life, even job interviews!

Godin introduces radical ideas that compel experienced professional marketers to rethink their approaches to maximise success in today's environment. His key message, repeated throughout his purple creation is that "being safe is risky". His goal in writing the book was to make it clear that "it's safer to be risky". Be remarkable is what this easy to read book advocates because if you're not, no one will notice you!

Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of the book is its own stunning launch! Godin experienced a few difficulties getting the book published, so sought to launch the book on his own. After printing 10,000 copies himself, he distributed the copies in purple milk cartons through permission marketing. Obviously, this caught the attention of people, and became the talking point for many. The Purple Cow was, because of its cleverly different launch, truly a Purple Cow in its own right! The original distribution tactics not only allowed the book to become remarkably popular, but also brought to life the theoretical contents of the book.

In summary, the paperback edition commences with the denunciation of traditional marketing. Marketing, as we knew it, no longer exists! Why? Because the means of distribution and the multitude of it have rendered many old ways of getting the message across to a more aware public, to be redundant. Today's consumers are generally a satisfied lot and as such, are unlikely to want for, or notice anything. Unless, that is, it is out of the ordinary. Thus, Godin adds to the all-important Ps of marketing his own P, the Purple Cow. The new P symbolises something remarkable, amazing, spectacular, different, daring, crazy, outstanding, exceptional, shocking, and essential. It makes your product or service worth noticing.

What are the 5 Ps of marketing?

Positioning - Communicate with your prospects exactly why they should do business with you.

Packaging - Package and present your services to generate interest and response from qualified prospects.

Promotion - Get more qualified prospects to call who are ready to do business with you now.

Persuasion - Turn those who call you into immediate sales... often over the phone.

Performance - Keep clients coming back for more and referring others...forever more!

Purple Cow - Be remarkable! Be out of the Ordinary!

Consumers these days are very selective! THE REASON WHY they are is because of the media saturated market place. More and more consumers will only respond if:

Businesses stand out.

Businesses keep their promises.

Originality is advocated, especially with the slow and painful death of traditional communication mediums like television.

Consumers are no longer the marketer's dream i.e. ignorant, robotic, clones who take in every piece of marketing communications.

The choices are now too overwhelming to soak such information like a sponge. Even sponges have limits!

Attracting consumer attention and interest is now determined by just how remarkable your Purple Cow is.

Finally, Godin describes the importance of creating a buzz. The buzz often occurs with pioneering products; those that are sought out by innovators, or the people who always need to know and experience the latest. The innovators, it is hoped, will become "sneezers", virally spreading the incredible new idea, or product, to others and creating the desired buzz. The "idea virus" is the remarkable idea that is being spread successfully, and is more commonly referred to as the Purple Cow.

Of course, the question then arises, by even moderately intelligent apes, that if the Purple Cow is so damn good, why aren't there more Purple Cows out there?

The Purple Cow itself is considered to be an idea that is remarkable! As with any remarkable idea, if it really is so great, if it really is so remarkable, then everyone, everywhere would be doing it by now. But, that is not the case. In my humble opinion, the concept is still great. Perhaps even revolutionary. Yet it hasn't caught on, and could even be called rare. Godin puts this rarity down to the fear of all the business top-shots who are too timid to contemplate anything out of the ordinary. We are all following the crowd, scared to stand out and critical of those cheating rebels that do. We forget that the rebels are the ones that everyone is already talking about while we attempt to increase awareness for an age-old brand. Instead of pumping the gold into amazing new products, we are whittling it away on promoting the dead, lifeless corpses of previous success stories.

The harsh and blatant truths of a saturated market place and communications that fail, are ignored by many, if not all marketers as they choose to stick to the tried and trusted methods of the past. Are we all living in a cloud of self-deception, filtering out the truths and embracing only half of the story that suggests victory? Godin forces the reader to wake up to at least make note of the full story behind each catastrophe or potential failure. Even if you had one crazy Purple Cow back in the good old days, he demands you don't follow traditional marketing rules by staying in the past wasting away hard earned profits on feeble attempts to re-building a withering brand. Find another damn Purple Cow! Of course, this is after you have milked the original, faded Purple Cows for all they are worth.

While Godin openly admits that there is no sure-fire method to formulating a Purple Cow, he does provide a rudimentary guideline to beginning your journey into building a Purple Cow. He is also thoughtful enough to bestow upon all readers a step-by-step process to leveraging "sneezers" through respect, and some brainstorming, to kick your business into gear.

My personal opinion of the book in a practical sense, is that from a first glance it is highly impractical. One could consider it haphazardly constructed, jumping from topic to case study, and then to suggestions in random order. Yet after analysing the book and its contents at a slightly deeper level, I feel that it is entirely possible to usurp the feasible implications for one's own business. To attain a consistent and rational set of theories and principles to implement your own Purple Cow, it is crucial to attempt to fully understand the book and its inherent concepts, speculations, and examples.

The visual facets of the book itself reinforce the fundamentals of the messages inside. The spotted purple paperback cover, the size of a child's novel, hints at fun reading and a view of marketing from outside of the box. The writing is simple, in that it is easily understood! It is witty, entertaining and punctuated with thought-provoking case studies, simple illustrations, a wide range of examples, practical suggestions, and my personal favourite, subtly bitchy anecdotes.

The book is different. Just looking at it makes one want to devour the contents. Its length and short, thought-provoking chapters ensure that the reader is able to finish it. It is a handy rewarding book from which one can derive some really useful tips that one can immediately put into effect. It is also simply an interesting book that studies marketing essentials, without achieving the ill-desired state of boredom, as is the case with the average marketing text and many of the self help texts self-help e-marketing books.

I highly recommend The Purple Cow for everyone, not just people who have an interest in marketing machinations average marketer. It can be considered light reading because it is, but it's clever! It challenges the audience to rethink their way of life and to fix their business. The Purple Cow has a phenomenally inspirational effect on the reader, and makes one want to be a remarkable Purple Cow in all aspects of life, not just in business. To others, the thought of changing one's mindset may be intimidating, but the lucky others will feel empowered to travel the road less taken.

So take the risk, accept my recommendation and read this book. As Godin himself says, "Being safe is risky". It is clearly outlined in The Purple Cow that it is infinitely "safer to be risky".

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