Purple Cow: My Summary

The third of the Seth Godin books and one that truly makes him famous.

Before Purple Cow, Seth was known for digital marketing. After Purple Cow, Seth was known for creating fantastic brands and products on and off the web.

Purple Cow is the simplest product strategy book for a modern company ever written.

It proves to you why throwing advertising dollars at a brand is not nearly as valuable as creating a product that people love (or hate) with a passion.

I picked it third on my list because I believe you first need the tribe (aka the target market), the dedication (the ability to power through the dip), and then you can actually come around to creating the product (which is what Purple Cow will teach you about).

If you are in product development, corporate strategy, or an entrepreneur, this book is a must-read.

Purple Cow

Marketers for years have talked about the five Ps of marketing:

- Product

- Pricing

- Promotion

- Positioning

- Publicity

- Packaging

- Pass-along

- Permission

Marketers aren’t good at math.

The new P is “Purple Cow”.


Cows are boring. A Purple Cow, though. Now that would be interesting.

The essence of the Purple Cow is that it must be remarkable. This book is about the why, the what, and the how of remarkable.

Something remarkable is worth talking about. Remarkable marketing is the art of building things worth noticing right into your product or service.

We’ve reached the point where we can no longer market directly to the masses. Alternative approaches aren’t a novelty, they are all we’ve got left.


Stop advertising and start innovating.

Before advertising, there was word of mouth. During advertising, if you advertised to the consumer, sales would go up. After advertising, the power of our new networks allows remarkable ideas to diffuse through segments of the population at rocket speed.

As consumers, we’re too busy to pay attention to advertising, but we’re desperate to find good stuff that solves our problems.

For example:

If you developed a new type of painkiller, what would you do? The obvious answer, is to spend all you’ve got to buy a ton of national TV and print advertising. You’ll face a few problems though.

1. You need people who want to buy a painkiller. While it’s a huge market, it’s not for everyone.

2. Then you need people who want to buy a new kind. If someone has found a convenient, trusted, effective painkiller, he’s probably not out there wasting time looking for a replacement.

3. You need to find people willing to listen. The vast majority of folks are just too busy and will ignore you, regardless of how many ads you buy.

You went from an audience of everyone to an audience of a fraction the size.


The sad truth about marketing is, most people can’t buy your product.

Either they don’t have money, they don’t have time, or they don’t have interest. Among the people who might buy your product, most will never hear about it. Just because you have someone’s email and number doesn’t mean they want to hear from you.

Ideavirus networks are hard to ignite in markets that are fairly satisfied. People are less likely to go out of their way to tell a friend about a product unless they’re fairly optimistic that the friend will be glad to hear about it.

If you want to grow your market share or launch something, you have a significant challenge ahead.

Once you see that the old ways have nowhere to go but down, it becomes more imperative to create things worth talking about.


The old rule was: Create safe, ordinary products and combine them with great marketing.

The new rule is: Create remarkable products that the right people seek out.


The value (to marketers) of a group isn’t related to its size.

It is related to its influence. Early adopters heavily influence the rest of the curve, so persuading them is worth far more than wasting ad dollars trying to persuade anyone else. Luckily, only the risk-taking, idea-spreading people that make up the early adopters are willing to listen to you.

It is so tempting to skip the early adopters and go for the juicy, profitable center of the bell curve, but that doesn’t work. Innovators and early adopters are the folks who sit in the front row, go to industry conferences, and read edgy trade journals. These folks can actually benefit from using a new product and are eager to maintain their edge over the rest of the population by seeking out new products and services.

The vast majority of consumers are happy. Stuck. Sold on what they’ve got. They’re not looking for a replacement, and they don’t like adapting to anything new. The ONLY chance you have is to sell to people who like change, who like new stuff, and actively looking for both.

You must design a product that is remarkable enough to attract the early adopters, but is flexible enough and attractive enough that those adopters will have an easy time spreading the idea to the rest of the curve.


Ideas that spread are more likely to win than those that don’t. These are ideaviruses.

Sneezers are the key spreading agents of an ideavirus. These are the experts who tell all their colleagues or friends or admirers or followers about a new product or service on which they are a perceived authority. If the early adopters aren’t sneezers, they won’t spread the idea.

Finding and seducing Sneezers is the essential first step in creating an ideavirus.

It is much easier to find the Sneezers for a small niche than a broad market. At the same time, sneezers in a niche market are more likely to talk about your product.


When an ideavirus occurs, it’s often because all the viral pieces work together.

How smooth and easy is it to spread the idea?

How often will people sneeze it to their friends?

How tightly knit is the group you’re targeting? Do they talk much? Do they believe in each other?

How reputable are the people most likely to promote your idea?

How persistent is it, is it a fad or does it have legs?


The vast majority of product success stories are engineered from the first day to be successful.

Products that are engineered to cross the chasm are more likely to succeed than others. The hard work and money you used to spend on advertising should go into engineering and R&D expenses. The Purple Cow isn’t cheap but it works.


It is useless to market to anyone (except interested Sneezers with influence).

You need to do advertising when consumers are looking for help in a place they will find you. The amount of chances you’ll have to do this is few. The rest of the time, invest in the Purple Cow. Develop products and services the market will SEEK out.


You can’t make people listen, but you can figure out who’s likely to be listening when you talk, and then invest the right combination of Ps to overwhelm them with the “rightness” of your offer.

The “Who’s listening?” question drives not just the success of individual products, but also the status of entire markets. When faced with a market in which no one is listening, the smartest plan is usually to leave.

In almost every market, the “leading brand” has a huge advantage over the others. Often a less brand has no chance. It’s just easier to go with the brand name.


The Purple Cow is so rare because people are afraid.

If you’re remarkable, some will hate you. Criticism comes to those who stand out. In a crowded market, fitting in is failing. Not standing out is the same as being invisible. We mistakenly believe criticism leads to failure. Luckily, since nearly everyone else is terrified of standing out and facing criticism, you can be remarkable with less effort, so we face two choices:

1. Be invisible yet safe

2. Take a chance at greatness

How are you going to predict which ideas are going to be worth the hard work? You can’t.

You don’t know if your Purple Cow will pay off like a golden goose. That’s the point. It’s the unpredictability of the outcome that makes it work. However, boring always leads to failure. Being boring is always the riskiest strategy.

The lesson of the Cow is worth repeating: Safe is risky. The white cow gets slaughtered.


The Purple Cow is all about putting the marketing investment into the product instead of into the media.

Mass marketing demands mass products and mass products demand mass marketing. This leads to a dangerous catch-22 for two reasons:

1. Boring products. What’s the point of advertising to everyone a product that doesn’t appeal to everyone? By targeting the masses and designing products accordingly, you waste your money. The only way an idea reaches the bulk of the market is to move from the early adopters on the left side of the bell curve to the mass in the middle. If you don’t grab the sneezers, your product dies.

2. Scary budgets. In order to launch a product for the masses, you need to spend big.


Measuring can help you improve your Purple Cow.

Companies that measure if their product, interactions, and policy is working (is it persuading sneezers to spread the word) will quickly optimize their offerings and make them more virus-worthy. If you measure it, it will improve.


As the world gets more turbulent, more people seek safety.

Fewer people seek to create a Purple Cow. At the same time, the market is getting faster. People are happy to switch their products and providers to get an edge, so while fewer people attempt to become the Purple Cow, the rewards for being remarkable continue to increase. There is a huge reward for getting the Purple Cow right.


Once you’ve managed to create a Purple Cow, the challenge is to do two things simultaneously:

1. Milk the Cow. Make profit for as long as possible.

2. Create an environment where you are likely to invent the next Purple Cow…. because all Cows die.

It is tempting to coast. It used to be easy to coast for a long time after a few remarkable successes.


Unique and abrasive is ok…. It is actually suggested.

When a committee gets involved, each well-meaning participant sands off the rough edges, speaking up for how their constituency might not like the product. The result is something boring…. Something safe.


Marketing departments often feel a need to justify their existence.

All too often, these marketing efforts lead to compromise: “We don’t have enough money to launch a new product, how about a new slogan?” or “That will offend our existing customer base, let’s do something less radical”. Almost without exception, these compromises are worse than doing nothing. Marketing just to keep busy is worse than nothing at all.


Otaku describes something that’s more than a hobby but a little less than an obsession.

Your goal is to connect with passionate early adopters and get them to sneeze. That’s where otaku comes in. Consumers with otaku for your niche are the sneezers you seek. Some markets have more otaku than others. The task of marketers is to identify these markets and focus on them, regardless of their size.

It’s easy to create a product if you have Otaku, but what if you don’t? You can choose two techniques:

1. Learn the art of projecting. Get inside the heads of the people who do care deeply and make something they’ll love. Learning this skill is much more profitable than being able to make stuff for only yourself. Immerse yourself in fan magazines, trade shows, and reviews.

2. Learn the science of projecting. Watch, measure, learn, and fail over and over again until you have the formula. Create a culture of aggressive prototyping new products… very public releases of cheap prototypes.


You don’t have to like it.

You don’t need a passion to create a Purple Cow. What you need is the insight to realize that you have no other choice. Nothing else is going to work.

Find the market niche and then make the remarkable product, not the other way around. It’s about being irresistible to a tiny group of easily reached sneezers with otaku.

The alternative is to start with a problem that you can solve for your customers (who already realize they have a problem). Then, create a remarkable solution and promote it to sneezers. This only works if you already have a loyal customer base though!


So is there a foolproof way to create a Purple Cow?

Of course not. I do, however, have a process. The system is easy: go for the edges.

Review your traditional marketing Ps. Sketch out where the edge is for you and competitors.


A slogan that accurately conveys the essence of your Purple Cow is also a script.

A script for Sneezers to use when they talk to their friends. The slogan reminds the user, “Here’s why it’s worth recommending us; here’s why your friends will love us.” Best of all, the script guarantees that the word of mouth is passed on properly, that the prospect is coming to you for the right reason.


If the goal of marketing is to create a Purple Cow, and the nature of the Cow is to be extreme in some attribute, it’s inevitable that compromise can only diminish your chances of success.

You can’t create a fast-growing company around vanilla. Pick a maverick and get out of the way.


Consumers don’t change their roles often.

Sneezers love to sneeze. Here are the four steps to make money off sneezers:

1. Get permission to alert them to when you might have a cow. Don’t abuse this.

2. Give them the story and tools they’ll need to share your idea to others.

3. Once you are profitable, hand your project to a different team. Let them milk it.

4. Reinvest. Launch another Purple Cow.


If post-design, post-manufacture marketing is dead, what replaces it?

Design. The person with the real influence on the success of a product gets to sit at the table when the original seeds are being sown. If you are a marketer who doesn’t know how to invest, design, influence, and adapt, you’re no longer a marketer.


Outrageous is not always remarkable.

It’s certainly not required. Sometimes it’s annoying. The outrageousness needs to have a purpose, and it needs to be built into the product. It’s not about the way you say it, it’s what you say. While you can momentarily use offensive behavior to capture attention, it’s not a long-run strategy.


But what about the factory?

Your boss and your coworkers are likely going to resist the Purple Cow. Remarkable isn’t always about hanging the biggest machine in your factory. It can be the way you answer your phone, launch a brand, price a revision of your software, or just do anything. Getting in the habit of doing the “unsafe” thing every time you have the opportunity is the best way to start being remarkable.


Cheap is one of the only remarkable items that never seems to run out of appeal.

The cheap gain market share. The problem with heap is that once you start, your competitor will likely play the same game. Cheap is a lazy way out. Cheap is the last refuge. The exception is a quantum leap in price. If you can change an $100k product into a $1k product, that’s amazing.


Explore the limits.

Be the cheapest, fastest, slowest, hottest, coldest, easiest, hardest, most efficient, loudest, hated, the copycat, the outsider, the oldest, the newest, the most of something. If there’s a limit, you should (and must) test it.

Think of the smallest conceivable market, and describe a product that overwhelms it. Go from there.

Copy, not from your industry, but from any other industry. Find an industry duller than yours and discover who’s remarkable and why. Do it in your industry.

Identify a competitor who’s generally regarded as “edgy” and outdo them.

Ask, “Why not”. Almost everything we don’t do is out of fear or someone not asking “Why not”.

Instead of trying to use your technology to make a better product for your users’ standard behavior, experiment with inviting users to change their behavior to make the product work dramatically better.


If you can’t imagine a future in which people are once again fascinated by your product, it’s time to take profits and reinvest them in building something new.


Differentiate your customers.

Find the sneezers and find the profitable. Ignore the rest. Don’t cater to the masses.


If you could pick one underserved niche to target (and dominate), what would it be?


Conclusion

Purple Cow makes it easy to understand why you have to be remarkable in order to succeed in the modern world. Building on the idea from The Dip, that the best in the world get the most, creating the best product for your market will make you the most money.

Focus your budget, time, and skills in the development of the product, not in the marketing of it.

When I get to run a company, this book will be part of my top-line revenue growth strategy.

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