December 2007
Learn the purpose behind the chart and the Blackberry. |
Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable
by Seth Godin
Key takeaway tip – The author quickly recounts the issues facing today's marketers – easily-solved problems have already been solved, information overload causes prospects to ignore you, and satisfied customers are less likely to tell their friends about you. How to address these issues? By being remarkable, that is, by being the purple cow that stands out in a field of commonplace brown cows. Some concepts I especially liked:
- A list comparing "ho-hum" products with comparable "purple cow" products (page 19).
- A critique of why a full page ad introducing the BearingPoint name was unremarkable (page 22).
- Examples of companies who "cheat" because they do not play by the rules of old-fashioned advertising-based marketing (page 38).
- Brainstorm techniques to help you find what's remarkable about your product or service (pages 122-137).
While most of the examples deal with tangible products, a number deal with services – which are the hardest of all to differentiate as remarkable. But just because it's hard to determine why a service is "purple" doesn't make it impossible.