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Purple cow.
Seth Godin on how to get your ideas to spread successfully.
How do ideas spread? Why do some charities, movies, architects, politicians, potato chips and cars succeed, while others (just as good apparently) fade away? Purple Cow is about how challenging it is to get your ideas to spread—and how you can do it successfully.
When was the last time you noticed a cow? Saw a cow on the side of the road, pulled over and gawked… Not likely. Cows, after you've seen them for a while, are boring. They may be well-bred cows, Six Sigma cows, cows lit by a beautiful light, but they are still boring.
A Purple Cow, though: Now, that would really stand out. The essence of the Purple Cow—the reason it would shine among a crowd of perfectly competent, even undeniably excellent cows—is that it would be remarkable. Something remarkable is worth talking about, worth paying attention to. Boring stuff quickly becomes invisible.
The world is full of boring stuff—brown cows—which is why so few people pay attention. Remarkable marketing is the art of building things worth noticing right into your product or service. Not just slapping on the marketing function as a last-minute add-on, but also understanding from the outset that if your offering itself isn't remarkable, then it's invisible—no matter how much you spend on well-crafted advertising.
This is an essay about what it takes to create and sell something remarkable. It is a manifesto for anyone who wants to make a difference at their organization by helping create products and services that are worth spreading in the first place.
Go ahead and be original, because it's the people passion, guts, and daring that will win. Not just because going through life with passion and guts beats the alternative (which it does), but also because it's the only way to be successful. Today, the one sure way to fail is to be boring. Your one chance for success is to be remarkable.
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