purple-cow-summary

Purple Cow, by Seth Godin

Book Summary & Takeaways

Table of Contents

Purple Cow, by Seth Godin

Quick Book Summary

What if you saw a Purple Cow? 😲

Picture this. You’re driving along a country road. The air is crisp and clean, and the sun is shining. You look over and see a brown cow on the side of the road eating grass. You haven’t seen many cows before, so this cow is really interesting. However, after 4 hours of driving, the same brown cows are no longer interesting to you. You’ve seen too many of them, and you’ve become habituated to the sight of brown cows. Well, that’s marketing and advertising in today’s world. We are constantly bombarded with advertisements. There are too many brown cows to notice any one particular brown cow.

Now, think about this. What if you’re driving on that same country road and you look over to see a purple cow munching on some grass? Now THAT would get your attention because THAT would be remarkable. The sight of a purple cow would likely be enough to get you to stop your car, get out, and take a picture. 🤳 A purple cow would be worth talking about. In fact, it would be difficult not to talk about a purple cow.

So think about this.

What if your product or service was a purple cow? What if people had to talk about your business? 🤔

That’s what this book is all about.

If you’re ready to learn how to create a Purple Cow, check out Free Prize Inside, by Seth Godin.

Outline

Lesson 1: What is a Purple Cow?

Traditional Thinking and the 5 P's of Marketing

Traditional marketing was about a combination of the following:

  • Product
  • Pricing
  • Promotion
  • Positioning
  • Publicity; or
  • Packaging

Purple Cow is the new "P"

  • A purple cow is remarkable, unusual, spectacular
  • It’s worth talking about
  • A purple cow in a field of (boring) brown cows would get your attention

What if your product or service was a Purple Cow?

Lesson 2: The World Has Changed?

There are more choices available to the average consumer than ever before, and less time to sort through those choices.

The old way of Marketing

Steps:

  • Create an average, ordinary, safe product;
  • Buy TV and newspaper ads;
  • Get more distribution;
  • Sell more products;
  • Make more money;
  • Buy more ads with the profit; and
  • Repeat the process.

The old method of marketing was based on selling average products to average people and marketing to the masses.

People had more time to browse and less products to choose from.

The new way of Marketing

  • The market is saturated with ordinary products. All the average products have been made, marketed, and sold. The old method is broken.
  • Less simple than old way
  • Requires companies to:
    • Take risk;
    • Create remarkable and interesting products; and
    • Market those remarkable products to a very specific and targeted group of people.
  • GOAL:
    • Get noticed;
    • Catch someone’s attention;
    • Be a bright purple cow in a field full of ordinary brown cows.

Ideas that Spread are Winners

  • We have to make things that are more interesting, not more average.
  • The only real way forward: Make something worth talking about, something remarkable. That’s the crux of purple cow marketing.

“My goal in Purple Cow is to make it clear that it’s safer to be risky . . . to fortify your desire to do truly amazing things. Once you see that the old ways have nowhere to go but down, it becomes even more imperative to create things worth talking about.”

✍️ Seth Godin

Lesson 3: The Idea Diffusion Curve

  • Geoffrey First explained this idea in Crossing the Chasm
  • The Idea Diffusion Curve is a visual representation of how new products and ideas move through a population. Each successful new business innovation travels along this curve, from left to right, through the following 5 groups of consumers:
    • The innovators,
    • The early adopters,
    • The early and late majority, and … finally
    • The laggards.

Here is a graphic representation of the Idea Diffusion Curve:

purple-cow-by-seth-godin-book-summary

The Idea Diffusion Curve

Key Concept: The people on the left side of the curve, the innovators and early adopters, are risk takers. Most successful innovations are first adopted by the left side of the curve before they are adopted by the majority. In other words, you must sell your product, service, or idea to a few risk-takers before you can sell to the masses.

Innovators

  • Tiny group of people
  • Must have the cutting edge stuff
  • Eager to try something new
  • Driven by wants not needs
  • Don’t necessarily need a given product, but they want it
  • Want to be first to have, use, or own something
  • They’re pioneers.
  • EXAMPLE: Innovators are the people wait in line for hours, or even days, to get their hands on the new iPhone.

Early Adopters

  • Larger group
  • More reasonable than innovators
  • Buy new products to gain an edge
  • Interested in benefits
  • EXAMPLE: These people buy the new iPhone because it has a better camera and because it the new features can increase their productivity.

Early & Late Majority

  • Don’t want new stuff, necessarily
  • No desire to be the first to own, use, buy
  • Willing to buy if product is proven safe to buy
  • Need assurance
  • Need convincing / need to be sold
    • Early adopters sell to majority
    • More likely to listen to reasonable early adopters than renegade innovators
  • EXAMPLE: The majority will buy the iPhone, but only after the early adopters show them how cool it is and how easy it is to use. They buy when the early adopters prove to them that it’s safe to buy.

Laggards

  • Last to buy
  • Switch when they have to or when their stuff becomes obsolete
  • EXAMPLE: These are the people that quit using newspaper ads when the newspaper goes out of business.
  • EXAMPLE: These are the people that bought a DVD player when they quit making VHS players and VHS movies.
  • EXAMPLE: These are the people that bought a smart phone for the first time in 2020 because their Nokia phone from 2003 died.

Lesson 4: Remarkable Stuff is Worth Talking About

The Ideavirus

  • An ideavirus is an idea that spreads
  • NOTE: Ideas that spread are much more likely to succeed than those that don’t.
  • Won’t get started on its own 👉 it needs a little help, and that’s where sneezers come in.

The Sneezer

  • A sneezer is a customer that talks about your product or service.
  • Seth Godin calls this type of person a “raving fan.”
  • Sneezers are a special subset of the population, often on the left side of the curve, that talk to other people and rave about products they love.
  • If sneezers love your product, service, or idea, they will sell it to anyone who will listen.
  • Sneezers are the key to spreading an ideavirus.
  • Sneezers want to talk about remarkable stuff.

How do we reach sneezers?

  • Create an ideavirus. Create a remarkable product. Create a purple cow. Then, release it into niche.
  • Find the smallest definable market segment possible and target that group.
  • Early adopters will be more likely to notice and try the product.
  • Sneezers will be more likely to talk about it.
  • This sets the stage for the ideavirus to spread through that niche and, eventually, expand into adjacent market segments and, eventually, if you’re lucky, the majority.

“It is useless to advertise to anyone (except interested sneezers with influence). . . . Your ads (and your products!) shouldn’t cater to the masses. Your ads (and products) should cater to the customers you’d choose if you could choose your customers.”

✍️ Seth Godin

Lesson 5: Create Remarkable Things

⭐ If you want your idea to spread, it must be remarkable.

How to Implement Purple Cow Marketing

  • Create something remarkable before you sell it.
  • Remarkability should be a part of your product’s design.
  • Part of the earliest stages of your business endeavor
  • Create something worth talking about; the ideavirus must be built into the product or service.

2 Types of FEAR that prevent people from making Purple Cows

  • Fear of Criticism
    • Remarkable products polarize
    • When you stand out, people will notice
    • Some will hate it, BUT some will love it
    • Some will adore you; some will criticize you
    • Embrace criticism
  • 2 – Fear of Failure
    • Risky products are the only products that succeed, but many will fail
    • Keep failing until you create an ideavirus
    • Create 👉 ship 👉 fail 👉 improve 👉 REPEAT 

“In a crowded marketplace, fitting in is failing. In a busy marketplace, not standing out is the same as being invisible.”

✍️ Seth Godin