Be A Purple Cow

I had heard Seth Godin talk and shared in a prior blog a few years ago what I thought was a great marketing strategy, given all the interference the consumer deals with every day in every way from every industry that deals with consumers;

Picture yourself driving through the country with your spouse and two kids. Your kids are 5 & 7, and naturally are squabbling most of the way to wherever you are going. Along the way, you pass some cows. They stop, turn their head for a moment, look at the cows with some interest, maybe even commenting on them. Within moments, the cows will be forgotten, the ride continues and so do the chldren squabbling.

Now, picture that same ride, only this time,you pass a purple cow. A real purple cow. You would look in amazement, having never seen a real purple cow. Your kids would be ooing with amazement. You probably would stop to get out of the car, and take some pictures with your camera phone of. Pictures of your kids with the cow, pictures of the cow, and when the ride resumed, no doubt the cow would be remembered every so often. When you got home, your kids would tell all their friends about the purple cow, and bring the pictures of the purple cow to show and tell. The purple cow would stick out among all the other cows, and other people might even drive out there to see the purple cow for themselves.

In todays multi billion website and mutli billion $$$ media markets, you want to be a purple cow. You want people to pick you over all the other regular brown cows they see all the time that mean nothing unless they happen to need a cow when a cow happens to be there. But the purple cow is remembered, talked about, and its popularity will grow.