Book notes: “Purple Cow” by Seth Godin

About your products

• Create remarkable products that the right people seek out.

• The leader is the leader because he did something remarkable. And that remarkable thing is now taken — it’s no longer remarkable when you do it.

• It’s safer to be risky. Use this mindset to go for the truly amazing things.

About your niche

• The 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.

• No one is going to eagerly adapt to your product. 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 way you break through to the mainstream is to target a niche instead of a huge market. With a niche, you can segment off a chunk of the mainstream, and create an ideavirus so focused that it overwhelms that small slice of the market that really and truly will respond to what you sell. The market is small enough that a few sneezers can get you to the critical mass you need to create an ideavirus.

• When faced with a market in which no one is listening, the smartest plan is usually to leave. Plan B is to have the insight and guts to go after a series of Purple Cows, to launch a product/service/ promotional offering that somehow gets (the right) people to listen.

• Otaku describes something that’s more than a hobby but a little less than an obsession. Consumers with otaku are the sneezers you seek. The flash of insight is that some markets have more otaku-stricken consumers than others. The task of the remarkable marketer is to identify these markets and focus on them to the exclusion of lesser markets — regardless of relative size. Smart businesses target markets where there’s already otaku.

• Find the market niche first, and then make the remarkable product — not the other way around.

- Viral pieces of an ideavirus:

• How smooth and easy is it to spread your idea?

• How often will people sneeze it to their friends?

• Is the target group talkative/prone to share?

• Do the target group believe in each other?

• How reputable are the sneezers in this group?

• How persistent is your idea? For how long will it live?

About advertising

• The marketing spending mindshift: Today, marketing is more time-consuming and expensive than it used to be. You’re just spending the money earlier in the process (and repeating the process mot often). The Purple Cow is not a cheap shortcut. It is, however, your best (perhaps only) strategy for growth.

• It’s useless to advertise to anyone, except interested sneezers with influence — as targeting this kind of people is rare, you should invest in the Purple Cow.

• **Put the marketing investment into the product instead of into the media.**What would happen if you gave the marketing budget for your next three products to the designers? Could you afford a world-class architect/designer/sculptor/director/author?

• Start with a problem that you can solve for your customer (who realizes he has a problem!). Then, once you’ve come up with a solution that is so remarkable that the early adopters among this population will gleefully respond, you’ve got to promote it in a medium where those most likely to sneeze are actually paying attention.

About your customers

• Differentiate your customers. Find the group that’s most profitable. Find the group that’s most likely to sneeze. Figure out how to develop/advertise/reward either group. Ignore the rest. 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.

The problem with the Cow is actually the problem with fear.

• Most companies are so afraid of offending or appearing ridiculous that they steer far away from any path that might lead them to this result. They make boring products because they don’t want to be interesting.

• The real growth comes with products that annoy, offend, don’t appeal, are too expensive, too cheap, to heavy, too complicated, too simple — too something. (Of course, they’re too too for some people, but just perfect for others.)

• Explore the limits. What if you’re the cheapest, the fastest, the slowest, the hottest, the coldest, the easiest, the most efficient, the loudest, the most hated, the copycat, the outsider, the hardest, the oldest, the newest, the… most! If there’s a limit, you should (must) test it.

• Remember, it’s not about being weird. It’s about being irresistible to a tiny group of easily reached sneezers with otaku. Irresistible isn’t the same as ridiculous. Irresistible (fot the right niche) is just remarkable.

• You’re probably guilty of being too shy, not too outrageous. Try being outrageous, just for the sake of being annoying. It’s good practice. Don’t do it too much because it doesn’t usually work. But it’s a good way to learn what it feels like to be at the edge.

Strategies and mindsets

• Invite users to change their behavior to make the product work dramatically better.

• If you could pick one underserved niche to target (and to dominate), what would it be? Why not launch a product to compete with your own — a product that does nothing but appeal to this market?

• Measure everything so you can watch what’s working an what’s not. What could your measure? What would that cost? How fast could you get the results? If you can afford it, try it. “If you measure it, it will improve”.

- The opposite of “Remarkable” is very good. Are you making very good stuff? How fast can you stop?

• Do you have a slogan or positioning statement or remarkable boast that’s actually true? Is it consistent? Is it worth passing on?

• Make a list of all the remarkable products in your industry. Who made them? How did they happen? Model the behavior (not mimic the product) and you’re more than halfway to making your own.

• What would happen if you told the truth about your product?

• If you could build a competitor that had costs that were 30 percent lower than yours, could you do it? If you could, why don’t you?

• Come up with a list of ten ways to change the product (not the hype) to make it appeal to a sliver of your audience.

• Think small. One vestige of the TV-Industrial complex is a need to think mass. If it doesn’t appeal to everyone, the thinking goes, it’s not worth it. No longer. Think of the smallest conceivable market, and describe a product that overwhelms it with its remark- ability. Forget the rest.

• Build and use a permission asset. Once you have the ability to talk directly to your most loyal customers, it gets much easier to develop and sell amazing things. Without the filters of advertising wholesalers, and retailers, you can create products that are far more remarkable.

• Copy. Not from your industry, but from any other industry. Find an industry more dull than yours, discover who’s remarkable (it won’t take long), and do what they did.

• Find things that are “just not done”in your industry, and do them.

• Ask, “Why not?” Almost everything you don’t do has no good reason for it. Almost everything you don’t do is the result of fear or inertia or a historical lack of someone asking, “Why not?”

• If someone in your organization is charged with creating a new Purple Cow, leave them alone! Don’t use internal reviews and usability testing to figure out if the new product is as good as what you’ve got now. Instead, pick the right maverick and get out of the way.

• Remarkable isn’t always about changing the biggest machine in your factory. It can be the way you answer the phone, launch a new brand, or price a revision to your software. Getting in the habit of doing the “unsafe” thing every time you have the opportunity is the best way to learn to project — you get practice at seeing what’s working and what’s not.

• You don’t need passion to create a Purple Cow. Nor do you need an awful lot of creativity. What you need is the insight to realize that you have no other choice but to grow your business or launch your product with Purple Cow thinking. Nothing else is going to work.

• Things that have to work rarely do anymore. You will have to try lot’s of things!