Be A Purple Cow

If we own a business today, we must find a way to stand out among the crowd.  We have to find a way to get noticed, discussed, and remembered.

Is “Good,” Good Enough?

Think of your last restaurant dining experience. Was the food good? Was the service good? Was the price good? Did you walk out and immediately call your friends? Of course not – good was expected! What if you went to a restaurant and the experience was so remarkable that you couldn’t wait to pick up the phone? What would you say?

You might say, “I just had an amazing dining experience! You need to visit this restaurant!” The word would spread, and the restaurant would have to work hard to keep up with the generated growth primarily from simple word of mouth.

I recently read Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable by Seth Godin. The basis of the book is simple - a field of brown cows is boring; a purple cow stands out. People will notice, discuss and remember a purple cow. They will tell their friends about the purple cow, who in turn will tell their friends about the purple cow. Soon, everyone will go to the field to see the purple cow.

Godin begins the book by discussing the dated principles of marketing: pricing, product, publicity, packaging, etc. He believes that these principles are part of the TV-industrial complex in which consumers learned about products from mass media. Companies spent huge amounts of money to tell consumers about their products, and it worked. Consumers bought the products.

In today’s fast-paced, attention-deficit world, consumers have everything they need; they probably even have everything they want. They don’t pay attention to an advertisement unless it is something that piques their interest.

What does this mean for marketing departments and product developers? It means that they must find a way to stand out in a crowd. They need to be remarkable. They need to be risky. They might even need to fail in order to learn what will ultimately make them remarkable. What is remarkable today might be boring next year. To be true purple cows, products need to be reinvented on a regular basis to avoid being “very good” or “safe.”

Godin gives examples of purple cows that include discount furniture retailers, high-end stereo systems, family restaurants and expensive cell phones. All of the examples, while very different products or services, have one thing in common: they have come up with a strategy or product that sets them apart from their competition. People talk about them to their friends, and excitement builds. Soon, those products and services are seen as leaders in the industry, and others are striving to catch up!

When I finished reading Purple Cow, I immediately tried thinking of purple cows that have touched my life, either personally or professionally. Two came immediately to mind…

• For my favorite personal purple cow, I thought of Papa Murphy’s - the new pizza restaurant that just opened in my neighborhood (www.papamurphys.com). I had actually eaten these pizzas while visiting family on the west coast, and hoped that one day I would be able to enjoy one in my own home. What is different about this pizza chain? They build the pizza in front of me, and I take it home and bake it when I am ready. They don’t deliver, but that’s ok! I know that I am getting fresh ingredients, and my house smells incredible while it’s baking. It is the best of both worlds – the ease of a frozen pizza, but the taste and quality of a restaurant pizza. They have made themselves remarkable!

• For my favorite professional purple cow, I thought of recently added services at Delta Dallas. We have many competitors in the Dallas area, and we are constantly trying to set ourselves apart from our competition with new products and services for our customers. We have implemented new programs that benefit both our paying clients (an On Call team that results in less downtime for our clients when they have immediate staffing needs), our candidates (training sessions on interviewing, resume writing and other subjects) or both (roundtable discussions about the entire job/candidate search process). Many of these services are free of charge, but we market them in the same manner that we market our core services.  We know our customers have multiple choices when it comes to staffing firms, so we are doing everything we can to go above and beyond their expectations.

What did you do today to set yourself apart from your competition? Did you follow the same path as yesterday hoping for different results, or did you create something new and exciting?

What is your purple cow?