September 17, 2005
there is no “purple cow 2.0″
Along with the co-authors of the Cluetrain, probably the most influential voice in the world of new marketing is Seth Godin.
Seth has written a lot of books, and I have read most of them. All great stuff. If you don’t have the time to read all his books, fret not, because most of his most salient points are expressed rather well in the speech he gave at the London Marketing Dinner last July. You can download the audio here.
I listened to it again the other day.
Here’s the thing. Seth’s main thesis is that, with the crumbling of what he calls the TV-Industrial Complex, mass marketing has become broken. Suddenly mass media has become to cluttered, too noisy, too fragmented, people are too busy to pay attention, they have too much choice etc etc. So unless you already have a product that is heavily mass marketed successfully, you will probaly fail if you try going down the same road. So what to do?
Seth’s answer is for companies to stop trying to think of clever, “creative” ways to mass market ordinary products, but instead to start making remarkable products.
That means products people will want to talk about, that will create “stories” that people will want to tell to other people, that will create ideas and conversations that will spread. Products aligned with this he calls a “Purple Cow”.
It’s a wonderful, simple idea, and from where I’m standing, glaringly obvious.
All well and good.
What got me thinking was a conversation I overheard at the dinner between Seth and another person. To paraphrase:
PERSON: “Yes Seth, I’m sure you’re correct, but what do you do if the company you work for doesn’t make remarkable products? Then how does ‘Purple Cow’ thinking apply?”
SETH: “It doesn’t. Quit your job and go find something better.”
PERSON: “No, I mean, besides that.”
Obviously, this was not the answer the guy wanted to hear. I get the feeling he just thought if he could slightly “tweak” Seth’s thesis, he wouldn’t need to bother with the hard work, he wouldn’t have to ask the hard questions, or find the hard answers. All he would need to do is put this new & improved, “Purple Cow 2.0″ into gear, and suddenly his career would suddenly be magically transformed, as if on autopilot.
I often find the same is true when people talk about the Cluetrain and the ideas of a lot of bloggers I know.
Because the guy’s boss is an ass, or because the market in question is awash with unremarkable people and unremarkable products, or because the guy is too overstretched with the mortgage, car payments and children’s school fees to handle uncertainty, the idea must somehow be inherently flawed.
Plus
Hi Hugh:
Good post.
Unfortunately, sometimes it’s not easy to simply pull up stakes and move to another job when you may have dependents, a mortgage, debt, and so on. It probably makes more sense to figure out ahead of time that X Corp. is a company where you’d like to work, and apply there…before you discover the heartbreak of Grey Cow-itis.
Now, a question for you that’s related. I don’t think every company in an industry can be sock-pow-WOW. You’re going to have a few that have the Purple Cows. In your case, I think the buzz and success of English Cut *at this point* (and Stormhoek, down the line) have to do with being first in terms of opening up its innards and broadening the customer/company discussion through blogging.
Does this scale if every bespoke tailor or wine company is doing it? Do we as prospective customers have time to follow and engage in the conversations of dozens of companies? And how does this scale to the corporate world as a whole?
Regards,
Jonathan
Excellent post! I don’t know why Seth didn’t write it himself — he should have
I wonder what’s the point of all that? People are just wasting their time and creative energy. I wouldn’t want to live a life where the remarkable things were the products I am buying. What’s the (big grand social) point of making an iPod, when frankly it’s only 10% better than any other MP3 player? Yes, it allows Apple to squash the competition, but does that really benefit the society?
I think a good answer to that person making unremarkable products would be to go back to his workplace, work honestly, maintain good working environment, respect the customer and listen to his needs and don’t be an asshole to suppliers, workers, competitors, customers or the environment. Hopefully that would help to make an honest profit and ensure that the customers get a solid, decent product.
Sadly, the audio link (on the wiki page) is broken. Good read though.
If your company doesn’t make a ‘purple cow’ product, then it means you’re not going to win big in a short period of time with word of mouth marketing (or something like it.)
That doesn’t mean your company or product won’t succeed — it just means that you won’t be able to easily break into a new market with low-cost marketing. So you’ll just have to succeed based on something else.
“And how does this scale to the corporate world as a whole?”
Who said it needs to scale (i.e. be copied by corporations) in order for it to be considered successful?
How can I say this without making you hate me?
Deep breath, here goes: I always thought that Seth Godin’s entire output could be summarised in one or two sentences, just like you’ve done above.
We have by now reached a state of such proficiency in industrial manufacturing that a product is pretty much a product, is a product. Washing machines? Any make will clean your laundry with minimum fuss. Cars? Last for years and will get you from a to b in comfort and safety. Microvaves will heat your food, TVs will show you pretty pictures. All, regardless of the logo stuck to them, assembled from the same components, manufactured by the same factory polluting some river in China.
What I am saying is that most products we use in everyday life are commodotised to a level where it is not only very hard to create a purple cow, the second you do so (assuming it turns out to be a good idea) is the second your competitors will add a similar feature to their own products.
And what is driving this commodotisation? Consumer demand. As long as there is a Walmart, as long as people make their buying decision simply on a bang for buck basis this will carry on.
So, what’s left? If it getting harder and harder to differentiate products by their features or even on price, where do we go? The answer is simple: Emotion. Feeling. Tribalism. You drive a Subaru if you want to be seen as an outdoor person. You drive a Saab if you want to be seen an urban intellectual. You drive a BWM if you want to be perceived as an up and coming real estate broker. Are these cars in any perceivable way different from each other? Of course not.
Does being remarkable guarantee success? We all know that it doesn’t. Take the portable mp3 player as an example. Apple’s iPod is the market leader, with a 75% share of the market. But was Apple the first company to make portable mp3 players? Of course not. Is the iPod the most feature rich player with the best battery life? Not by a long shot. The companies that pioneered the technology are being left behind or are abandoning the market altogether, despite having created a purple cow if ever there was one. Their mistake? Not communicating that fact effectively. Not becoming part off popular culture.
So what’s responsible for the success if the iPod if it’s neither price, nor features? In a word: Marketing. Advertising. Creating an emotional attachement. People choose the products they buy — apart from price — for three reasons, how they see themselves, how they want to see themselves or how they want to be seen.
Successful advertising, in all it’s incarnations, including blogs, including WOM, is all about creating an emotional attachment. It’s about becoming a part of who the customer is, or wants to be, or wants to be seen as. It’s really that simple.
The audio link is broken unfortunately. Is there an alternative download available?
Just try the link called “The Full Monte”, around two lines below the first one.
Hugh: GRRReat post. I concur with you in every bit of it.
For those who say “not all companies can produce purple cows”, I say no, not all of them. From an economical (hail Keynes) point of view: we cannot have a market purely based on purple cows, because it will always tend to regain balance. Purple cows are niche products (methinks) with high profit margins (again) and sometimes you just need dish detergent.
But wht’s important is that not everyone needs to work for those non-purple-cow-producing companies. If you’re in for the high payroll and benefits, you’ll be ok working for Procter, Unilever or something similar. If you want to live the excitement of giving birth to a purple cow, ma’man, you don’t want to reshape the dinosaur, you’ll need to quit your job and start looking into places like Tara’s (http://www.horsepigcow.com/) new job (http://www.ojos-inc.com/). Yup, give back that company car too.
This link worked fine this morning:
http://www.leonard-payne.com/Seth_Godin.mp3
»So what’s responsible for the success if the iPod if it’s neither price, nor features? In a word: Marketing. Advertising. Creating an emotional attachement.<
I would argue that they way you define features is not the same for everybody. Sure battery life is battery life, but some people would rather have the coolness factor as long as battery life is good enough (to them).
Secondly, I’d argue that Marketing and Advertising are not what creates an emotional attachment. The product design (which includes which features it provides as well as how it looks etc) is what creates the attachment. Marketing and Advertising is what communicates about it. BUT if the product design is not congruent with the marketing message then there is no attachement.
If the product design — and I’m speaking in the broadest sense of what product is designed to do as well as how it does it — is outstanding ie it is a product you want to have an emotional attachment to, then you have a purple cow.
Biz Coach:
You’re ignoring the fact that the iPod is a commodity. even in the design department. Other players have the cool design — Sony and Olympus come to mind. What none of Apple’s competitors have managed to achieve is to become part of popular culture. Apple doesn’t have the superior product, but they sure as hell had the superior marketing.
It’s true that Godin has diverted his time away from writting books and is pouring it all into a new venture of his. However, contrary to what was suggested above, his new venture (Squidoo) is not secretive at all. Seth Godin outlines his new business at http://www.gobignetwork.com (The Go Big Network)…a site for entrepreneurs and investors.
So, is the iPod Nano Apple’s Purple Cow 2.0?
Busy Week = No Clear Thoughts
I gotta a lot on my mind today and have erased and re-written today’s post a half a dozen times cause I can’t seem to form any one of my thoughts into a full post. So here’s some random thoughts:…