Purple Cows

If you had to re-invent yourself, how would you do it? I've really gotten into a new-to-me writer, Seth Godin, who asks that and other cool questions in his book Purple Cow. He's a brilliant marketer, and I just started reading a third book of his called Small is the New Big. I'm in the middle of All Marketers Are Liars, too. The purple cow concept is that if you were driving along and saw a purple cow, you'd think to yourself "wow, now that's something remarkable, even though it's just the same old cow, just purple." He goes a lot deeper into other things relating to purple cow-type marketing concepts. He even applies purple cow to individuals (think about what you need to do to make yourself purple, for example in the workplace, so you stand out and get noticed.)

A few of my favorites:

• How Curad stole the adhesive bandage market away from Band-Aid -> Band-Aid was a household name. How could any other company become the market leader? Curad developed a Purple Cow product: they added characters to their product. Kids, the largest consumers of bandages, loved them, so parents bought them. Kids wore them to school where other kids saw them and asked their parents to buy them.
• Paint is paint, right, so how does a paint company take the market share away from the competition? Just creating a new texture or color isn't going to do the trick. What did do the trick was to re-design the pail, and make a pail that is easy to pour and doesn't allow the paint to run down the side. Voila! A Purple Cow.
  

So, even if you don't have to market stuff to pay the bills and put food on the table like I do, you might really enjoy reading one or more of his books anyway. I think most people are interested in marketing because it influences just about every hour of our day, but until you think about it you may not realize how. His writing makes you think about it, and may even change the way you consume. If you had to make yourself purple, what would you do differently?

He also has a website called squidoo - sort of a master database of stuff - "thousands of people creating a handbuilt catalog of the best stuff online" (car camping to "um, who is Gnarls Barkley?" to how to make the best grilled cheese sandwich ever to how to speak mock Swedish like the chef on the Muppets). http://www.squidoo.com/. Check it out, and consider reading one of his books, too.