Purple Cows and Chicken Poop

No, I haven't quit my job and bought a farm. You might remember a recent post where I described a marketing book I read and really got into called Purple Cow. The book is about making a product remarkable. Seth Godin says we have now moved into an era where markets are largely satisfied, and to be noticed, a product and its marketing need to be remarkable to be seen at all, let alone to sell.

Now for the poop part. I was traveling the past few days and came across a product made here in Kansas called Chicken Poop (no, it does NOT contain chicken poop). It's a chapstick, and it is...a purple cow. I bought a tube ($2.49 at Walgreens..about 2.5 times more than I usually pay for chapstick). Chapstick is chapstick in my book, but being a marketer, I've gotta say they seem to have done something right here. You have to admit the name alone does the trick. It got your attention, didn't it? The inspiration for the name came from something the creator's grandpa once told her when she complained about chapped lips. "If you've got chapped lips, put some chicken poop on them and you won't lick them." Someone should have told Napoleon Dynamite about Chicken Poop (remember when he called his brother from school to ask if he could bring him some chapstick because his lips "hurt real bad.")

The packaging is very plain (white tube with black writing), and tubes are "dispensed" out of the back side of a chicken-shaped display box, exactly where you'd expect a product with such a name to be found.

Here's the website: www.ilovechickenpoop.com