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Purple Cow
Projections, Profits, and
the Purple Cow
Mass marketing demands mass products. And mass products
beg for mass marketing.
This equation leads to a dangerous catch-22, one with
two parts.
Part One: Boring Products. Companies that are built
around mass marketing develop their products accordingly.
These companies round the edges, smooth out the differentiating
features, and try to make products that are
bland enough to work for the masses. These companies
make spicy food less spicy, and they make insanely great
service a little less great (and a little cheaper). They push
everything – from the price to the performance – to the
center of the market. They listen to the merchandisers at
Kmart and Wal-Mart or the purchasing agents at Johnson
& Johnson and make products that will appeal to everybody.
After all, if you’re going to launch a huge ad campaign
by direct mail or in trade magazines or in daily newspapers
or on television, you want your ads to have the maximum
possible appeal. What’s the point of advertising to everyone
a product that doesn’t appeal to everyone By following this
misguided logic, marketers ensure that their products have
the minimum possible chance of success.
Remember, those ads reach two kinds of viewers:
• The highly coveted innovators and adopters who will
be bored by this mass-marketed product and decide
to ignore it.
• The early and late majority who are unlikely to listen
to an ad for any new product, and are unlikely to
buy it if they do.
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