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Seth Godin<br />
The Pearl in the Bottle<br />
Remember Prell All of us boomers certainly can envision<br />
the clear bottle of shampoo filled with green liquid . . .<br />
and the pearl slowly drifting downward. This image was<br />
omnipresent in the advertising for Prell.<br />
The commercial never made it clear precisely what a<br />
pearl had to do with shampoo or why we wanted the pearl<br />
to move slowly. What is beyond dispute is that TV commercials<br />
made this rather ordinary shampoo a significant<br />
success.<br />
Where do you find a Purple Cow in the cosmetics business<br />
After all, almost all shampoos are the same. More<br />
often than not, it’s an extraneous exotic ingredient or<br />
fancy packaging that people notice, not the effectiveness of<br />
the potion.<br />
Compare the inexorable decline of Prell (the TV commercials<br />
stopped working) with the gradual ascent of Dr. Bronner’s.<br />
Dr. Bronner’s does no advertising at all, yet their product<br />
continues to grow in sales and market share. If it’s not<br />
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