Purple Cow

Seth Godin
The Magic Cycle of the Cow
Does our chaotic world guarantee that your efforts to
bring new ideas to the marketplace are guaranteed to be
chaotic as well? Are we doomed to randomly invent stuff
for an ever-changing roster of potential consumers?
I don’t think so. The reason is that many consumers
don’t change their roles very often. Sneezers love to
sneeze. They’re often open to hearing from marketers
who are pretty reliable in their track record of creating
Purple Cows. But cocooned, scared consumers (in business
or at home) keep their ears closed virtually all the
time. The cautious consumers are stuck in their habitual
mode, just like the sneezers are.
But it’s the sneezers we care about, and we can leverage
the fact that if we respect them, they’ll listen.
The four steps, then, are these:
1. Get permission from people you impressed the
first time. Not permission to spam them or sell
them leftovers or squeeze extra margins from
them. Permission to alert them the next time you
might have another Cow.
2. Work with the sneezers in that audience to make it
easier for them to help your idea cross the chasm.
Give them the tools (and the story) they’ll need to
sell your idea to a wider audience.
3. Once you’ve crossed the line from remarkable to
profitable business, let a different team milk it.
Productize your services, servicize your products,
let a thousand variations bloom. But don’t believe
your own press releases. This is the inevitable
downward slide to commodity. Milk it for all it’s
worth, and fast.
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