Be Remarkable – Be a Purple Cow!

‘A crisis is too good an opportunity to waste‘
– Anon.

Meet the Purple Cow

‘Something remarkable is worth talking about. Worth noticing. Exceptional. New. Interesting. It’s a Purple Cow. Boring stuff is invisible. It’s a brown cow.’ (Seth)

Are you seeing purple?

When it comes to changing for the better, there’s no time like the present.  According to Seth Godin, the key to succeeding in an age with infinite choices, impossible-to-tell-before-you-buy quality and grossly limited time is to be remarkable. To be purple.

The 4-step guide to breeding Purple Cows

1. Come up with a remarkable idea: Invent a Purple Cow!
2. Milk the cow for everything it’s worth.
3. Have a Purple Cow succession strategy: Create an environment conducive to nurturing Purple Calves.
4. Rinse and repeat.

Advertising alone is not enough

• Be innovative – Stop advertising and start innovating!
• Appeal to early adopters – They’re the sneezers who’ll propel your idea or product among the slower adoption groups in Moore’s idea diffusion curve.
• Invest in talent and put in the hardwork – The Purple Cow requires talent and a lot of hardwork. A Purple Cow isn’t a quickfix.
• Differentiate your customers – Target and reward the sneezers. Focus on the sneezers.
• Measure, measure, measure – from your products to interactions. Respond to the feedback by adapting and changing for the better.

How now Purple Cow?

Here’s Seth’s takeaway in a nutshell. It’s got Agility built-in.

• Trust: Be authentic in what you say and do.
• Iterate: Iterate over the things you do.
• Incremental Change: Develop new ideas and implement them incrementally.
• Courage: Encourage new ideas and embrace change. Instead of saying, ‘That sounds like a good idea, but…’, try ‘Why not?’

Things to remember during your stay on Animal Farm

• Boring is risky and, according to Seth, always leads to failure.
• ‘The Purple Cow is so rare because people are afraid.’ (Seth)
• Wake up and smell the cheese! What would you do if you weren’t afraid?