Purple cow

Concentrated Knowledge™ for the Busy Executive • www.summary.com

Vol. 25, No. 8 (2 parts) Part 2, August 2003 • Order # 25-20

FILE: MARKETING

®

Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable

PURPLE COW
THE SUMMARY IN BRIEF
Following the traditional rules of marketing just isn’t enough anymore. In today’s competitive economy, companies that want to create a successful new productmust create a remarkable new product. According to bestselling author and marketing guru Seth Godin, such a product is a Purple Cow, a product or service that is worth making a remark about. The impact of advertising in newspapers and magazines is fading — people are overwhelmed with information and have stopped paying attention to most media messages. To create Purple Cow products, Godin advisescompanies to stop advertising and start innovating. Godin recommends that marketers target a niche, and he describes (through an assortment of case studies) effective ways to spread your idea to the consumers who are most likely to buy your product. Godin claims there isn’t a shortage of remarkable ideas — every business has opportunities to do great things — there’s a shortage of the will to executethose ideas.

By Seth Godin

CONTENTS
Not Enough P s
Page 2

Did You Notice The Revolution?
Pages 2, 3

Why You Need The Purple Cow
Page 3

Consider the Beetle
Page 4

What You’ll Learn In This Summary
✓ What makes a product or service worth mentioning. ✓ How to build things into your product or service that are worth noticing. ✓ How companies can win when they value theattention of their prospective customers. ✓ Why individuals and businesses have stopped paying attention to newspaper and television advertising. ✓ Why it is important to find and seduce “sneezers” — people who launch and spread an “ideavirus” by telling their colleagues and friends about a new product or service that they’re knowledgeable about. ✓ Why boring is almost always the most risky strategy. ✓How to milk your Purple Cow for everything it is worth by figuring out how to extend its lifespan and profit from it for as long as possible. ✓ What to do when the benefits of your Purple Cow start to wane. ✓ What you should do when nothing else is working.
Published by Soundview Executive Book Summaries, P.O. Box 1053, Concordville, Pennsylvania 19331 USA
©2003 Soundview Executive Book Summaries• All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or part is prohibited.

Ideas That Spread, Win
Page 5

The Problem With the Cow
Pages 5, 6

The Benefits of Being the Cow
Page 6

The Process and the Plan
Page 7

The Magic Cycle of the Cow
Page 7

What it Means to Be A Marketer Today
Page 8

Salt is not Boring — Ways to Bring the Cow to Work
Page 8

…and much more!

PURPLECOW
by Seth Godin

— THE COMPLETE SUMMARY

Not Enough Ps
For many years, marketers have used the five (or more) Ps as guidelines for selling their product and achieving their company’s goals. Some of the Ps include: ● Product ● Pricing ● Promotion ● Positioning ● Publicity ● Packaging ● Permission ● Pass-along According to the popular theory, if these elements aren’t all in place, themarketing message is unclear and ineffective. Making the right marketing moves does not guarantee success, but the prevailing wisdom used to be that if your Ps were right, you had a better chance of succeeding in the marketplace. But at a certain point in the evolution of marketing, it became clear that following the Ps just isn’t enough. This book tells about a new P — Purple Cow — that is extremelyimportant to marketers in today’s fast-paced, highly competitive business environment. Purple Cow refers to a product or service that is different from the rest and somehow remarkable. Purple Cow tells about the why, the what, and the how of remarkable. ■

The marketing department bases its efforts on an existing product, spending money to tell the target audience about its special benefits. This...