Nick Carroll

Just finished reading Purple Cow by Seth Godin. The core message behind the book is that you need to stop being like everybody else and instead focus on developing an innovative product that targets a niche market. Godin argues that there is no need to appeal to the masses as there is little growth in this strategy. Instead of spending $10 million dollars on one television advertising campaign, that money could better be invested in developing 10 innovative products with a budget of $1 million each. At least this way you have a better chance of producing a new high growth product.

Now if you spend that $10 million dollars on developing 10 different products does that mean you need to raise more money to advertise each of the new products? Seth Godin seems to think not. If you design a purple cow product, then essentially the product will sell itself. This is done through viral marketing. If your product is remarkable then it is worth talking about. The early adopters that are continually searching for a product to make their lives easier will no doubt tell their friends, and their friends will tell their friends, and so on and so forth.

An example of this is Apple’s recent release of their iPhone. They built a remarkable new phone with an innovative touch screen. The hype and pandemonium over this phone was built up over the last 8 or so months when it was announced late last year. This led to die-hard Apple fans camping outside Apple stores waiting to be the first to purchase the iPhone. These early adopters then went straight home and blogged about their new phone or rang their friends to tell them about how remarkable their new phone is. The book gives lots of other examples of companies that have taken some risk to produce a purple cow product, then reap the rewards by milking the cow for all its worth.

The book is an interesting read, but its structure reads like a bunch of blog entries that were printed out and slapped together as a book. I would recommend reading Seth Godin’s blog instead, or his article on the Purple Cow in Fast Company.