Being a Purple Cow #1
Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable– a Book Review by Seth Godin, No-Tears Marketing 04/10 enhanced by Peter/CXO Wiz4biz 4/13
Why this Book? What on earth is a book about a Purple Cow doing on the list of best business books? When I decided to choose a business book to read & write a review about, I did not want to pick a book describing the success stories of a major company or brand. Any success story is exactly as it states: A success story. Not a success recipe. The world of marketing is extremely complex, because there are no guaranteed success step-lists to follow. What does, however make sense, is that successful & growing businesses today all have one thing in common: nothing! Every success story has its own unique twist, “fingerprint”… an extraordinary-factor.
A Purple Cow is defined as: “Products, services & techniques so useful, interesting, outrageous, & note-worthy, that the market will want to listen to what you have to say and will actually seek them out.” Author Seth Godin is a renowned and celebrated marketing guru and has started several successful companies – who challenges the world of traditional marketing/ business beliefs & philosophies in an attempt to solve the problems that the new era of marketing is bringing with it. He successfully creates simple, clear, logical ideas that are all supported by real-life case studies in this book. In Purple Cow he encourages the reader to put the “extraordinary”-factor into every part of his/her business (from the creation right through to the marketing and selling of a product)… even within yourself (marketers are becoming designers).
What does it take to create something worth marketing and spreading in the first place… something that is remarkable? As Seth states in this book; being remarkable and doing remarkable things is the only way to be successful. A sure road to failure is by being boring… by being safe, something that is much more risky and dangerous for a business than inventing a Purple Cow.
Challenges to make you think. Not only is Seth’s writing style very easy to read, fiery & graspable, but he challenges the reader to think about his theories. Throughout the book (at the end of each chapter) he provides the reader with a food-for-thought concept that encourages reflection on the discussed issue within his/her own current business position. This technique actively involves and intrigues the reader as they progress through the book. This is due to the fact that the Purple Cow concepts are all very easy to apply in practice, the challenge, however is for Seth to persuade readers to take a leap of faith and actually test these different strategies in their lives/businesses.
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