As opting for an unbeaten path can give a unique charm to your life, likewise, Godin talks of taking risks in your business to make it stand out from the rest. In fact, ensuring safety is actually risking. Read the book summary prepared by Prof. Sameer Mathur.

1. Purple Cow
By Seth
Godin
Book Summary
1Prepared By: Prof. Sameer Mathur, Ph.D.

2. Introduction
2
Seth Godin says PUSHING your product to the
customer isn’t good enough to insure a
successful product.
You have to find a way to get your customers to
PULL your product to them.

3. Introduction
3
It’s not about making a
remarkable product, it’s
about making a product
people are going to talk
about.
Imagine seeing a purple cow
on the side of the road.
Chances are that’s the cow
people will talk about.

4. Introduction
4
• The Impact of advertising in newspapers
and magazines is fading;
• People are so bombarded with
information they have stopped paying
attention.
• Companies need to stop advertising and
start Innovating.

5. Introduction
5
• Godin recommends that marketers target a
niche.
• He suggests that there isn’t a shortage of
remarkable ideas but a shortage of the will to
execute those ideas.

6. Contents
6
1. Not enough Ps
2. Boldfaced Words and gutsy Assertions
3. Did you notice the Revolution?
4. Why you need the purple cow
5. The Death of the TV-Industrial Complex

7. Contents
7
6. Consider the Beetle
7. The Will and the Way
8. Ideas that Spread, Win
9. Who’s Listening
10. The Problem with the Purple Cow
11. The Benefits of Being the Cow

8. Contents
8
12. The Process and the Plan
13. The Magic Cycle of the Cow
14. What it Means to Be a Marketer Today
15. Is it About Passion?
16. Salt is Not Boring – Ways to Bring the
Cow to Work

9. Not Enough Ps
9
The Ps Marketers have been using for years are:
• Product
• Pricing
• Promotion
• Positioning
• Publicity
• Packaging
• Permission
• Pass-along

10. Not Enough Ps
10
Today, following the Ps just isn’t enough in
today’s fast paced and highly competitive
business environment.
There is a new P – Purple Cow
Purple Cow refers to a product or service that is
different from the rest and somehow remarkable.
It tells about the why, the what and the how of
‘remarkable’.

11. Boldfaced words and gutsy assertions
11
Remarkable Marketing: The
process of building things
into your product or service
that are worth noticing.
If your product isn’t
remarkable, it’s invincible.

12. Not Enough Ps
12
The TV-industrial Complex: relationship between
consumer demand, TV advertising and companies
that depend on expensive marketing.
The Post-consumption Consumer has run out of
things to buy and is too busy to research new
products.

13. Not Enough Ps
13
The Marketing Department spends money telling
its target audience about its product and benefits.
This approach no longer works.
Most products are invisible and the dynamic of
marketing has changed. Traditional approaches
are obsolete and alternatives are all that’s left.
Companies must stop advertising and start
innovating.

14. Did you notice the revolution?
14
Products with a future
are created by
passionate people.
Big companies are
scared companies that
try to restrict change
and believe it is cheaper
to keep existing
customers than trying
to find new ones.

15. Did you notice the revolution?
15
New Products and ideas reach different groups
of people (innovators, early adopters).
Public has attention deficit that must be
overcome.

16. Why you Need the Purple Cow
16
Sad Truths about Marketing:
• Most people can’t buy your product – they
don’t have the money and/or time and/or desire.
• If consumers don’t have enough money to buy
what you are selling at the price you are selling it
for, you don’t have a market for your product or
service.

17. Why you Need the Purple Cow
17
Sad Truths about Marketing:
• If Consumers don’t have time to listen to and
understand your marketing pitch, your product
or service is invisible to them.
• If Consumers take the time to hear your pitch
but decide they don’t want what you are selling,
you are not going to be successful.

18. Why you Need the Purple Cow
18
Most people who might buy
your product will never hear
about it.
A remarkable idea that spreads
like a virus – an “ideavirus” is
hard to spread to unsatisfied
consumers.
Overwhelmed consumers are
less likely to tell their friends
about a product.

19. Why you Need the Purple Cow
19
The same holds for business – those who buy
for businesses aren’t as needy as they used to
be.

20. Why you Need the Purple Cow
20
Daunting Challenges to grow market share:
• Consumers aren’t as likely to have obvious,
easily solved problems that your product or
service will fix.
• Consumers are hard to reach because they are
overwhelmed with information and will tend to
ignore you.
•Satisfied consumers are less likely than
unsatisfied customers to tell their friends.

21. The Death of the TV-Industrial Complex
21
The Death of the TV-Industrial Complex has
caused turmoil for companies. They now need to
find a market niche that needs to be filled.

22. The Death of the TV-Industrial Complex
22
A Successful Cycle
In the past, people believed products advertised
on TV were of high quality. TV was very effective.
Television changed the way products were
created and marketed.
The Impact of advertising in newspapers and
magazines is fading too because individuals and
businesses have just stopped paying attention.

23. The Death of the TV-Industrial Complex
23
The Old Rule was “Create safe, ordinary
products and combine them with great
marketing.”
The New Rule is “Create remarkable products
that the right people seek out.”

24. Consider the Beetle
24
When the original Volkswagen Beetle came out,
it wasn’t an immediate hit.
Great TV and print ad campaigns turned it into a
successful product.

25. Consider the Beetle
25
The New Beetle is different.
It became successful due to
its mechanics; how it felt to
drive and how it looked.
It also received good
reviews from the auto
industry.
Seeing the Beetle on the
road among boxy SUVs was
marketing in itself.

26. The Will and the Way
26
No Shortage of remarkable ideas – shortage of
the will to execute them.
It’s actually become safer to take the risk to
create remarkable things than stick with old
ways of marketing.
Excuses can be overcome by brainstorming,
ideation, and creativity techniques.

27. Ideas that Spread, Win
27
Ideaviruses – Ideas that spread
rapidly – are more likely to succeed
than ideas that don’t.
“Sneezers” are people who launch
and spread ideaviruses. They are the
experts that tell their colleagues and
friends about a new product.
Finding and seducing sneezers is
essential to creating an ideavirus.

28. Ideas that Spread, Win
28
In order to create an idea and product/service:
• Don’t make a product for everybody, because
that is a product for nobody.
• Target a niche instead of a huge market. This
focus will overwhelm that small section of the
market and those people will respond.

29. Who’s Listening?
29
Some people predict that all
mass media will die, and it’s
easy to conclude that ads
don’t work at all.
Not True – Ads do work.
Targeted Ads are more cost
effective than untargeted ads.
Untargeted ads touch
everyone regardless of who
they are or what they want.

30. Who’s Listening?
30
In any given market there are people who are all
ears. Big Idea: “It is useless to advertise to
anyone – except interested sneezers with
influence”

31. Who’s Listening?
31
Advertise at the Right Time
Doing advertising in the right
place at the right time is
essential.
Success happens when the
person listening is a sneezer
who will probably tell his/her
friends and colleagues.

32. The Problem with the Cow
32
The problem with creating purple cow products
is actually a problem with fear.
It is untrue that there are too few great ideas or
that their product/industry/company can’t
support a great idea.
People don’t create purple cow products
because they are afraid.

33. The Problem with the Cow
33
GOOD NEWS!
Since almost everyone else is
petrified of creating a Purple
Cow product, you can be
remarkable with much less
effort.
Since boring = failure, boring is
almost always the most risky
strategy.

34. The Benefits of Being the Cow
34
Lots of money, prestige, power, and satisfaction
that follow!
Once you’ve created a purple cow, you must do
two things:
1. Milk your purple cow for everything it’s worth
2. Create a working environment in which you
have a good chance of inventing another
purple cow in time to replace the first one.

35. The Process and the Plan
35
The Process to creating a Purple Cow
• Go for the Edges
Look at the Ps to sketch out where your edges
are and where your competition is.
The Process a company uses to discover fringes
makes a product remarkable.

36. The Magic Cycle of the Cow
36
Do Companies need to continually invent
remarkable products for an ever-changing roster
of potential customers?
NO! Because consumers don’t change roles
very often.

37. The Magic Cycle of the Cow
37
4 Steps to Creating a Purple Cow
1. Get permission from people you impressed to
alert them the next time you might have another
Purple Cow
2. Work with sneezers to make it easier for them
to get your idea to your target audience.

38. The Magic Cycle of the Cow
38
4 Steps to Creating a Purple Cow
3. Once you’ve gone from remarkable product to
profitable business, let a different team take
over. Try to create variations of your purple cow
product.
4. Reinvest and launch another Purple Cow to
the same audience.

39. The Magic Cycle of the Cow
39
**Fail and Fail and Fail again! Assume
what was remarkable the first time
won’t be again.**

40. What it Means to be a Marketer Today
40
If Purple Cow is a new P of marketing: it changes
the definition of marketing.
Marketing used to be about communicating the
values of a product after it had been developed
and manufactured.

41. What it Means to be a Marketer Today
41
These days marketing is the act of inventing the
product; the effort of designing it; the craft of
producing it; the art of picturing it; and the
technique of selling it.
Companies that create Purple Cows have to be
run by Marketers.

42. What it Means to be a Marketer Today
42
If the company is failing the problem is probably
this: you’re running a company, not a marketing
product.
You don’t have to be passionate about the
product – you just have to realize nothing else is
working. You must have the insight to realize you
have no other choice but to launch a Purple Cow
product.

43. Salt is not Boring – Ways to Bring the Cow to Work
43
Everyone thought Salt was a
boring product – but people in
France sell handmade salt
from seawater and sell it for
$20 a pound.
Diamond Kosher salt will earn
millions of dollars because
their salt tastes better on food.

44. Salt is not Boring – Ways to Bring the Cow to Work
44
Come up with a list of 10 ways to change your
product to make it appeal to a segment of your
audience.
• Think small! Think of the smallest conceivable
market and describe a product that overwhelms
is with its “remarkability.”

45. Salt is not Boring – Ways to Bring the Cow to Work
45
• Outsource! If the factory is giving you a hard
time about jazzing up the product, go elsewhere.
There are plenty of places that would be
delighted to take on your product.

46. Salt is not Boring – Ways to Bring the Cow to Work
46
• Build and use a permission asset. Once you
can talk directly to your most loyal customers, it
becomes much easier to develop and sell
amazing things.
• Copy, not from your industry, but from any
other industry. Find an industry more dull than
yours, discover who’s remarkable in it, and do
what it did.

47. Salt is not Boring – Ways to Bring the Cow to Work
47
• Identify a competitor who’s
generally regarded as “at the
edges,” and outdo it. What it
is known for, do that thing
even better.

48. Salt is not Boring – Ways to Bring the Cow to Work
48
• Ask, “Why not?” Almost everything you don’t
do is the result of fear or inertia or a historical
lack of someone asking “Why not?”

49. Summary
49
Today, following the Ps just isn’t enough in
today’s fast paced and highly competitive
business environment.
There is a new P – Purple Cow
Purple Cow refers to a product or service that is
different from the rest and somehow remarkable.
It tells about the why, the what and the how of
‘remarkable’.

50. IMAGE CREDITS
 http://jephmaystruck.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/purple-cow.jpg
 http://volkswagenbeetle.goyalive.com/img/vw-beetle-so-popular.jpg
 http://www.refinedguy.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/07-Volkswagen-Beetle-2013-Classic-Cars-Then-
and-Now.jpg
 http://www.tithing.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/rope-pull.jpg
 http://www.netpromoter.com/netpromoter_community/servlet/JiveServlet/showImage/38-1402-
1083/purple+cow.jpg
 http://www.homebusinessproductreports.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/niche-marketing-edited.png
 http://www.nextbillion.net/pubs/images/Mercadeo2.png
 http://i.goldstar.com/gse_subscriber_media/002/284/114/Studio_Theatre_-_Invisible_Man.jpg?p=1&w=960
 http://www.digitaltrends.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/old-tv.jpg
 http://www.tanveernaseer.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/employee-hiding-under-desk.jpg
 http://civility.missouri.edu/education/civility-you-mizzou/images/incivility-4.jpg
 http://bligoo.com/media/users/0/872/images/idea%20virus.jpg
 http://www.surrey.ca/images/cos-master/pageImages/officecubicles.jpg
 http://knovelblogs.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/watching-tv-600.jpg
 http://t2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSRpKyEgPKmFK0Z0qpo6Nkrpxh3OiVe2NcttN9zsZQwHQ9nxKBR
50
Summary

51. IMAGE CREDITS
 http://www.psdgraphics.com/file/fluorescent-light-bulb-icon.jpg
 http://upstreamdownstream.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/kid_TV.jpg
 http://brucegilchrist.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/active-listening.jpg
 http://www.staceyreid.com/news/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/fof971212clr.png
 http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-RKOmNP5BxjA/TVW91Am57yI/AAAAAAAAAG4/9k6SSxOCkZI/s1600/scared.gif
 http://socialwizz.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/household.jpg
 http://sprinklesontopp.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/purplecow1.jpg
 http://www.inspiretheentrepreneur.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/Dont-Give-Up.jpg
 http://www.gotimetraining.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/iChangewithMike-quote1-e1344458347589.png
 http://socialmashmedia.com/wp-content/uploads/customer-feedback.png
 http://daddytypes.com/archive/draisien.gif
 http://media02.hongkiat.com/catchy-and-creative-slogans/volkswagon-logo-think-small-slogan.jpg
 http://olaw.in/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/outsourcing-it.gif
 http://www.mbd2.com/forum/balloon_Animal_Blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/Person-Thinking.jpg
 http://grandmalin.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/purple_cow_by_writeraxi-d316nve.jpg
51
Summary

52. 52
Prof. Sameer Mathur, Ph.D.
Sameer Mathur
Indian Institute of Management,
Lucknow
Marketing Professor 2013 –
Marketing Professor 2009 – 2013
Ph.D. and M.S. (Marketing) 2003 – 2009