Author: Seth Godin
ISBN: 978-0141016405
Another great marketing book by Seth!
EXCERPTS
CREATE REMARKABLE PRODUCTS THAT THE RIGHT PEOPLE SEEK OUT.
Mass marketing traditionally targets the early and late majority because this is the largest group. But in many markets, the value of a group isn’t related to its size – a group’s value is related to its influence. In this market, for example, the early adopters heavily influence the rest of the curve, so persuading them is worth far more than wasting ad dollars trying to persuade anyone else.
The reason it’s so hard to follow the leader is this: The leader is the leader because he did something remarkable. And that remarkable thing is now taken – it’s no longer remarkable when you do it.
Instead of trying to use your technology and expertise to make a better product for your users’ standard behavior, experiment with inviting the users to change their behavior to make the product work dramatically better.
If a product’s future is unlikely to be remarkable – if you can’t imagine a future in which people are once again fascinated by your product – it’s time to realize that the game has changed. Instead of investing in a dying product, take profits and reinvest them in building something new.
The big insight here, though, is that the vast majority of the curve ignores you. Every time. People in the early and late majority listen to their experienced peers but are going to ignore you. It is so tempting to skip the left and go for the juicy center. But that doesn’t work anymore. Regardless of industry, successful new products and services follow this familiar pattern after they are introduced. First they are purchased by the innovators. These are the people in a given market who like having something first. They may not even need the product; they just want it. Innovators are the folks who sit in the front row at a fashion show in Paris, go to Internet World, and read edgy trade journals. Right next to innovators on Moore’s curve are the early adopters. (No, they’re not early adapters – that would be just about the opposite, wouldn’t it?) Early adopters are the folks who can actually benefit from using a new product and who are eager to maintain their edge over the rest of the population by seeking out new products and services. It might be a new investment device (zero-coupon bonds, say) or even a new TV show, but in any meaningful market, this audience is both sizable and willing to spend money. Trailing after the early adopters are the early and late majority. These consumers don’t necessarily yearn for a new product or service that can benefit them, but if enough of their peers try it and talk about it, these followers are likely to come along as well. It’s essential to realize two things about this big and profitable group. First, these people are really good at ignoring you. They have problems that they find far more significant than the ones your product solves, and they’re just not willing to invest the time to listen to you. Second, they often don’t even listen to the innovators on the left part of the curve. The early and late majority want protocols and systems and safety that new products rarely offer. Countless products never manage to get far enough along the curve to reach these folks. And if they’re not even going to listen to their friends, why should they listen to you?
No one is going to eagerly adapt to your product. The vast majority of consumers are happy. Stuck. Sold on what they’ve got. They’re not looking for a replacement, and they don’t like adapting to anything new. You don’t have the power to force them to. The only chance you have is to sell to people who like change, who like new stuff, who are actively looking for what it is you sell. Then you hope that the idea spreads, moving from the early adopters to the rest of the curve. After the early adopters embrace what you’re selling, they are the ones who will sell it to the early majority – not you. And they will sell it poorly. (Moore talks at length about moving through the rest of the curve. I highly recommend his book.) You must design a product that is remarkable enough to attract the early adopters – but is flexible enough and attractive enough that those adopters will have an easy time spreading the idea to the rest of the curve. [I also highly recommend Geofrey Moore's - Crossing the Chasm. You can find excerpts under the "Books" section ?]
Being remarkable in the right way helps you in two ways. First, it makes it far easier to attract the left side of the curve. And second, it makes it easier for these early adopters to persuasively sell their peers on the rest of the curve.
Sneezers are the key spreading agents of an ideavirus. These are the experts who tell all their colleagues or friends or admirers about a new product or service on which they are a perceived authority. Sneezers are the ones who launch and maintain ideaviruses. Innovators or early adopters may be the first to buy your product, but if they’re not sneezers as well, they won’t spread your idea.
Every market has a few sneezers. They’re often the early adopters, but not always. Finding and seducing these sneezers is the essential step in creating an ideavirus.
So how do you create an idea that spreads? Don’t try to make a product for everybody, because that is a product for nobody. The everybody products are all taken. The sneezers in these huge markets have too many choices and are too satisfied for it to be likely that you will capture their interest. The way you break through to the mainstream is to target a niche instead of a huge market. With a niche, you can segment off a chunk of the mainstream, and create an ideavirus so focused that it overwhelms that small slice of the market that really and truly will respond to what you sell. The early adopters in this market niche are more eager to hear what you have to say. The sneezers in this market niche are more likely to talk about your product.
Then, if you’re good and you’re lucky, that innovation will diffuse. After it dominates the original niche, it will migrate to the masses.
Marketing in a post-TV world is no longer about making a product attractive or interesting or pretty or funny after it’s designed and built – it’s about designing the thing to be virus-worthy in the first place. Products that are engineered to cross the chasm – with built-in safety nets for wary consumers – are way more likely to succeed than are products not engineered that way. Services that are worth talking about get talked about.
Yes, sometimes this hurricane allows you to skip the painstaking work of moving from the left to the right. Sometimes the entire market needs something, knows they need it, and are willing to listen. The key word here, though, is sometimes.
IT IS USELESS TO ADVERTISE TO ANYONE (EXCEPT INTERESTED SNEEZERS WITH INFLUENCE).
You need to do this advertising when these consumers are actually looking for help, and in a place where they’ll find you. Of course, advertising to one interested person is a good idea, but the real win occurs when the person who’s listening is a sneezer likely to tell her friends and colleagues. Obviously, the chances you have to advertise to this select audience are rare. The rest of the time, you need to be investing in the Purple Cow. Products, services and techniques so useful, interesting, outrageous, and noteworthy that the market will want to listen to what you have to say. No, in fact, you must develop products, services, and techniques that the market will actually seek out.
You can’t make people listen. But you can figure out who’s likely to be listening when you talk, and then invent the right combination of Ps to overwhelm them with the rightness of your offer. Even if someone is listening, your offering of “a little bit cheaper,” “a little bit better,” or “a little bit easier” is just a waste of time. The influential sneezers, the people with a problem to solve – they’re open to hearing your story only if it’s truly remarkable; otherwise, you’re invisible.
Differentiate your customers. Find the group that’s most profitable. Find the group that’s most likely to sneeze. Figure out how to develop/advertise/reward either group. Ignore the rest. Your ads (and your products!) shouldn’t cater to the masses. Your ads (and products) should cater to the customers you’d choose if you could choose your customers.
As consumers get better and better at ignoring mass media, mass media stops working.
In almost every market measured, the “leading brand” has a huge advantage over the others. Whether it’s word processors, fashion magazines, Web sites, or hairdressers, a lot of benefits go to the brands that win. Often a lesser brand has no chance at all. There may be a lot of consumers out there, but they’re busy consumers, and it’s just easier to go with the winner. (Of course, this is true only until the “winner” stops being interesting – and then, whether it’s cars, beer, or magazines, a new leader emerges.)
Why not launch a product to compete with your own – a product that does nothing but appeal to this market?
The Cow is so rare because people are afraid. If you’re remarkable, it’s likely that some people won’t like you. That’s part of the definition of remarkable. Nobody gets unanimous praise – ever. The best the timid can hope for is to be unnoticed.
In a crowded marketplace, fitting in is failing. In a busy marketplace, not standing out is the same as being invisible.
We’ve been raised with a false belief: We mistakenly believe that criticism leads to failure. From the time we get to school, we’re taught that being noticed is almost always bad. It gets us sent to the principal’s office, not to Harvard. Nobody says, “Yeah, I’d like to set myself up for some serious criticism!” And yet … the only way to be remarkable is to do just that.
You do not equal the project. Criticism of the project is not criticism of you. The fact that we need to be reminded of this points to how unprepared we are for the era of the Cow. It’s people who have projects that are never criticized who ultimately fail.
Will you do some things wrong in your career and be justly criticized for being unprepared, sloppy, or thoughtless? Sure you will. But these errors have nothing at all to do with the ups and downs you’ll experience as a result of being associated with the Purple Cow.
Is there much to criticize about the way they do business? Not really. But there’s no Cow there. As a result, very few new customers go out of their way to do business with them. So how are you going to predict which ideas are going to backfire and which are guaranteed to be worth the hard work they take to launch? The short answer: You can’t.
You can’t know if your Purple Cow is guaranteed to work. You can’t know if it’s remarkable enough or too risky. That’s the point. It’s the very unpredictability of the outcome that makes it work. The lesson is simple – boring always leads to failure. Boring is always the most risky strategy. Smart business-people realize this, and they work to minimize (but not eliminate) the risk from the process. They know that sometimes it’s not going to work, but they accept the fact that that’s okay.
The problem with people who would avoid a remarkable career is that they never end up as the leader. They decide to work for a big company, intentionally functioning as an anonymous drone, staying way back to avoid risk and criticism. If they make a mistake and choose the wrong bird to follow, they lose. When a big company lays off ten thousand people, most of those people probably don’t deserve to get fired. They were doing what they were told, staying within the boundaries, and following instructions. Alas, they picked the wrong lead bird.
What’s the point of advertising to everyone a product that doesn’t appeal to everyone?
What would happen if you gave the marketing budget for your next three products to the designers? Could you afford a world-class architect/designer/sculptor/director/author?
Well, creators of the Purple Cow must measure as well. Every product, every interaction, every policy is either working (persuading sneezers and spreading the word) or not. Companies that measure will quickly optimize their offerings and make them more virus-worthy. As it becomes easier to monitor informal consumer networks, the winners will be companies that figure out what’s working fastest – and do it more (and figure out what’s not working – and kill it).
What could you measure? What would that cost? How fast could you get the results? If you can afford it, try it. “If you measure it, it will improve.”
Once you’ve managed to create something truly remarkable, the challenge is to do two things simultaneously: Milk the Cow for everything it’s worth. Figure out how to extend it and profit from it for as long as possible. Create an environment where you are likely to invent a new Purple Cow in time to replace the first one when its benefits inevitably trail off. Of course, these are contradictory goals.
Palm, Yahoo!, AOL, Marriott, Marvel Comics … the list goes on and on. Each company had a breakthrough, built an empire around it, and then failed to take another risk.
The Opposite of “Remarkable” is “very good.”
Factories set quality requirements and try to meet them. That’s boring. Very good is an everyday occurrence and hardly worth mentioning.
The paradox is this: The same word of mouth that can make your product a huge hit can also lead to someone’s snickering at you.
When a committee gets involved, each well-meaning participant sands off the rough edges, speaking up for how their constituency might not like the product. The result is something boring and safe.
Do you have the email addresses of the 20 percent of your customer base that loves what you do? If not, start getting them. If you do, what could you make for these customers that would be superspecial? Visit www.sethgodin.com and you can sign up for my list and see what happens.
Find the market niche first, and then make the remarkable product – not the other way around.
A slogan that accurately conveys the essence of your Purple Cow is a script. A script for the sneezer to use when she talks with her friends. The slogan reminds the user, “Here’s why it’s worth recommending us; here’s why your friends and colleagues will be glad you told them about us.” And best of all, the script guarantees that the word of mouth is passed on properly – that the prospect is coming to you for the right reason.
Do you have a slogan or positioning statement or remarkable boast that’s actually true? Is it consistent? Is it worth passing on?
It’s a lot easier to sell something that people are already in the mood to buy. As obvious as this may seem, most marketers don’t get it.
Consumers with needs are the ones most likely to respond to your solutions. Whether your prospect is an industrial bearings buyer at Ford or an overworked househusband in Tucson, you need to figure out who’s buying, and then solve their problem.
The alternative is to start with a problem that you can solve for your customer (who realizes he has a problem!). Then, once you’ve come up with a solution that is so remarkable that the early adopters among this population will gleefully respond, you’ve got to promote it in a medium where those most likely to sneeze are actually paying attention.
The safe compromise choice for a kid’s birthday party is the vanilla. But vanilla is boring. You can’t build a fast-growing company around vanilla. In almost every market, the boring slot is filled. The product designed to appeal to the largest possible audience already exists, and displacing it is awfully difficult. Difficult because the very innocuousness of the market-leading product is its greatest asset. How can you market yourself as “more bland than the leading brand”? The real growth comes with products that annoy, offend, don’t appeal, are too expensive, too cheap, too heavy, too complicated, too simple – too something. (Of course, they’re too too for some people, but just perfect for others.)
Bootstrapping entrepreneurs often upend existing industries because the dominant players in an industry are the last places you’ll find empowered mavericks. The market-leading companies may owe their dominance to the Purple Cow they marketed years and years ago, but today, they’re all about compromising themselves to continued profitability. The seeds of their destruction lie in their dependence on being in the middle.
If someone in your organization is charged with creating a new Purple Cow, leave them alone! Don’t use internal reviews and usability testing to figure out if the new product is as good as what you’ve got now. Instead, pick the right maverick and get out of the way.
But it’s the sneezers we care about, and we can leverage the fact that if we respect them, they’ll listen. The four steps, then, are these: Get permission from people you impressed the first time. Not permission to spam them or sell them leftovers or squeeze extra margins from them. Permission to alert them the next time you might have another Cow. Work with the sneezers in that audience to make it easier for them to help your idea cross the chasm. Give them the tools (and the story) they’ll need to sell your idea to a wider audience. Once you’ve crossed the line from remarkable to profitable business, let a different team milk it. Productize your services, servicize your products, let a thousand variations bloom. But don’t believe your own press releases. This is the inevitable downward slide to commodity. Milk it for all it’s worth, and fast. Reinvest. Do it again. With a vengeance. Launch another Purple Cow (to the same audience). Fail and fail and fail again. Assume that what was remarkable last time won’t be remarkable this time.
Companies that create Purple Cows – companies like JetBlue, Starbucks, Hasbro, and Poland Spring – have to be run by marketers.
If a company is failing, it is the fault of the most senior management, and the problem is probably this: They’re running a company, not marketing a product. Go take a design course. Send your designers to a marketing course. And both of you should spend a week in the factory.
Where does remarkable come from? Often, it comes from passionate people who are making something for themselves.
The number-one question about the Purple Cow is, “How do I know it’s remarkable?” This question almost always comes from the people who don’t have the otaku. John Scharffenberger, founder of Scharffen Berger Chocolate, has no trouble telling great chocolate from ordinary chocolate. He gets it. When I was building my first company (we created books), I always asked potential employees how often they went to the bookstore. People who don’t love shopping for books obviously don’t have the book otaku, and they’re going to have a harder time inventing books for people who do. Everyone who works at Patagonia is an outdoor nut. When the surf is up, the offices empty out as people rush to hit the waves. While this makes for a chaotic work environment, it also makes it more likely that Patagonia staff will know a remarkable outdoor product when they see one.
Is there someone (a person, an agency?) in your industry who has a track record of successfully launching remarkable products? Can you hire them away, or at least learn from their behavior? Immerse yourself in fen magazines, trade shows, design reviews – whatever it takes to feel what your fans feel.
Outrageous is not always remarkable. It’s certainly not required. Sometimes outrageous is just annoying.
It’s easy to fall into a trap of running upside-down ads, wearing green bow ties, and filling your ads with scatological references. Being scandalous might work on occasion, but it’s not a strategy; it’s desperation. The outrageousness needs to have a purpose, and it needs to be built into the product.
The reminder: It’s not about the way you say it, it’s what you say. And while you can momentarily use offensive behavior to capture the attention of people who might not want to pay attention, it’s not a long-run strategy. Outrageousness by itself won’t work because the conversations sneezers have about you aren’t positive.
You’re probably guilty of being too shy, not too outrageous. Try being outrageous, just for the sake of being annoying. It’s good practice. Don’t do it too much because it doesn’t usually work. But it’s a good way to learn what it feels like to be at the edge.
If they weren’t afraid of failing, what’s the most audacious thing they’d try?
“Instead of selling what we wanted to sell, we sold what people wanted us to sell, and then figured out how to make money doing it. Every time we talked to our customers, they wanted us to follow the path that turned out to be the hardest possible path we could follow. And every time, that path was the right path.”
Cheap is one of the only remarkable items that never seems to run out of appeal. For just about any repeatedly purchased item, all other things being equal, the cheap one will gain market share. The problem with cheap is that once you start, your competitor will likely play the same game. In an incremental price war, how will one player beat the other and still win economically? IKEA can do it. Wal-Mart can do it. Can you? Cheap is a lazy way out of the battle for the Purple Cow. Cheap is the last refuge of a product developer or marketer who is out of great ideas.
Isn’t a million points a lot to give away? Exactly. It’s Purple.
The Purple Cow is just part of the product life cycle. You can’t live it all the time (too risky, too expensive, too tiring), but when you need to grow or need to introduce something new, it’s your best shot.
When Comedy Central focus-group-tested South Park, it set a record, scoring just 1.5 out of 10 points with women. Three of the women in the group cried, they hated it so much. Scary? Sure. Weird? To some. But the group that mattered – adolescent boys and those who act like them – spread the word, and the show was a monster hit. Remember, it’s not about being weird. It’s about being irresistible to a tiny group of easily reached sneezers with otaku. Irresistible isn’t the same as ridiculous. Irresistible (for the right niche) is just remarkable.
In each case, Yahoo! and Google had the same things going for them. Unbelievably simple interface (for the first few years of Google, there were only two buttons – and one of them was “I feel lucky”). Fast loading. No decisions. When people asked someone else where to go to get what they needed online, the recommendation was simple.
L.L. Bean can sell mail-order clothes to people who don’t trust mail order. It’s the guarantee that makes it work. Take a pair of pants, light them on fire, send in the ashes, and L.L. Bean will refund your money. Stories like that make it easy for a sneezer to spread the word.
Is your product the best at anything worth measuring?
Lottery tickets offer low investment and a big win. When the jackpot hits record levels ($100 million is remarkable money, even to a millionaire), ticket sales go up exponentially. Ironically, the odds of winning are even worse than usual, so buying when there’s a $20 million jackpot is the smarter of two dumb choices. So why do sales go up? Because the remarkable nature of the larger jackpot gets people talking about it and dreaming about winning.
Why do some people smoke unfiltered cigarettes or drink high-proof alcohol? Maybe it’s the affiliation with danger and self-destruction. The extreme nature of the product makes it appealing to this audience.
When a product or service is about risk avoidance, a solution that minimizes that risk is worth talking about. If I were a lawyer, I’d specialize in a very narrow niche, becoming the best in the world at defending a certain kind of lawsuit. If your company was the victim of one of these lawsuits, whom would you hire? The specialist who does nothing but defend (and win) cases like this, or your local corporate firm?
Speeding through the airport the other day, I noticed that the clothing worn by just about everyone working at every concession was totally unremarkable. Why not dress the folks at the ice cream stand in pink and white stripes and bow ties? “Hey, did you see that?”
No one will argue you with you if you claim that Wal-Mart is the biggest, most profitable, scariest retailer on earth. So, when Wal-Mart was frantically trying to catch up with Amazon.com, what did they have plastered on a banner in their offices? “You can’t out-Amazon Amazon.” It’s a great insight. Even this mighty retailer realized that just copying Amazon’s strengths wouldn’t be sufficient. Once someone stakes out a limit, you’re foolish to attempt a pail imitation.
Copy. Not from your industry, but from any other industry. Find an industry more dull than yours, discover who’s remarkable (it won’t take long), and do what they did. Go one more. Or two more. Identify a competitor who’s generally regarded as at the edges, and outdo them. Whatever they’re known for, do that thing even more. Even better, and even safer, do the opposite of what they’re doing.
Ask, “Why not?” Almost everything you don’t do has no good reason for it. Almost everything you don’t do is the result of fear or inertia or a historical lack of someone asking, “Why not?”
