How advertisers can turn a brown cow into a purple cow in planning and strategy

Bec Drummond
Aug 9, 2017 · 5 min read

At some point, you may have come across the five (or more) P’s of marketing — product, pricing, promotion, packaging, positioning, etc — also seen as a basic marketing checklist with the prevailing wisdom that if your P’s are right, you have a better chance at succeeding.

But, according to author, entrepreneur, marketer and public speaker Seth Godin, these traditional ‘rules’ of marketing aren’t enough anymore in a largely competitive economy. Creating a new product that is successful means that the new product must be nothing short of game-changing; remarkable.

Which means when it comes to the P’s in the evolution of marketing, perhaps following the existing P’s just aren’t enough. Godin introduces a new P — Purple Cow — a P that he argues to be important in today’s fast-paced and highly competitive business environment.

In his book of the same name, The Purple Cow refers to a product or service that is different to the rest and is somehow remarkable. His book provides guidelines and case studies to help illustrate how creating and spreading remarkable ideas can have an instrumental difference in your business.

You can buy this book here

What is the book about, and what is a purple cow?

The concept of a introducing the ‘purple cow’ into a set of very professional sounding Ps is almost as remarkable as the theory itself — but to ease that curiosity before we continue — the concept came from a family road-trip, where Godin and his family were captivated by hundreds of “storybook brown cows” that dotted the country side over a number of kilometers, until, after a few minutes had passed they were forgotten; they became part of the background. “The new cows were just like the old cows, and what was once amazing was now common. Worse than common: It was boring.”

He translates this feeling into a commercial setting. While early inventors built their fortunes by selling a new product, today customers’ needs are usually already met and provided for in an increasingly competitive, saturated market. In any given category.

BUT. As Godin explains, had they suddenly driven past a purple cow on their road trip… that would have been worth talking about. “The essence of the Purple Cow — the reason it would shine among a crowd of perfectly competent, even undeniably excellent cows — is that it would be remarkable. Something remarkable is worth talking about, worth paying attention to. Boring stuff quickly becomes invisible.”

Therefore, in a commercial setting, in order to succeed there is a need to do or be something remarkable that the right people seek out and can be drawn to.

I would probably stop and look, yes.

Pulling no punches about the ‘death of traditional advertising’, Godin believes we are in the era ‘post-advertising’ where consumers have become experts in filtration, and unless they are looking for something specific, will probably ignore the ads in front of them. We have (in essence) gone back to traditional word of mouth advertising, only the ‘word’ is now exchanged online making good news and bad news spread a lot faster than in previous eras.

Throughout the book Godin identifies and explores a number of ways to raise a “Purple Cow” in today’s market using tactics such as:

1. Thinking small and build up from there,
2. Differentiating and choosing your customers (focusing on the early adopters, or ‘sneezers’),
3. Launching competing products to your own which targets completely different markets,
4. Going above and beyond for loyal customers,
5. Understanding the limits and exploring them — testing the ‘impossible’,
6. Finding things that aren’t being done in the category, and go and do them,
7. Ask ‘why not’ on things you don’t do.

He also notes that “Remarkable” is not necessarily about changing the biggest machines, it can be a smaller mechanic that is functioning within an existing P.

What is my big takeout?

“It’s riskier to be safe and it’s safer to be risky” — This phrase is by far one of my biggest takeaways from Purple Cow. Bound by fear of rejection and failure, it’s easy to play it safe in business (and in life); that’s natural behaviour. We play by the rules; we rarely question ‘why not’, and quite frankly we find it easier to follow the tried and tested because fact tells us that it will work.

Godin argues that in a constantly changing landscape, traditional rules can lead to failure while taking more risks can set you apart from the masses. But this doesn’t mean that marketers and advertisers should be throwing out what they have learnt and starting from the beginning; it’s about re-looking at the P’s and understanding where there is opportunity to tweak and challenge traditional behaviour. If we look at the 70:20:10 model as an example, it’s about looking at opportunities within that 10% that push traditional norms and category boundaries.

What does this mean for how we think and plan as advertisers?

For those who have read this book, I agree that it may seem a little far removed from our day-to-day roles as strategists/planners/buyers in Ad-land.

The thought provoking moment for me as a planner was that if in 2002 when this book was written, buzzwords like “clutter”, “online WOM” and “fragmentation” were surfacing, it means that now in 2017 the filtration power of consumers must be tenfold. This made me think about white space and what exactly that might mean for different kinds of advertisers today. The go-to solution for “white space” has traditionally been looked to as experiential or activation led ideas that are outside the typical channel buy. But really, the purple cow of media doesn’t necessarily rely on expensive short term solutions.

Another favourite paper of mine was the IPA study The Long and the Short of It, which in a nutshell, advises advertisers to consider long-term foundation planning rather than spikes of short-term reactive planning.

Read more on the effectiveness theory here

Perhaps the “purple cow” of media is to invest long-term in a channel that is outside of category ‘norms’, or own a moment in time that no one else in the category is — in order words, being known for something and standing out from the category crowd through remarkable thinking. As Godin mentions, “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.”

Understanding the competitive behaviour and category foundations of your brand might just help you to create a purple cow solution that moves your brand to future growth and separates your client from the rest of the category.

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