Finding your purple cow.
I like cows they’re great, you see them in the countryside. Seeing the same cow over and over again eventually gets boring. Seeing a purple cow now that’s exciting, that makes me look at it.
The bigger a company gets the more scared it gets. Big companies tend to stick to what they know got them there, and don’t take any risks, even when taking risks is what got them there in the first place. Do what you’ve always done, get the results you’ve always got, but in marketing, it’s worse you get less of the results you’ve always got.
You have a 6th sense.
100 years of marketing has built into us all a 6th sense when it comes to advertising. We’re bombarded with advertising so much that people watching a screen take 0.5 seconds to recognise something is a banner ad on a website, and stop looking at it. This is probably why the Google search network isn’t a good advertising option, but that’s for another article.
This means that traditional approaches to marketing are almost always not going to have the same impact they once did, especially when compared to the TV Ad Industrial Complex, but I’ll get into that later.
Obscure, alternative, new and novelty ideas in marketing are all we have left, traditional is becoming boring and non-effective. To break away from the norm you need a purple cow in everything you build.

The Tv industrial complex.
Oh yeah the TV Industrial complex, I was talking about that earlier. There was once a time when brands had so much money and the opportunity to advertise to get in front of millions of eyeballs. The TV-industrial complex was the symbiotic relationship between consumer demand, TV advertising, and ever-growing companies that were built around investments in ever-increasing marketing expenditures. The days when big brands could buy traditional ad space on TV and launch a new brand to success are over.
Old marketing methods have nowhere to go but down. If you still watch traditional live TV can you remember a time when you wanted to watch the adverts and didn’t just pull out your smartphone to browse social media, it’s been a long time right.
Future products and services that have success are going to be made by passionate people, and those same people are going to be risk takers, it’s safer to be risky than to keep your head down and stay boring.
Creating a purple cow is so hard because the big companies and the small start-ups are so scared they won’t have success with it, you have to go with your intuition and welcome the criticism anyways, that’s how you truly stand out.
Standing out is the only way to be visible, otherwise blending in is just that blending in, so take a chance at greatness.
Will your flock always be there?
Through government-funded schooling or as I like to call it “government-funded indoctrination” you’re taught to blend in, not to stick your head out, follow orders, get a job, so when it comes to standing out it’s hard, it goes against what we’re taught.
I wish I could tell you all your purple cow ideas are going to work, that your purple cow is the one, but it’s just not that easy. Like the old saying goes if it was easy everyone would do it.
When birds fly together they need one bird at the front to break the air in front of them, however there might come a time when your flock isn’t behind you anymore because you don’t break the air in front.
Purple cow and USPs.
When finding your purple cow, you need to think is your USP worth passing on, is your innovation worth passing on? Almost all big brands have a purple cow that they can pass on.
If you run a focus group and they don’t like your idea, they’re probably wrong. Most people don’t have the foresight to see what the future holds. When South Park first tested it scored 0.1 out of 10, women cried through it, others thought it was weird, but the ones that liked it the most were adolescent boys. It’s not about being weird it’s about standing out.
Almost everything you don’t do is because you have fear, ask yourself why not do it, everything you don’t do might be your purple cow.
99% of excellence is deciding you want to be excellent the rest is straightforward. You can change in a microsecond or never change at all, its the same as quitting smoking, it takes a microsecond to change but the rest of eternity to keep the change.
When finding your purple cow, you need to think is your USP worth passing on, is your innovation worth passing on? Almost all big brands have a purple cow that they can pass on.
If you run a focus group and they don’t like your idea, they’re probably wrong. Most people don’t have the foresight to see what the future holds. When South Park first tested it scored 0.1 out of 10, women cried through it, others thought it was weird, but the ones that liked it the most were adolescent boys. It’s not about being weird it’s about standing out.
Almost everything you don’t do is because you have fear, ask yourself why not do it, everything you don’t do might be your purple cow.
Finding excellence.
99% of excellence is deciding you want to be excellent the rest is straightforward. You can change in a microsecond or never change at all, its the same as quitting smoking, it takes a microsecond to change but the rest of eternity to keep the change.
How do you know when you’ve found your purple cow? If you can’t explain to the man or woman on the street why you’re special then you’ve not found your purple cow. Your purple cow should make your customers think wow thats cool.
Finding your purple cow requires you to make adjustment after adjustment after adjustment. If any business is a success it’s going to get copied, so you need an appetite for innovation and the not boring.
Sony had its many purple cows, the Walkman, The mini disk, but now has become a me too company selling Playstations and is more akin to a soulless corporation than anything innovative, sad. That’s not to say they don’t make money, but could they be making more money with new innovations rather than playing it safe.

In conclusion.
When you want your purple cow remember these things:
- Don’t be boring.
- Design rules now.
- Very good is bad.
- Safe is risky.
References:
Book: Purple Cow – Seth Goden
Book: In Pursuit of wow – Tom Peters