Purple Cow

My wife has been pushing Seth Godin on me for awhile.  I finally caved and started watching his YouTube videos.  Really good stuff.  I wanted more.  So I purchased his audio book, Purple Cow. Audio book you say?  Heck yes!  I LOVE audio books.  I read while I run.  I read while I drive.  I read myself to sleep.  But that's off topic.


In the dark ages before the interwebs, marketing went like this:  Huge companies spent millions of dollars on national TV campaigns, sold a ton of product, and reinvested the money in, yep, more TV time.  They forced ads down our throats, we watched, and bought.  This worked fabulously.  Then.  But this was before TiVo, Hulu, Netfix and an epidemic of ADD.  


Now, if we don't want to watch an ad, we don't, so more effective marketing has evolved.  Certainly, some companies have not evolved and they're still using the 1970 model.  It doesn't work anymore.


Now, you've got to do things differently.  You've got to target your marketing - get your product or service in front of people who WANT to see it.  That's the genius of a Google search - you type "widget", and you see ads for just what you're looking for.


The main point of the book however, is that marketing should start with the creation of the product.  You need to create a product that will market itself.  You can no longer create something, and then think, "hmm, how will I market this?"  The product or service has to be the marketing.  And how will it do that?  It must be a purple cow.  It's gotta stand out.  Be different.  Make people take notice.


If your product IS the purple cow, you'll have the early adapters (sneezers) gobble it up.  It will be so cool, that they'll "sneeze" it out into the world, and then the rest of the world will start to adopt it.


So here's the question:  How are you going to make YOUR voice over business, your widget or other product stand out?


Check out Seth's book and get the full scoop.