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Purple Cow

By Seth Godin

In his bestselling book Purple Cow, Seth Godin says that the key to success is to find a way to stand out. If you can remember the first time you saw a field of cows, you probably thought they were pretty interesting, maybe even remarkable. But the more you see them the less interesting they become. Imagine one day though that you saw a purple one. Now that would really stand out. You'd probably rush off and tell people about it.

Seth is an outstanding marketing expert and his purple cow theory is that if you create something remarkable, people will talk about you and the business will market itself. There are many great case studies in this book. As an example, he recounts the story of Stew Leonard's, a small dairy store founded in Connecticut USA in 1969, selling just 8 items.

They had great fresh products, but the real difference came from the remarkable service they introduced from day one. Stew Leonard set out to do everything he could to create unsurpassed customer service. He felt so passionate about it that he had his service ethic carved in a 3 ton piece of granite at the entrance to his store. He also realised that to give great service you needed to be a great place to work and set about recruiting a great team, engaging and inspiring them and ensuring they had the right development to wow his customers.

Then Stew and his team thought about every little thing they could do to give great service. They set out to listen to and love their customers. They held monthly focus groups for their customers to keep innovating and giving them what they want. They thought about ways to improve shopping with children. One thing kids can do there, when passing by the bakery section, is to ask for a piece of dough to play with. Kids can also dance in the aisle to songs performed by animatronics. Maybe that's a bit OTT, but Stew's customers loved it. When the customer spends $100, the cash register 'moos' and people get free coffee or ice cream. Perhaps that's not for all of us - but it is different and it is remarkable. And it got people talking.

Stew Leonard's grew to become not only the World's Largest Dairy Store, but one of America's most renowned grocery stores, with annual sales of nearly $300 million. More than 300,000 shoppers visit Stew Leonard's each week. It's appeared in the Fortune 100 best places to work for the last six years. It's fair to say it's remarkable.

But you don't have to be a huge business in the US to be remarkable. My local dry cleaning man is a purple cow. Hours of dry cleaners never seem to fit in do they? So I'm always dashing. After a few visits he must have noticed - probably something to do with the fact that I always parked outside despite the double yellows. He said 'Look you always seem quite busy, how about I give you my number and you just call me when you want things picking up and dropping off and I'll send someone round.' OK, so I never call him, but I certainly tell everyone this story and all my friends go there now - he got me talking.

Seth issues a word of caution about being very good. Being very good is very good, but it doesn't make people talk. If you get on an airline and it arrives safely and on time, that's very good but you don't go round telling people. What makes it remarkable ie either the service is horrible beyond belief OR the service is so remarkable that you need to share it. So go on, dare to be remarkable.

Purple Cow is a remarkable book - thanks go to Michael Gottlieb who sent it to me in the first place.

25 May 2007