Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable is a marketing and business book by American author and entrepreneur Seth Godin. It was first published in 2003 by Portfolio. The book argues that conventional mass marketing has become less effective in markets crowded with competing products, advertising messages, and consumer choices. Godin proposes that businesses should instead develop products and services that are sufficiently distinctive and interesting to attract attention and generate word-of-mouth discussion.
The central metaphor of the book is a purple cow: an ordinary cow may become unremarkable after a person has seen many cows, whereas a purple cow would be unusual enough to attract attention. Godin uses this metaphor to argue that being merely competent, reliable, or incrementally better is often insufficient in a crowded marketplace. A product should be deliberately designed to be “remarkable”—in the literal sense of being worthy of remark.
The book became one of Godin’s best-known works and contributed to the popularization of the concepts of remarkability, word-of-mouth marketing, early adopters, customer evangelism, and product-led marketing. A revised and expanded edition was published by Portfolio in 2009. The new edition contains 224 pages and incorporates additional examples and material.
Book information
| Item | Details |
|---|---|
| Author | Seth Godin |
| Original title | Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Subject | Marketing, advertising, business strategy, entrepreneurship |
| Genre | Business nonfiction |
| Publisher | Portfolio |
| Original publication | 2003 |
| Revised and expanded edition | 2009 |
| Original ISBN | 978-1-59184-021-3 |
| 2009 edition ISBN | 978-1-59184-317-7 |
| Pages | 145 pages in the original Penguin edition; 224 pages in the 2009 revised edition |
| Preceded by | Survival Is Not Enough |
| Followed by | Free Prize Inside |
Bibliographic records identify the original edition as a 2003 Penguin/Portfolio publication, while Penguin Random House lists the revised and expanded edition as published on November 12, 2009, by Portfolio.
About The Author: Seth Godin
Seth Godin is the author of 20 international bestsellers that have been translated into over 38 languages, and have changed the way people think about marketing and work. For a long time, Unleashing the Ideavirus was the most popular ebook ever published, and Purple Cow is the bestselling marketing book of the decade.
He worked as a year as the volunteer founding editor of The Carbon Almanac, and his recent bestsellers also include The Practice and This is Marketing.
He’s a recent inductee to the Marketing Hall of Fame, and also a member of the Direct Marketing Hall of Fame and (go figure), the Guerrilla Marketing Hall of Fame.
His book, Tribes, was a nationwide bestseller, appearing on the Amazon, New York Times, BusinessWeek and Wall Street Journal bestseller lists. It’s about the most powerful form of marketing–leadership–and how anyone can now become a leader, creating movements that matter.
His book Linchpin came out in 2008 and was the fastest-selling book of his career. Linchpin challenges you to stand up, do work that matters and race to the top instead of the bottom. More than that, though, the book outlines a massive change in our economy, a fundamental shift in what it means to have a job.
In addition to his writing and speaking, Seth was founder and CEO of Squidoo.com,. His blog (find it by typing “seth” into Google) is the most popular marketing blog in the world. Before his work as a writer and blogger, Godin was Vice President of Direct Marketing at Yahoo!, a job he got after selling them his pioneering 1990s online startup, Yoyodyne.
He’s known as a pioneer in online education, and was the founder of the altMBA.
You can find every single possible detail that anyone could ever want to know at sethgodin.com
Overview
Purple Cow is built around a simple marketing proposition: products themselves should become part of the marketing.
Godin argues that traditional marketing often treats the product as something already completed and places most of the responsibility for growth on advertising, promotion, distribution, and sales. In his view, this approach becomes increasingly difficult when consumers are surrounded by thousands of commercial messages and have limited attention.
The alternative presented in Purple Cow is to create something that people naturally notice and discuss.
Godin describes “remarkable” not simply as excellent, luxurious, expensive, technically advanced, or unusual. Rather, the word is connected to its literal meaning: something worth making a remark about. Godin later emphasized this interpretation explicitly, explaining that remarkability exists from the perspective of the consumer rather than the marketer.
The book therefore connects product development, positioning, customer behavior and marketing rather than treating advertising as an isolated business function.
The Purple Cow metaphor
The title comes from an intentionally improbable image: a purple cow.
A person driving through a countryside might initially notice a herd of cows. After seeing similar cows for some time, however, the cows become part of the background. Their familiarity reduces their ability to attract attention.
A purple cow would interrupt that pattern.
Godin uses this as an analogy for modern markets.
Ordinary product
Product → Advertising → Consumer awareness → Possible purchase
Purple Cow approach
Remarkable product → Attention → Conversation → Word of mouth → Adoption → Growth
The distinction is important. Godin is not simply recommending unusual advertising. He argues that the underlying product, service or customer experience should itself contain something distinctive.
The central thesis
The central thesis of Purple Cow can be summarized as:
In a crowded marketplace, being merely good is often not enough; businesses must create something people consider worth talking about.
Godin’s argument rests on several related observations.
- Consumers have limited attention.
- Most markets contain large numbers of competing products.
- Traditional advertising can become expensive and easy to ignore.
- Consumers are more likely to talk about products that surprise, delight, challenge or interest them.
- Word of mouth can introduce a product to people outside the company’s immediate advertising audience.
- Therefore, product design and marketing strategy should be integrated.
The book consequently shifts the marketer’s question from:
“How can we advertise this product?”
to:
“What could we build that people would want to talk about?”
The decline of mass marketing
One of the book’s major arguments concerns the changing economics of mass marketing.
Godin describes an earlier model sometimes associated with the TV-industrial complex, in which companies could manufacture products for large markets, advertise them extensively through mass media, and use advertising to build awareness and demand.
In this model:
Mass production → Mass advertising → Mass distribution → Mass consumption
Godin argues that this model becomes progressively less powerful as markets become fragmented and consumers gain more choices.
The book therefore proposes a different sequence:
Targeted product → Early adopters → Word of mouth → Wider adoption
The argument was particularly notable in the early 2000s, when the internet, search engines, blogs and emerging social networks were changing how information about products spread.
The five Ps and the “new P”
Traditional marketing is often taught through frameworks involving elements such as product, price, promotion and place. Godin argues that marketers have historically concentrated heavily on conventional variables such as pricing, promotion and publicity.
Purple Cow introduces remarkability as a crucial additional consideration.
Conceptual marketing model
| Traditional emphasis | Purple Cow emphasis |
|---|---|
| Product | Remarkable product |
| Promotion | Product people talk about |
| Mass audience | Selected audience |
| Advertising | Word of mouth |
| Awareness | Action and adoption |
| Market average | Early adopters |
| Safe decisions | Calculated experimentation |
| Incremental improvement | Meaningful differentiation |
The publisher’s description of the book similarly characterizes it as a challenge to conventional marketing thinking and describes the Purple Cow as an additional “P” in the marketer’s toolkit.
Ideas that spread
A major concept in the book is that successful marketing depends not merely on reaching people but on creating conditions in which an idea can spread.
Godin distinguishes between people who simply encounter an advertisement and people who actively transmit an idea to others.
This creates a conceptual chain:
PRODUCT
↓
ATTENTION
↓
INTEREST
↓
CONVERSATION
↓
WORD OF MOUTH
↓
NEW CUSTOMERS
↓
MORE CONVERSATION
The product therefore becomes a participant in its own distribution.
Godin’s earlier work on ideas and viral marketing, particularly Unleashing the Ideavirus, forms part of the intellectual background to this approach. His own account of the Purple Cow launch explicitly described a strategy of focusing on early adopters and “sneezers”, making the book remarkable, making it easy to spread, and allowing it to move toward the mass market.
Early adopters and “sneezers”
One of the book’s most important strategic ideas is the distinction between the early adopter and the mainstream consumer.
Early adopters are more willing to experiment with unfamiliar products. They are often interested in new technologies, new experiences, unusual products or emerging ideas.
Godin also uses the term “sneezers” for people who spread ideas to others.
The resulting model can be represented as:
┌──────────────────┐
│ NEW PRODUCT │
└────────┬─────────┘
│
▼
┌──────────────────┐
│ EARLY ADOPTERS │
└────────┬─────────┘
│
▼
┌──────────────────┐
│ SNEEZERS │
│ / INFLUENCERS │
└────────┬─────────┘
│
┌────────────┴────────────┐
▼ ▼
CONVERSATION SHARING
│ │
└────────────┬────────────┘
▼
┌──────────────────┐
│ EARLY MAJORITY │
└────────┬─────────┘
▼
┌──────────────────┐
│ MASS MARKET │
└──────────────────┘
The implication is that a company does not necessarily have to persuade everybody simultaneously. It can first create enthusiasm among people who are naturally interested in trying and discussing new things.
Godin later explained that identifying the appropriate community or “hive” of people who are likely to spread an idea is a critical part of the strategy.
Not all customers are equally valuable
A recurring idea in Purple Cow is that businesses should not necessarily treat every potential customer identically.
Traditional mass marketing often seeks the largest possible audience.
Godin instead recommends identifying people who are:
- interested in innovation;
- willing to experiment;
- likely to talk about products;
- connected to other potential customers;
- influential within a particular community.
This produces a different definition of market size.
Conventional approach
Maximum number of people reached
Purple Cow approach
Maximum number of relevant people likely to spread the idea
This distinction is particularly important for products entering crowded or mature markets.
Remarkability versus quality
A central distinction in the book is between quality and remarkability.
A product can be well made without being remarkable.
For example, a technically competent product may satisfy customers but produce little conversation.
Conversely, a product with a distinctive feature, unusual experience, unconventional design or unexpected business model may generate discussion even if its competitive advantage is difficult to summarize using conventional quality measures.
Godin therefore treats quality as necessary in many markets but insufficient as a complete marketing strategy.
His later writings reinforce this distinction. He has argued that calling a product a Purple Cow does not make it remarkable and that the customer’s willingness to talk about it is the meaningful test.
The importance of “otaku”
The book uses the Japanese term otaku to describe an intense enthusiasm for a particular subject.
In Godin’s framework, these highly interested consumers can be valuable because they actively seek information and experiences within a category.
They are not merely passive recipients of advertising.
They may:
- search for new products;
- compare alternatives;
- discuss products with others;
- write about their experiences;
- recommend products;
- experiment with new offerings.
The concept therefore connects naturally with modern enthusiast communities, specialist forums, online creators and niche communities.
The problem with compromise
Godin argues that organizations often weaken potentially remarkable products by attempting to satisfy everyone.
A product designed to offend nobody may also excite nobody.
This can produce a familiar pattern:
Original idea
↓
Management review
↓
"Make it safer"
↓
"Make it cheaper"
↓
"Make it appeal to everyone"
↓
"Remove anything controversial"
↓
Average product
↓
Average marketing
↓
Low attention
Godin presents this as one of the dangers of excessive compromise.
The objective is not to be controversial merely for publicity. Instead, businesses should identify where meaningful differentiation can be created and then have the confidence to pursue it.
Case studies and examples
The book uses numerous businesses and products to illustrate its ideas. The examples vary across industries and include companies such as Starbucks, JetBlue, Krispy Kreme, Apple, the Aeron chair, Logitech, Curad, Dutch Boy, Häagen-Dazs, Motorola, Nokia and McDonald’s. The revised edition expands the range of examples and case studies.
These examples are not presented simply as companies to imitate. Instead, they demonstrate different ways in which businesses can create distinction.
Starbucks
The Starbucks example illustrates how an ordinary category such as coffee can be transformed by changing the overall customer experience, environment and brand relationship.
JetBlue
JetBlue is used as an example of how an airline can differentiate itself through elements of the passenger experience.
Krispy Kreme
Krispy Kreme illustrates how product experience, scarcity, location and sensory appeal can contribute to customer enthusiasm and word of mouth.
Apple
Apple represents a broader example of product design, identity and differentiation working together.
Dutch Boy
Dutch Boy’s redesign of paint packaging illustrates Godin’s broader argument that innovation does not necessarily require inventing an entirely new category. A familiar product can become remarkable through changes in design and user experience.
The product as marketing
One of the most consequential ideas in Purple Cow is the proposition that marketing should begin before advertising.
Traditional sequence:
Build product
↓
Create advertising
↓
Buy media
↓
Reach consumers
Purple Cow sequence:
Identify opportunity
↓
Design remarkable product
↓
Put it in front of people likely to care
↓
Encourage discussion
↓
Facilitate sharing
↓
Expand distribution
In this model, marketing becomes partly a function of product design.
A company therefore cannot necessarily delegate marketing entirely to its marketing department.
Product managers, designers, engineers, customer-service teams and executives all contribute to whether the customer experience is worth discussing.
Marketing as design
The book argues that modern marketers increasingly need to behave like designers.
The marketer’s job is not merely to communicate an existing value proposition. It is also to identify opportunities to create value that consumers can recognize and discuss.
This represents a shift:
Marketing communication
→ “How do we tell people about our product?”
to:
Marketing design
→ “What should the product be so that people want to tell others about it?”
This distinction has subsequently become influential in product marketing, user experience design, startup strategy and brand building.
Being remarkable does not mean being outrageous
A common misunderstanding of the Purple Cow concept is that a remarkable product must be shocking or bizarre.
Godin rejects this narrow interpretation.
Something can be remarkable because it is:
- exceptionally useful;
- unusually convenient;
- beautifully designed;
- surprisingly simple;
- dramatically faster;
- highly specialized;
- exceptionally generous;
- distinctive in packaging;
- unusually personalized;
- strongly associated with a community;
- unexpectedly entertaining.
Godin later summarized the concept by explaining that “remarkable” means something that people actually make remarks about, rather than something a marketer merely labels remarkable.
The economics of attention
Attention is a scarce resource in the book’s framework.
A consumer may encounter hundreds or thousands of commercial messages without consciously processing most of them.
The strategic implication can be represented as:
More products
+
More advertising
+
More media
+
More choices
↓
More competition for attention
↓
Less attention per message
↓
Greater value of genuine distinction
This does not mean advertising becomes completely useless.
Rather, the book argues that advertising becomes more powerful when it supports something people already find interesting.
Word-of-mouth marketing
Word of mouth is perhaps the most important mechanism in Purple Cow.
Advertising generally requires a company to purchase or obtain access to attention.
Word of mouth involves customers voluntarily transmitting information to others.
Simplified comparison
| Advertising | Word of mouth |
|---|---|
| Company initiates message | Customer initiates conversation |
| Paid distribution often involved | Often unpaid |
| Company controls message | Message can change |
| Audience may be passive | Recipient may actively engage |
| Can reach many people quickly | Can spread through social networks |
| Often expensive at scale | Can become self-propagating |
Godin does not simply present word of mouth as a promotional trick. His larger argument is that the product must give people a reason to talk.
The “magic cycle”
The Purple Cow strategy can be visualized as a cycle:
┌─────────────────────────┐
│ REMARKABLE PRODUCT │
└────────────┬────────────┘
↓
PEOPLE NOTICE
↓
PEOPLE TRY IT
↓
PEOPLE TALK
↓
OTHERS DISCOVER
↓
MORE TRIAL
↓
MORE TALKING
│
└───────────────→
BACK TO
REMARKABILITY
The cycle only works if the underlying product continues to provide a reason for customers to talk.
A marketing campaign may create temporary attention, but the Purple Cow concept attempts to make attention an attribute of the product itself.
The danger of copying successful examples
Another important point in the book is that companies should not simply copy the visible characteristics of successful Purple Cows.
If one company succeeds because of an unusual store design, another company cannot necessarily reproduce the same result simply by copying that design.
The underlying principle is:
Copy the thinking, not the surface feature.
A successful innovation becomes less remarkable once competitors imitate it.
Godin’s own later writing makes the same point in another form: what is remarkable at one moment can eventually become ordinary. He has described the changing nature of remarkability as a continuing strategic challenge.
Remarkability has a life cycle
A Purple Cow is not permanently remarkable.
Once competitors imitate it, consumers become familiar with it.
The cycle can be expressed as:
NEW
↓
UNUSUAL
↓
REMARKABLE
↓
POPULAR
↓
COMMON
↓
EXPECTED
↓
BORING
This creates a strategic problem for established companies.
The characteristic that originally created differentiation may eventually become a baseline expectation.
Therefore, innovation has to continue.
The Purple Cow strategy
A simplified version of Godin’s strategic process is:
1. Find a market
Identify a group of people with a strong interest in a particular problem, category or experience.
2. Understand the audience
Determine what they value, discuss, seek and share.
3. Create something worth noticing
Develop a product or service with a distinctive characteristic that matters to the intended audience.
4. Target early adopters
Avoid attempting to persuade the entire population simultaneously.
5. Encourage transmission
Make it easy for interested customers to tell others.
6. Observe the response
Measure whether customers actually notice, discuss and adopt the product.
7. Improve
Use feedback to refine the offering.
8. Expand
Once adoption begins to spread, broaden distribution.
The role of risk
A Purple Cow strategy involves a degree of risk.
A company that deliberately creates something unusual cannot know with certainty how the market will respond.
Traditional organizations often minimize risk by producing products that resemble existing successful products.
Godin argues that this apparent safety can itself be dangerous because a safe product may become invisible.
The strategic challenge is therefore not:
“How can we eliminate all risk?”
but:
“How can we conduct small, intelligent experiments while preserving the possibility of exceptional success?”
This approach is particularly relevant to startups and new product development.
The “safe” product problem
A simplified risk matrix illustrates the argument:
| Strategy | Short-term risk | Potential attention | Potential upside |
|---|---|---|---|
| Copy competitor | Low | Low | Low |
| Incremental improvement | Low–medium | Medium | Medium |
| Strong differentiation | Medium | High | High |
| Radical innovation | High | Very high | Very high |
The book does not imply that every product should be radical.
Instead, it challenges organizations to consider whether excessive caution is producing products that consumers simply ignore.
The role of advertising
Purple Cow is sometimes interpreted as an argument that advertising is obsolete.
That interpretation is too simplistic.
Godin’s argument is more accurately understood as a criticism of advertising as a substitute for product differentiation.
Advertising can still:
- introduce a product;
- reinforce a brand;
- communicate information;
- reach particular audiences;
- remind existing customers;
- support distribution.
However, advertising cannot permanently compensate for a product that gives consumers no reason to care.
The publisher’s description of the book similarly frames Godin’s argument around the need to create remarkable products worth marketing in the first place.
Purple Cow and digital marketing
Although Purple Cow was published in 2003, several of its ideas became particularly relevant to digital marketing.
Digital platforms make it easier for consumers to:
- review products;
- recommend products;
- share links;
- publish videos;
- compare alternatives;
- build communities;
- criticize companies publicly;
- discover niche products.
This increases the potential importance of products that generate conversation.
A contemporary interpretation of the Purple Cow model could therefore be:
Product
↓
Customer experience
↓
Reaction
↓
Content / review / post / video
↓
Network distribution
↓
Discovery
↓
New customer
↓
New reaction
The internet does not create the principle of word of mouth, but it can increase the speed and geographical reach of customer-to-customer communication.
Purple Cow and social media
Social media created an environment in which customers can become distributors of brand stories.
A remarkable product can generate:
- photographs;
- reviews;
- short videos;
- recommendations;
- memes;
- discussion threads;
- comparison content;
- influencer commentary.
However, the underlying principle remains the same: the customer must have a reason to share.
Simply asking customers to “share” a mediocre product does not create a Purple Cow.
Purple Cow and startups
The book has particular relevance to startups because startups often lack the advertising budgets of established corporations.
A startup may therefore need to find a narrower group of customers for whom its product is unusually valuable.
The strategy can be summarized as:
Small audience + strong differentiation + enthusiastic users → potential organic growth
This is one reason the book continues to be associated with entrepreneurship and product innovation.
Purple Cow and personal branding
The Purple Cow concept can also be applied beyond products.
Professionals, writers, consultants, educators and creators can ask:
- What do I do differently?
- What specific problem do I solve?
- Why would someone mention me to another person?
- What evidence makes my work distinctive?
- What can I offer that is difficult to compare directly with everyone else?
The resulting idea is not simply “be famous.”
It is:
Become useful or distinctive enough that people voluntarily remember and discuss your work.
Purple Cow and the long tail
The book’s emphasis on niche audiences is compatible with the broader concept of the long tail, in which digital distribution makes it economically possible to serve many relatively small markets rather than depending exclusively on mass-market products.
A highly specialized product may be unattractive to the general population but extremely valuable to a particular group.
This creates a strategic opportunity:
Mass market
│
│
│ X
│ XXX
│ XXXXX
│ XXXXXXX
│ XXXXXXXXX
└──────────────────────
Niche → Niche → Niche
The Purple Cow approach does not require everyone to love a product.
It requires the right people to care enough to notice and talk about it.
Structure of the book
The original edition contains a series of short chapters and case-based discussions rather than a conventional linear business textbook.
Among the chapter themes are:
- the need for a Purple Cow;
- the decline of traditional mass marketing;
- awareness versus action;
- ideas that spread;
- early adopters;
- customer segmentation;
- following leaders;
- the problem of compromise;
- product development;
- the relationship between marketing and design;
- factories and scalability;
- employment and personal differentiation;
- passion;
- ways to make ordinary businesses more remarkable.
The revised edition contains additional case studies and expands the discussion of the process and application of the Purple Cow idea. A library catalog records numerous case studies involving companies such as Chip Conley, Logitech, the United States Postal Service, Dutch Boy, Krispy Kreme, Motorola and Nokia.
Ten-point framework
The book concludes with a practical checklist intended to help readers think about creating a Purple Cow.
A generalized representation of its strategic logic is:
01 Identify the market
02 Find the people most likely to care
03 Study what they value
04 Create a distinctive product
05 Make the distinction meaningful
06 Give early adopters a reason to try
07 Give customers a reason to talk
08 Make the idea easy to spread
09 Measure the response
10 Continue innovating before novelty disappears
The important point is that remarkability is not simply a promotional campaign. It is a product and business-design decision.
Examples of Purple Cow thinking
The following examples illustrate the principle without suggesting that every example is necessarily a literal Purple Cow in Godin’s original sense.
| Business situation | Ordinary approach | Purple Cow approach |
|---|---|---|
| Restaurant | Good food | A distinctive experience worth discussing |
| Dental clinic | Standard treatment | An unusually convenient or anxiety-reducing patient experience |
| Hotel | Clean rooms | A memorable experience with a clear identity |
| Software | More features | One exceptionally useful or surprising feature |
| Book | Publish and advertise | Create an idea people want to discuss |
| Education | More lessons | A learning experience students remember |
| E-commerce | Lower price | An experience customers want to recommend |
| Professional service | Generic expertise | A sharply defined, distinctive specialty |
The point is not novelty for its own sake. The distinctive element must have value to the intended audience.
What the Purple Cow is not
The concept is frequently misunderstood. A Purple Cow is not necessarily:
- an expensive product;
- a luxury product;
- a viral video;
- a shocking advertisement;
- a controversial statement;
- a celebrity endorsement;
- a bright visual identity;
- a strange product;
- a gimmick;
- a temporary publicity stunt.
A product can be remarkably simple.
Likewise, a visually spectacular product can fail to become remarkable if consumers have no reason to discuss it.
Criticism and limitations
The ideas in Purple Cow have also attracted criticism and require qualification.
1. Not every market rewards novelty
Some industries place a premium on reliability, safety, compliance and predictability. In such markets, radical differentiation may be constrained.
Medical devices, aviation, financial infrastructure and industrial systems, for example, cannot necessarily pursue novelty in the same way as consumer products.
2. Remarkability is difficult to manufacture
A company cannot guarantee that customers will find something remarkable.
What seems extraordinary to a product team may appear irrelevant to customers.
3. Word of mouth is unpredictable
Word of mouth can be powerful, but it is not fully controllable. Customers may discuss a product in ways that differ from the company’s intended message.
4. Advertising remains useful
The claim that traditional advertising has become less effective should not be interpreted as meaning that all advertising is ineffective.
Advertising can remain important for brand awareness, product education, distribution support and competitive positioning.
5. Not every remarkable product succeeds
A product can be genuinely interesting and still fail because of poor pricing, distribution, timing, execution, competition or market demand.
6. “Be different” can become generic advice
Once differentiation becomes a popular management slogan, simply instructing employees to “be remarkable” can itself become conventional.
The difficult question is not whether a company should be remarkable. It is what specific change will make customers care?
Reception
Purple Cow became one of Seth Godin’s best-known marketing books.
The publisher describes the book as a work that helped popularize the idea that businesses must become remarkable or risk becoming invisible. Penguin Random House notes that the book was first published in 2003 and revised and expanded in 2009, and describes its influence on marketers, entrepreneurs, product managers, writers and other creators.
Godin’s own website describes Purple Cow as his “bestselling marketing book of that decade” and summarizes its purpose as explaining how to spread ideas by being remarkable.
The book’s influence is also visible in Godin’s subsequent writing, in which the Purple Cow concept continued to appear in discussions of marketing, careers, product design and the spread of ideas.
The marketing of Purple Cow
An unusual feature of Purple Cow was that Godin applied some of the book’s principles to the launch of the book itself.
In a 2003 account published on his blog, Godin described an early strategy involving limited distribution, a free or low-cost offer, bulk purchasing and distinctive milk-carton packaging. He explicitly described the launch as an attempt to make the marketing of the book embody the ideas contained within the book.
This created a form of meta-marketing:
Book about remarkable marketing
↓
Remarkable book launch
↓
People notice the launch
↓
People talk about the launch
↓
More people discover the book
↓
The marketing demonstrates the thesis
The approach became part of the mythology surrounding the book because the marketing strategy itself illustrated its central argument.
Influence on marketing terminology
The phrase “Purple Cow” subsequently became shorthand in marketing discussions for a product, service, brand or experience that stands out sufficiently to generate attention and discussion.
Its conceptual vocabulary includes:
- remarkability;
- sneezers;
- early adopters;
- word of mouth;
- ideas that spread;
- product-as-marketing;
- niche targeting;
- calculated risk;
- customer evangelism.
The phrase is therefore used not only as the title of a book but as a metaphor within marketing discourse.
Relationship to Seth Godin’s other works
Purple Cow forms part of a broader body of work in which Godin examines how ideas spread and how organizations can create meaningful differentiation.
Related books include:
- Permission Marketing;
- Unleashing the Ideavirus;
- Free Prize Inside;
- All Marketers Are Liars;
- The Dip;
- Tribes;
- Linchpin;
- This Is Marketing;
- The Practice.
Godin’s own bibliography describes Purple Cow as a book about spreading ideas by being remarkable and places it within a larger body of work concerning marketing, leadership, creativity and work.
Author
Seth Godin
Seth W. Godin is an American author, entrepreneur, speaker and marketing writer.
He was born on July 10, 1960. He graduated from Tufts University and later earned an MBA from Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business. His professional career has included work in software, publishing, direct marketing and internet entrepreneurship.
Godin founded Yoyodyne, an early internet marketing company that was later acquired by Yahoo!, where he became vice president of direct marketing. He later founded and served as chief executive of Squidoo, an online publishing platform.
He also founded the altMBA, an alternative management education program. His books have been translated into numerous languages and include Permission Marketing, Purple Cow, Tribes, Linchpin, The Dip, This Is Marketing, and The Practice. Penguin Random House currently describes him as the author of 18 international bestsellers, while Godin’s own biography lists 21 best-selling books and says his work has been translated into 40 languages.
Godin has also been a long-running blogger and public speaker. His blog has been an important part of his public writing and has provided an ongoing forum for developing and revisiting ideas introduced in his books.
In 2018, Godin was inducted into the Marketing Hall of Fame.
Legacy
The lasting significance of Purple Cow lies less in any particular marketing tactic than in its change of emphasis.
Instead of beginning with:
“How do we get more people to see our advertisement?”
the Purple Cow framework begins with:
“What can we create that the right people will care enough about to talk about?”
This represents a shift from attention buying toward attention earning.
The distinction remains relevant in environments where consumers can choose among enormous numbers of products, services, creators and sources of information.
Contemporary interpretation
More than two decades after its original publication, the Purple Cow principle can be interpreted in the context of modern digital businesses as a combination of:
Differentiation + Product experience + Community + Word of mouth + Distribution
A contemporary version of the model can therefore be represented as:
┌───────────────────────┐
│ CUSTOMER PROBLEM │
└───────────┬───────────┘
↓
┌───────────────────────┐
│ DISTINCTIVE SOLUTION │
└───────────┬───────────┘
↓
┌───────────────────────┐
│ REMARKABLE UX │
└───────────┬───────────┘
↓
┌───────────────────────┐
│ CUSTOMER REACTION │
└───────────┬───────────┘
↓
┌───────────────────────┐
│ WORD OF MOUTH │
└───────────┬───────────┘
↓
┌───────────────────────┐
│ DIGITAL DISTRIBUTION │
└───────────┬───────────┘
↓
┌───────────────────────┐
│ NEW CUSTOMERS │
└───────────┬───────────┘
│
└──────→ REPEAT
The modern interpretation should nevertheless distinguish the underlying principle from contemporary “viral marketing.” A viral campaign may generate enormous temporary reach without producing durable customer value. Godin’s concept is fundamentally concerned with making the thing itself worth noticing and discussing.
Purple Cow framework: visual summary
THE PURPLE COW MODEL
┌──────────┐
│ NOTICE │
└────┬─────┘
│
▼
┌────────────┐
│ TRY │
└─────┬──────┘
│
▼
┌─────────────┐
│ LOVE / │
│ VALUE │
└─────┬───────┘
│
▼
┌─────────────┐
│ TALK │
└─────┬───────┘
│
▼
┌──────────────┐
│ SHARE │
└──────┬───────┘
│
▼
┌───────────────┐
│ DISCOVERY │
└──────┬────────┘
│
▼
┌───────────────┐
│ NEW USERS │
└──────┬────────┘
│
└──────────→ MORE TALK
Key concepts at a glance
| Concept | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Purple Cow | Something sufficiently remarkable to attract attention and discussion |
| Remarkable | Worth making a remark about |
| Sneezers | People who spread ideas to others |
| Early adopters | Consumers willing to try new products |
| Otaku | Highly interested enthusiasts within a category |
| Word of mouth | Customer-to-customer transmission of information |
| TV-industrial complex | Godin’s term for the traditional mass-production/mass-advertising system |
| Product as marketing | Designing the product itself to generate attention |
| Niche | A focused segment with particular needs or interests |
| Risk | The uncertainty involved in creating something genuinely different |
Central lesson
The deepest lesson of Purple Cow is not simply “be different.”
It is:
Create something sufficiently valuable, distinctive or interesting that the customer—not the advertising department—becomes part of the marketing process.
That distinction is important.
Being different is a feature of the product.
Being remarkable is a reaction produced in the customer.
And that reaction is what gives the Purple Cow its name.
References
- Godin, Seth. Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable. Portfolio, 2003. ISBN 978-1-59184-021-3.
- Godin, Seth. Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable. Revised and expanded edition. Portfolio, 2009. ISBN 978-1-59184-317-7.
- Penguin Random House. “Purple Cow, New Edition.” Portfolio.
- Godin, Seth. “Marketing plan for a marketing book.” Seth’s Blog, January 2003.
- Godin, Seth. “Remarkable is where you choose to make it.” Seth’s Blog, June 20, 2003.
- Godin, Seth. “Sell like you buy.” Seth’s Blog, October 2, 2009.
- Godin, Seth. “Different or remarkable?” Seth’s Blog, June 25, 2013.
- Godin, Seth. “Ridiculous is the new remarkable.” Seth’s Blog, December 2012.
- Penguin Random House. “Seth Godin — Author.”
- Godin, Seth. “Seth’s short bio.” Seth’s Blog.
- Alfaisal Library. Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable, catalog record and contents.
- Google Books. Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable, 2003 edition.
Further reading
- Godin, Seth. Permission Marketing: Turning Strangers into Friends and Friends into Customers.
- Godin, Seth. Unleashing the Ideavirus.
- Godin, Seth. Free Prize Inside: The Next Big Marketing Idea.
- Godin, Seth. All Marketers Are Liars.
- Godin, Seth. Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us.
- Godin, Seth. Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?
- Godin, Seth. This Is Marketing: You Can’t Be Seen Until You Learn to See.
- Godin, Seth. The Practice: Shipping Creative Work.
See also
- Seth Godin
- Marketing
- Word-of-mouth marketing
- Viral marketing
- Permission marketing
- Product differentiation
- Brand management
- Consumer behavior
- Early adopters
- Influencer marketing
- Product marketing
- Innovation
- Entrepreneurship
- Design thinking
- The Tipping Point
- Crossing the Chasm
External links
- Seth Godin’s official website and blog — writings and resources by the author.
- Penguin Random House — Purple Cow, New Edition — publisher information, edition details and author information.
- Seth Godin’s book bibliography — overview of his books and descriptions.
Article classification
Type: Book article
Subject: Marketing and business strategy
Author: Seth Godin
First published: 2003
Revised edition: 2009
Primary concept: Remarkability as a driver of attention and word-of-mouth growth
Major themes: Product differentiation, early adopters, word of mouth, innovation, niche marketing and customer-driven growth