Purple Cow

Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable

By: Seth Godin

Narrated by: Seth Godin

Length: 2 hrs and 58 mins

Publisher's summary

You're either a Purple Cow or you're not. You're either remarkable or invisible. Make your choice. What do Starbucks and JetBlue and KrispyKreme and Apple and DutchBoy and Kensington and Zespri and Hard Candy have that you don't? How do they continue to confound critics and achieve spectacular growth, leaving behind former tried-and true brands to gasp their last?

Face it, the checklist of tired P's marketers have used for decades to get their product noticed - Pricing, Promotion, Publicity, to name a few -aren't working anymore. There's an exceptionally important P that has to be added to the list. It's Purple Cow. Cows, after you've seen one, or two, or 10, are boring. A Purple Cow, though...now that would be something.

Purple Cow describes something phenomenal, something counterintuitive and exciting and flat-out unbelievable. Every day, consumers come face to face with a lot of boring stuff - a lot of brown cows - but you can bet they won't forget a Purple Cow. And it's not a marketing function that you can slap on to your product or service. Purple Cow is inherent. It's built right in, or it's not there. Period.

In Purple Cow, Seth Godin urges you to put a Purple Cow into everything you build, and everything you do, to create something truly noticeable. It's a manifesto for marketers.

©2002 Do You Zoom Inc. (P)2009 Gildan Media Corp

Critic reviews

"Take Leo Burnett,David Oglivy, Bill Bernbach and Mark Twain. Combine their brains and shave their heads. What's left? Seth Godin." (Jay Levinson, author of Guerrilla Marketing)
"Godin's style is punchy and irreverent, using short, sharp messages to drive his points home. ....[H]is wide-ranging advice - be outrageous, tell the truth, test the limits and never settle for just 'very good' - is solid and timely." ( Publishers Weekly)

A "Fun" Read with No Nuts-and-bolts

I have to admit, I like marketing books. In graduate school, my favorite classes had a marketing focus. So when I saw this book about marketing I felt a strong pull to read it. Maybe it's the fact that I live in Vermont where black and white cows are everywhere. Maybe it was the intriguing purple cow milk cartons that were around to initially promote the book. Maybe it was the purple cow on Seth Godin's website. Whatever it was, I was sold and got the book.

I would label this book as a "pop" marketing book. This book is to marketing like a mass-media self-help book is to psychology. If you are a business owner or solo entrepreneur don't look to this book to really help you build a market strategy. If you are looking for a nuts and bolts marketing book, this book is not it. David Bangs' "Market Planning Guide" is what you need.

This is a "fun" book: a book to put on your night stand and read a few pages before you go to sleep; a book to supplement what you already know; a book to reinforce your existing strategies. This would be a good book to read on a plane flight or on vacation while sitting around the pool drinking margaritas. It is cute enough to be entertaining while being wrapped in some thought-provoking concepts.

There is nothing "new" in this book. No comparative studies document the purple cow phenomenon. The examples seem only to illustrate the author's ability to come up with clever terms to apply to pre-existing concepts. For example the "sneezer" metaphor just presents as silly and distracting. I can't see anyone seriously discussing how to mobilize the "sneezers" in a business meeting with other executives.

But I could see a CEO asking people on the executive team read it before they go on the next company retreat. It might provide a good entrance to brain-storming before doing the next year's marketing plan.

Overall, this is a good read - a quick read - an easy read. I would recommend it to any individual responsible for marketing a concept or product -- or even trying to get the edge on their competition. The purple cow concept stuck with me weeks after reading the text -- probably because of a great introductory story. I like the purple cow.

Exeptional content and relevance

If you could sum up Purple Cow in three words, what would they be?

Worth every cent and more..... I hope my competitors neglect to read it. It remains relevant and will continue to be so.

Good info, needs more pauses

I think the information was great. Godin clearly knows what he is talking about, I just wish he would take more and longer pauses between sentences and ideas. It makes it hard to tell when the topic has shifted.

Love it! accurate, identifyable and applicaple.

I look forward to implementing these strategies with businesses I work with in my marketing space.

Great marketing book

Very easy to read and understand. I use it in my business plan 101 class

out of date

written before the days of social media would be a lot more useful and a lot more relevant if it was updated.

Good Message

Where does Purple Cow rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

It was good. It had a single, powerful message that is important for business and marketing.

How would you have changed the story to make it more enjoyable?

I love Seth Godin, but he used the word "huge" way too much & he says it like Donald Trump, pronouncing it "yuge" which drove me a little nuts after the 25th time.

What about Seth Godin’s performance did you like?

It's always great to hear the author read the book.

Simple remarkable and purple

Finishing this book I discovered that I'm a big fan of Seth's work.
In this work of a master we can hear again his really amazing and different approach to an audiobook. When he narrates you have the feeling that Seth's actually talking directly to you.
Such a simple thing, but an amazing experience overall. I felt like I was part of a friendly conversation on an amazing topic "Being different"

HUGE!!!! VS Yuge

The book was great, but I struggled focusing on the content because the way Seth pronounces the word huge was severely irritating. I noticed he uses the word more often than any other marketing books I have read (which made it even worse). This may be nit picky but it obstructed my focus from the true value.

best marketing book

this is a classic book, i have to read it again and again until i mastered this book