Book of the Week: Purple Cow

21 Jul 2013

Purple Cow is for the marketing people who were left out of the startup world. The business people read Crossing the Chasm. The Innovator’s Dilemma was a good read for the engineers. These books are all about taking the first step toward creating a remarkable, innovative company. Traditionally hiring marketing and sales people come later. As a founder, you need to go out and do the marketing and sales in the beginning to learn about your customer. Those who hire people to do those roles at the onset are doomed to failure. I would read Crossing the Chasm first.

We’ve created a world where most products are invisible - Seth Godin

The old way of marketing is dead. Marketing was linked to newspapers and television, now those mediums are dead. People don’t spend their free time viewing newspapers and television. When they are on those mediums they are there to consume a very specific piece. Risks and Boring Guys

The problem with people who would avoid a remarkable career is that they never end up as the leader. They decide to work for a big company, intentionally functioning as an anonymous drone, staying way back to avoid risk and criticism. - Seth Godin

The problem is that as companies get big, they tend to get risk-adverse. People don’t like to lose what they already have, so they cling on to it. This makes them take boring choices. If you avoid taking risks, somebody else is going to take that risk and swim in the ocean while you are still content wadding in the kiddie pool. To mitigate risks, one has to diversify by trying many different approaches. Managing risks is different than betting the farm on black. People are penalized for taking risks. Women don’t like boring guys who have stable jobs at big companies with nothing to talk about. There is nothing remarkable about it, nothing that catches your interest. There is nothing to tell your friends about it. What’s exciting is the bad boy who they can’t wait to tell their friends about. Remarkable products spread by themselves. That doesn’t mean you just sit back and let the product go viral. Products need to be designed to go viral at inception. There needs to be synergy of marketing, business and engineering. Boring shit is created by committees and compromise. Measuring

Measurement means admitting what’s broken so you can fix it. - Seth Godin

This is a hard thing. As a founder, you need to be able to ask the hard questions and get answers to them. You may not like the answer and probably have a gut feeling it may be ugly. The answer may even say your assumptions are wrong. It is better to admit something is broken and then fix it than ignoring it until it destroys your company. On Marketing

Marketing departments often feel a need to justify their existence - Seth Godin

It is important to not view marketing as an expense, but as an asset. You want marketing to do the right thing. Sometimes you can shoot yourself in the foot trying to do something just to look busy. This goes back to measuring and making sure you are marketing effectively. There’s a common marketing cliche, “Half my advertising works, I just don’t know which half.” You want your marketing people to know which half works. There is a rumor on the internet. If you blog about Seth Godin, he will link to you. Purchase Purple Cow from Amazon.com or check it out from your local library.