You need to be Remarkable
purple-cow
This week I had the chance to read this wonderful book from Seth Godin, The Purple Cow. I came across the book and the author many times before but never actually bothered to read anything…and what a shame, because even tough the book is now already a couple of years old, it is still really actual and I would even say “remarkable“. What Seth Godin actually says is that your business, in today’s world (and even more now then a couple of years before when the book was first written) needs to be “remarkable”. Being the best in an industry was once more then enough to succeed but it is definitely not the case any more. Being very good is ok, but will that make you remarkable, will that make anybody remember you or come back? Unless you are one of those big players that had the chance to build their business empires in the last century using traditional marketing, you will really struggle to survive. Being remarkable does mean you need to risk a lot , but as he explains throughout the book playing risky is actually your safest bet.
New marketing mix
The Purple cow, which is the latest P of the marketing mix (and I remember from my marketing class that there are only 4 Ps) is not an option anymore and became a necessity in our very competitive economy.
I would also like to draw the parallel with the funky success lifestyle. From its own definition, Funky Success is a purple cow. It might employ many techniques of traditional success but all of its force is taken from creating something unique and clearly remarkable. Money as a single ingredient is not enough. A need of so much other ingredients is necessary , such as outside the box thinking, lifestyle design, creativity, world travelling…just to name a few. But once again, with Funky Success, the actual recipe is entirely yours, it is planed, designed and implemented by its author and therefore have so much more chances to be remarkable.
It is also important to notice that a disadvantage can be turned into a purple cow. What I mean by that is being raised on Canadian soil, my name became a purple cow on its own. Yes, at the beginning I spent a lot of tough moment, because of the difficulties of spelling and pronunciation, not to mention how mean the kids can be. But what happened is it almost always created discussion, something to talk about. Therefore most of the people that I’ve met remembered me, just because my name was remarkable. Now hopefully people will remember as somebody remarkable, somebody living funky success.
