Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable

Rating:
Summary: Being Remarkable
Review: Seth Godin is simply remarkable with his book, "Purple Cow". Godin delivers every marketers worst dream, a day when traditional T.V. advertising no longer works. Unfortunately for marketers, that day is today. Godin shows that there is still a way to get your product out there and generate a large profit. Through the use of purple cows businesses are able to achieve amazing levels of success without spending a dime on T.V. advertising. Purple cows are remarkable products and Seth Godin demonstrates exactly how to create one. If you are at all interested in creating a new product or saving market share of an old one, read this book.

Rating:
Summary: It's time for a green cow
Review: If you're feeling stuck in your marketing program, read this book. While it's short on "how-to's", it tops the charts in inspiration. The author provides ample evidence that you won't get noticed unless you stand out, and with so many products and services on the market today, you won't get business if you don't stand out. Purple cows stand out. The problem is that once everyone gets their hands on a purple cow, we get bored with purple cows.

Use this book as a reminder to keep innovating. Once you think you've got it down to a science, start your next process of reinvention. The book is an easy read - one or two sittings should do it. But, once you're done, keep it around. I keep it on my shelf as a reminder, not a reference book. If you need to shake things up in your marketing efforts, this book is a great place to begin.

[e-mail]

Rating:
Summary: A must have
Review: This is a must have for anyone that wants a company, their company, and/or their clients' company to succeed.

Seth Godin uses great real world examples to illustrate his points that are both remarkable and memorable.

It's a quick read and I have given it as gifts to friends and collegues.

Rating:
Summary: good but not great
Review: Caveat Emptor. Beware of gurus for they are first and foremost gurus at peddling their ware. Godin figured out a formula to sell plenty of books. Good for him. The reality is this is not a bad book. It's good. It's fun to read. But it's no miracle cure. The purple cow? Please. Milka chocolates has been using it for decades. And what he fails to dig is that once the "purple cow" is done and everyone does it, you'll again have a thousends of cows, purple, yellow, red, teal and so on. Thus you're back in the same cluttered marketplace; granted a bit more colorful. The miracle answer: brands must hold a perception in the mind of the marketplace. And gimmicks like purple cows, sock puppets et. al. are and will always be just that - gimmicks.

Rating:
Summary: Be prepared to wipe "blue egg" off your face ....
Review: This book is not for anyone who has already read just a few of the popular marketing books out there. There is nothing ground breaking here except the term ¡°Purple Cow¡± itself which I guess the author is dying to have become part of marketing vernacular judging by the number of times this term comes up per page. It gets a bit tiresome to be subjected to this attempt to get this term ingrained into general marketing consciousness. At the end of the day, if your product is not remarkable it will be hard to stand apart from the herd of normal cows in the field. The product markets itself so try to find the niche and then meet the demand for the new remarkable product.

At the end of the day, the only purpose this book served was as a light-weight (physically and figuratively) read to pass the time on the plane. Having read a few marketing books I was ¡°almost¡± upset that I purchased this for such a high price because the benefits barely outweighed the cost (barely). The author does not have a remarkable product here but utilizes his marketing savvy (the book is a nice size and unique visual package) to get people like me to notice it and buy it. Like me, I fear that many of you who are in the marketing field will feel upset having to wipe the ¡°blue egg¡± off your face after reading this book. In my opinion, you will not learn anything new here.

If I could make a suggestion, please take a look at Scott Bedbury's¡°A New Brand World¡±. This book is one I've read recently, very readable and a true "keeper" on my bookshelf at work that I often refer to. It includes in-depth real world examples from a former marketer at Starbucks and Nike as opposed to the shotgun cursory approach to real world examples ("case studies"? Come on!) found in Purple Cow.


Rating:
Summary: A new perspective
Review: Purple Cow-Transform your Buisness by Being Remarkable is indeed a new approach to all those involved in the marketing field.It introduces a totally new outlook which one is completely unaware of.It's a must read for all those who intend to not only survive in the market but compete.It gives concrete ideas which can be very helpful.

Rating:
Summary: Read 'The Art of Innovation' instead
Review: While the premises of this book are important - 'safe is death' and that we must put intelligent passionate thought into design - the author is way too repetitive and gives himself an awful lot of credit for ideas he has simply abstracted out from design heavy companies (think apple, ideo, ikea etc). I value the hammering home of the ideas but after hearing them for the fourth time I grew tired of the repitition and the continual "look how smart I am for getting these ideas on paper" attitude of the author. Read Art of Innovation by Tom Kelley instead. It provides ideas from a company that successfully uses them and it is a much more interesting read.