When it comes to businesses, there is a lot to consider to make them successful and remarkable, considering the competitors you have to handle and how many methods and strategies are available nowadays.
As a result, you will notice many people relying on personal experiences from entrepreneurs and successful individuals who share their thoughts and ideas, and tips to work in your own business.
The question is, do those experiences, books, and shares really work? Only if you find one of them that is worth your time, still updated, and can offer you the answers and tips you’re looking for.
Purple Cow by Seth Goding is a book that can offer you lots of advice and help with what we know about advertising and business. However, we have to admit that it doesn’t work for everyone, and you might want to give it a second thought before diving in.
Or, at least, take the time to know a bit more about it so you can dive into the reading with a set of mind that will help you to understand it a bit better.
Here, we will help you by providing the most crucial information, additional details and leave a short yet necessary introduction of the author himself.
Businessman & Author: Who Is Seth Godin?
This name is quite popular in the USA, and even when some people don’t know much about who he is or the details behind his life and career, they must have read, heard, or seen his name at least once.
We like to go over the authors’ biography because it helps you to have a different perspective when you dive into their books.
Just think about starting reading a business book with examples and success stories that might be from someone who isn’t actually successful or a good example to keep in mind and follow.
This is why our focus on knowing about the authors is even more when it comes to those, and with that said, this is what you need to remember about Godin.
Seth Godin is an American author, marketer, businessman, and speaker born on July 10, 1960, in Mount Vernon, New York. He is considered the ultimate entrepreneur and is the author of 17 books, while he is known for writing a blog every day.
His childhood and early years are full of ideas and yet, difficult times. Fortunately, he was able to get graduated from Williamsville East High School in 1978.
After high school, he studied computer science and philosophy at Tufts University, followed by an MBA in marketing at the Stanford Graduate School of Business.
Seth Godin began working at Spinnaker Software during his MBA and lasted from 1983 to 1986.
After quitting his job, he founded his own company, Seth Godin Productions. He only had $20k saved by the time, dedicated to packaging books from his New York City apartment. He met Mark Hurst during this time and started Yoyodyne.
Yoyodyne was committed to using innovative ideas to reach its target audience and focused on permission marketing and promotion. After many years, he decided that his priority was this company and decided to sell Godin Productions to a few employees.
Flatiron Partners gave four million dollars to Seth Godin’s Yoyodyne in 1996 and received a 20% share in return. This service was quickly popularized and used by many large companies like Microsoft, Volvo, and Sony.
Yahoo! bought Yoyodyne in 1998. The 30-million-dollar sale was completed, and Seth Godin, vice president of Permission Marketing, remained on the job.
Entrepreneur in heart and spirit, he found another challenge in writing books. He published the e-book “Unleashing The Ideavirus” in 2000. Many claims that this book is the most downloaded, and since it is now free online and available in ten languages, you can give it a try as well.
In 2003, Seth Godin published another popular book, Purple Cow, which is our main topic during this article and part of his success in this field.
Seth Godin’s books were so popular that he decided in 2005 to publish ‘All Marketers are Liars.’ Fortune Magazine featured this book, which was also listed among the top 100 most-ordered books on Amazon.
Many other books quickly followed, including ‘The Big Moo’: Stop Trying To Perfect and start Remarkable.’
He also created Squidoo. It is a website that shares information about interesting topics. CNN and Washington Post quickly picked up the website and made it one of the 500 most popular websites worldwide.
What About the Book? – Is It a Purple Cow?
Many believe that with the name, the book isn’t really that relevant. However, doesn’t it catch your attention due to how interesting the title is?
In our case, the book wasn’t part of our reading list since we knew about it but weren’t deeply interested in investing time despite the reviews and reputation.
However, after giving it a quick read and searching a bit about what it is about and how it helps not only future entrepreneurs but also every person, we had to give it a try. It ended up being one of our favorite non-fiction books to this date.
So, if you have your doubts, at least try to read what to expect from it.
Purple Cow’s premise is that the traditional way of building a business is not effective. It involves making safe products and marketing them with as much TV advertising as you can afford.
Instead of using it, we need to create remarkable products that people will talk about. A brown cow is not worth telling anyone about. But a purple cow… That’s amazing and worth mentioning. So, Godin makes sure you see it in this way.
You might be amazed at the beauty of the countryside and the number of farm animals you see.
It’s exciting to see a brown cow, especially if you are new to the area and have never seen one before. After a while, you will start to see more brown cows, and with them everywhere, you will lose interest.
What if you saw a purple cow? That would be amazing! This is something you will tell all your friends and family members.
Seth Godin’s marketing genius will show you how you can build purple cows for your business.
This will allow you to go from the initial customer to the main market. Traditional marketing, which is advertising on radio and TV, no longer works.
People rely on word of mouth to sort through the thousands of advertisements and offers they see every day. So, to make it simple, Godin’s goal is for you to be entirely remarkable and stop being just a brown cow or start by turning into one that can make something remarkable that people will talk about.
Popularity: Was This Purple Cow Remarkable?
You can definitely say it was and continues to be.
The concept and ideas used to provide examples, tips, and teachings throughout the book attracted people that are either tired of reading too many technical terms without understanding a simple concept in the book that is supposed to teach them, or those who want a more creative and unique experience.
In our experience, Purple Cow by Seth Godin is a masterpiece in how he encourages you to build and do everything by being remarkable and turn into a cow that is out of the ordinary.
If you want to create a product or service that is worth marketing, you can just go to this book and come up with the idea, start it, and even have a result, thanks to the examples provided.
The main reason for its popularity isn’t only or more like, it isn’t the purple cow in specific. Instead, people felt too identified with being brown cows and decided to change this once starting reading the book.
Well, we have to include ourselves and say that Godin’s best-seller changed our minds and allowed us to aim for more in terms of who we are and how we do things.
Sales & Reception: A Look Inside the Numbers
Sometimes, numbers don’t mean anything when it comes to the popularity of a book.
In the case of Purple Cow, the reason behind this is that the book has been free for most years since its publication, and the other is that special editions were low cost, and people could download them online.
During the first two years, it sold 150,000 copies over the course of 23 printings.
However, with the version being an e-book, Seth made it free download for many, and people accessed and still can download it without issues.
When it comes to the book’s reception, we have to admit that with an average score of 3.8 out of 5, the critics vary.
Some consider the Purple Cow to be too simple, or the people don’t share Godin’s thought about services, products, and how to stop being a brown cow.
Others loved it because the settings and way to provide the details of being remarkable helped them see success differently and find themselves in the business world and their lives.
Therefore, you will find a variation of reviews, but most of them are positive regarding the book’s narrative and use of sentences and paragraphs.
In our personal opinion, it isn’t the top one on our list of non-fiction and business books. However, it definitely helped us during our road, and we still go back to some elements to motive us and remember what to do for certain situations.
4 Facts About Purple Cow by Seth Godin
- The imagery of the purple cow refers to a product or service that is so remarkable that people start talking about it and buy it without hesitation.
- The book remains relevant due to the advice and number of examples provided that worked for companies in 2003 and those nowadays.
- Although it is centered in businesses, you can learn about life and how to be remarkable in anything else you do.
- The message is simple, but the content is what it promises to be: remarkable.
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