Purple Things

I’m always leery of “traveling salesmen” who coin their own terminology and set up consultancies around them (The Chasm Group comes to mind). Seth Godin, for instance, coined the “purple cow”. The premise is if you saw a purple cow, you’d be so amazed that you’d start telling others how remarkable it was (viral, or word-of-mouth, marketing).

If I saw a purple cow, I’d run and call CDC to figure out what those industrial meat breeders pumped the poor animal with that it turned purple.

Joking aside, I think Godin is on to something here.

Purple Gyros

Here’s an example. My stalwart coding compadre (that’s you, Ronnie) recommended a Greek gyro stand in Manhattan. One or two blocks up the street from Microsoft’s office on 6th avenue. There are plenty of gyro stands in The City, but this one has a long line. I’m told the line is there in the morning, during lunch and in the evening. You look across the street and see other vendors idling. Somehow, the rumor about this gyro stand spreads. Word of mouth, of course, because their food is remarkable.

Purple Books

No big secret that the computer book publishing industry is on crutches. Writing computer books isn’t a profitable business unless you’re Jeffrey Richter or Martin Fowler (no, this not a put-down directed at anyone in particular). Yet, if you pick up a copy of one of the Head First books, you’ll know that exact second: they are remarkable.

Head First books went where Dummies and For Complete Idiots series failed. They are funny, beautifully done, insanely detailed and reasonably priced. I don’t know how many hours of layout design and copy writing goes into each book, but it’s remarkable they managed to keep the prices low enough. For extra brownie points remember to check out the colophon. Even the colophon is funny.

This is in stark contrast to publishers who use Microsoft Word for page layout (figuratively speaking). I feel for those folks who slave and write books only to have their effort wasted by re-incarnated Wrox, for example. I don’t understand the purpose of cloning books with bland, ugly design (Prentice Hall is now on my list of offenders right next to Wrox, and with O’Reilly asking for it).

P.S. Special props go to Bob Stein at VisiBone for some very “purple” things and to the makers of Company of Heroes (the game is ill!).

I'm leery of “traveling salesmen” who coin their own terminology too, because often, I find they've done nothing but make up an amusing name for something that's very obvious.

If I saw a purple cow, I'd talk about it, because it's unusual. Yes. Indeed. If I saw a car with square wheels, I'd do the same thing, but this wouldn't result in people buying the car, so the car manufacturers didn't get much out of Seth Godin's Purple Cow Law here.

So, I guess to sell a product, its unusual feature has to be something that people want, i.e. it has to be unusually good, i.e. it has to be better than similar products usually are. So, applied to selling stuff, the law seems to be "Make stuff that's better than other, similar stuff."

Wow. Never woulda thought of that :)