The last 2 days have been pretty horrible for me as I was bedridden. I could not work on anything except some slides in a pitch which  I had to send to a client. However  I managed to reread a wonderful book by Seth Godin - " Purple Cow" . There are zillions of examples in the book which suggest that companies which stay remarkable in their offerings are the only ones that are going to survive. Seth’s ability to bring home the point of Purple Cow from a diverse variety of stories is mind boggling. Page 136 and 137 of the book are worth a million dollars to any company, be it a startup, a growing company or a mature company. Here are the main questions that are posed which will make any company situp and strive to be remarkable:

  • Is your product more boring than salt ? Unlikely. So, come up with a list of ten ways to change the product to make it appeal to a sliver of your audience.
  • Think Small. One vestige of the TV industrial complex is a need to think mass. If it doesn’t appeal to everyone, the thinking goes, its not worth it. No longer. Think of the smallest conceivable market, and describe a product that overwhelms it with its remarkability. Go from there.
  • Outsource. If the factory is giving you a hard time about jazzing up the product, go elsewhere. There are plenty of job shops that would be delighted to take on your product. After it works, the factory will probably be happy to take the product back
  • Build and Use a permission asset. Once you have the ability to talk directly to your most loyal customers, it gets much easier to develop and sell amazing things. With out the filters of advertising, wholesalers and retailers , you can create products that are far more remarkable
  • Copy, not from your industry, but from any other industry. Find an industry more dull than yours, discover who’s remarkable and do what they did
  • Go one more, or two more . Identify a competitor who’s generally regarded as at the edges and outdo them. Whatever they are known for, do that thing even more. Even better and even safer, do the opposite of what they are doing
  • Find things that are “just not done” in your industry, and do them. Jet Blue almost instituted a dress code for passengers.They are still playing with the idea of giving a free airline ticket to the best dressed person on the plane. A plastic surgeon can offer gift certificates. A book publisher could put book on sale. Stew Leonard’s took the strawberries out of the little green plastic cages and let the customers pick their own - and sales doubled
  • Ask, “Why not”? Almost everything you don’t do has no good reason for it. Almost everything you don’t do is the result of fear or inertial or a historical lack of someone asking “Why not?”