Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable

Here’s a great Google story I heard from Mark Hurst: It turns out that the folks at Google are obsessed with the email they get criticizing the service. They take it very seriously. One person writes in every once in a while, and he never signs his name. According to Marissa Meyer at Google, “Every time he writes, the e-mail contains only a two-dig

targeting a thriving niche in a slow-moving industry can work – if you’re prepared to invest what it takes to be remarkable.

leader is the leader because he did something remarkable. And that remarkable thing is now taken – it’s no longer remarkable when you do it.

The path to lifetime job security is to be remarkable.

None of these companies are using the old-fashioned advertising-based techniques to win. To their entrenched (but nervous) competitors, these companies appear to be cheating because they’re not playing by the rules. Why aren’t you cheating?

it’s cheaper to keep an old customer than it is to get a new one – and articulated the entire field of customer relationship management. They showed that there are only four kinds of people (prospects, customers, loyal customers, and former customers)

on the UI team, so as not to introduce too many links. It’s like a scale that tells you that you’ve gained two pounds.” (Yahoo! has more than five hundred words on their home page now.)

to introduce something new, it’s your best shot.

Remarkable isn’t always about changing the biggest machine in your factory. It can be the way you answer the phone, launch a new brand, or price a revision to your software. Getting in the habit of doing the “unsafe” thing every time you have the opportunity is the best way to learn to project – you get practice at seeing what’s working and what’s