Shawn cited the book “The Purple Cow” by Seth Godin as a source of 21st Century marketing information and speculated that a national TV campaign would be doomed to failure. I believe he was 100% right with that observation.
The famous “Go RVing” campaign continues to serve that industry today. But that brand was made during the hey-day of television advertising, a media that is slipping in influence almost as fast as newspaper advertising.
Even Mr. Godin’s book is now behind the curve in several ways, mostly doe the rapid pace of change in how people receive information. But the underlying premise of the book – to create an exceptional business model based on a superior idea – is as valid as ever.
And the businesses he cites as examples, including Apple, JetBlue, Dutch Boy, etc. continue to dominate innovation in their industries, joined by relative newcomers, such as Facebook.
In this week’s Economist, an article on the 100th birthday of IBM talks about how Big Blue’s longevity (despite a few “near death” experiences) owes much more to it’s philosophy of “the big idea” rather than “the product.” The article further discusses likely candidates in the technology quarter to eventually celebrate 100th anniversaries, such as Apple, Facebook, etc. because they adhere to the same basic philosophy.
The idea is to take an existing idea or product, wrap it in a simple and elegant package with “Wow!” features and sell it at a premium price. There are several home manufacturers doing this right now.
But this alone doesn’t generate the kind of uniqueness that Seth Godin talks about as being necessary for success in today’s world.
For instance, there are now about a million foreclosed homes on the market and more are coming. These homes are selling for considerably less than the average market price which in turn has retreated by a third in the past few years.
Much of the “pent-up demand” for homes is likely to be absorbed by these homes over the next several years.
So how does a home manufacturer convince the public that buying a brand new, Energy Star-rated, manufactured home is a better idea than buying one of these foreclosures with all of their “deferred maintenance” issues?
What is the “Wow!” factor that will set one manufacturer on the road to dominance in the industry?
What is the “purple cow” that will create the demand for the product and what will replace that “purple cow” when it turns brown and fades into the pack of ineffective features and techniques that we all know so well?
The manufacturer who solves these has a bright future.
The same holds for communities and retail operations. What makes YOUR service or community unique or special? Is it so special that it makes your business stand head and shoulders above your competition? Is it engrained in the DNA of your business or just tacked on?
Think about it. You may have to begin again from scratch, sitting down and pretending that today is the first day you’ve been in business. What do you do, starting today to build your business knowing that most of yesterday’s marketing methods no longer work very well?
Some of you will find the answers and will be around for years to come. Some of you won’t. It’s up to you.