bought in.
Then just about every company forgot the lesson of the Cow. Instead of taking the money and using it to create a series of innovations that could lead to the next Cow (at a higher, bigger level), these companies took profits. The companies streamlined and mechanized and milked their Cow. Alas, very few markets are stable enough and fast—or long growing enough to allow a public company to thrive for very long. Their days of 20 percent annual growth are probably gone forever.
The Opposite of “Remarkable”
is “very good.”
Ideas that are remarkable are much more likely to spread than ideas that aren’t. Yet so few brave people make remarkable stuff. Why? I think it’s because they think that the opposite of “remarkable” is “bad” or “mediocre” or “poorly done.” Thus, if they make something very good, they confuse it with being virus-worthy. Yet this is not a discussion about quality at all.
If you travel on an airline and they get you there safely, you don’t tell anyone. That’s what’s supposed to happen. What makes it remarkable is if it’s horrible beyond belief or if the service is so unexpected (they were an hour early! they comped my ticket because I was cute! they served flaming crêpes suzette in first class!) that you need to share it.
Factories set quality requirements and try to meet them. That’s boring. Very good is an everyday occurrence and hardly worth mentioning.
Are you making very good stuff? How fast can you stop?
The Pearl in the Bottle
Remember Prell? All of us boomers certainly can envision the clear bottle of shampoo filled with green liquid ... and the pearl slowly drifting downward. This image was omnipresent in the advertising for Prell.
The commercial never made it clear precisely what a pearl had to do with shampoo or why we wanted the pearl to move slowly. What is beyond dispute is that TV commercials made this rather ordinary shampoo a significant success.
Where do you find a Purple Cow in the cosmetics business? After all, almost all shampoos are the same. More often than not, it’s an extraneous exotic ingredient or fancy packaging that people notice, not the effectiveness of the potion.
Compare the inexorable decline of Prell (the TV commercials stopped working) with the gradual ascent of Dr. Bronner’s.
Dr. Bronner’s does no advertising at all, yet their product continues to grow in sales and market share. If it’s not because of a better product, then why? Because of the incredible packaging. The packaging is very much part of the experience of using the product.
Most people discover this extraordinary product at a friend’s house. Brushing your teeth in the guest bathroom, with nothing much better to do than snoop, you inevitably start reading the thousands of words inscribed all around the bottle. “Balanced food for mind-body-spirit is our medicine.”
Not only is it unique, but the uniqueness is aimed at a specific audience, one in which the early adopters are more than happy to proselytize to their friends.
Dr. Bronner’s is a truly remarkable shampoo as shampoos go. It’s worth noticing, worth talking about, and for many people, worth buying. In a world without (effective) ads, it has an unfair advantage against anything the big guys can develop.
Buy a bottle of Dr. Bronner’s. Now, working with your factory and your designers, Bronnify a variation of one of your products.
The Parody Paradox
J. Peterman is back. His oblong white catalog—filled with lengthy descriptions of Mata Hari, duster coats from cowboys on the prairie, and irreplaceable white silk scarves—was solidly entrenched in the zeitgeist a decade ago. The writing was so over the top that a fictional J. Peterman even became a character on Seinfeld.
A tiny ad in The New Yorker launched this duster coat and the idiosyncratic voice behind the J. Peterman catalog. It was so remarkablethat it spread, and as it spread, it became
Then just about every company forgot the lesson of the Cow. Instead of taking the money and using it to create a series of innovations that could lead to the next Cow (at a higher, bigger level), these companies took profits. The companies streamlined and mechanized and milked their Cow. Alas, very few markets are stable enough and fast—or long growing enough to allow a public company to thrive for very long. Their days of 20 percent annual growth are probably gone forever.
The Opposite of “Remarkable”
is “very good.”
Ideas that are remarkable are much more likely to spread than ideas that aren’t. Yet so few brave people make remarkable stuff. Why? I think it’s because they think that the opposite of “remarkable” is “bad” or “mediocre” or “poorly done.” Thus, if they make something very good, they confuse it with being virus-worthy. Yet this is not a discussion about quality at all.
If you travel on an airline and they get you there safely, you don’t tell anyone. That’s what’s supposed to happen. What makes it remarkable is if it’s horrible beyond belief or if the service is so unexpected (they were an hour early! they comped my ticket because I was cute! they served flaming crêpes suzette in first class!) that you need to share it.
Factories set quality requirements and try to meet them. That’s boring. Very good is an everyday occurrence and hardly worth mentioning.
Are you making very good stuff? How fast can you stop?
The Pearl in the Bottle
Remember Prell? All of us boomers certainly can envision the clear bottle of shampoo filled with green liquid ... and the pearl slowly drifting downward. This image was omnipresent in the advertising for Prell.
The commercial never made it clear precisely what a pearl had to do with shampoo or why we wanted the pearl to move slowly. What is beyond dispute is that TV commercials made this rather ordinary shampoo a significant success.
Where do you find a Purple Cow in the cosmetics business? After all, almost all shampoos are the same. More often than not, it’s an extraneous exotic ingredient or fancy packaging that people notice, not the effectiveness of the potion.
Compare the inexorable decline of Prell (the TV commercials stopped working) with the gradual ascent of Dr. Bronner’s.
Dr. Bronner’s does no advertising at all, yet their product continues to grow in sales and market share. If it’s not because of a better product, then why? Because of the incredible packaging. The packaging is very much part of the experience of using the product.
Most people discover this extraordinary product at a friend’s house. Brushing your teeth in the guest bathroom, with nothing much better to do than snoop, you inevitably start reading the thousands of words inscribed all around the bottle. “Balanced food for mind-body-spirit is our medicine.”
Not only is it unique, but the uniqueness is aimed at a specific audience, one in which the early adopters are more than happy to proselytize to their friends.
Dr. Bronner’s is a truly remarkable shampoo as shampoos go. It’s worth noticing, worth talking about, and for many people, worth buying. In a world without (effective) ads, it has an unfair advantage against anything the big guys can develop.
Buy a bottle of Dr. Bronner’s. Now, working with your factory and your designers, Bronnify a variation of one of your products.
The Parody Paradox
J. Peterman is back. His oblong white catalog—filled with lengthy descriptions of Mata Hari, duster coats from cowboys on the prairie, and irreplaceable white silk scarves—was solidly entrenched in the zeitgeist a decade ago. The writing was so over the top that a fictional J. Peterman even became a character on Seinfeld.
A tiny ad in The New Yorker launched this duster coat and the idiosyncratic voice behind the J. Peterman catalog. It was so remarkablethat it spread, and as it spread, it became
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