Godin's Words Seen in Everyday Life

This final week of reading Seth Godin’s The Purple Cow has lead me to his overarching message for the entire book, “Explore the limits and become a Purple Cow.” Early on in the book Godin foretells of a slow and bitter end to the modern ways of advertising and marketing. Our lives have become oversaturated with consumer goods and almost all of our basic human needs and wants have been fulfilled, so mass-marketing has become less and less effective. Too many companies are attempting to build products that remain within the herd, battling their other competitors for a short and never-sweet-enough second in the spotlight. Capitalistic Darwinism has been in effect for many decades now, but it is unable to be as harsh and respect-demanding as it once was. Today, most companies worth their salt are parts of massive industrial conglomerates that have billions in cushion-funding available to protect them from any failed venture that would lose in an exhibition of survival-of-the-fittest. This lesson is especially vital for anyone looking to enter an industry already flooded with a herd of competitively identical products backed by massive corporations. Although most products in the herd will discover they same failing fate, they will have the means to recover, and you, as a start-up, will not be able to keep up. You must be different if you want your product to survive.

I was walking through the mall before Christmas, looking to buy any remaining gifts when I came across a large rack of winter gloves in the middle of a department store. I saw a real-life example of Godin’s words, the rack was filled from top to bottom with what must have been over 60 different pairs of seemingly identical black gloves. I wasn’t in the market for gloves and nobody I was shopping for needed a pair, but had I been searching and had I stumbled upon this example of over-saturation, I wouldn’t have much to base my decision off of. These micro-moments of consumer decision, blown up over several occurrences over a long period of time, are what make or break a product. You must be the greatest or the least if your product is to have any chance at success. The cheapest, the fastest, the largest, the smallest, the easiest, etc. If one of these gloves had been made by a company not backed by millions or billions of dollars they would surely be destined for defeat in the Darwinistic concrete jungle of modern industry. Don’t be another black glove on the rack, be the brightest, the boldest, the cheapest, or the softest glove you can be.