Purple Cows 🐄 - Ben's 1x1x1 - October 18, 2024 🚀
For those of you that are new here, every week I send what I call a 1x1x1.
One thought from my week. One interesting find/tool from my week. One image from my life.
Let’s dive in 👇
Thought from the week
Purple cows are one of the greatest business/marketing strategies ever.
Sometimes it’s by accident. Sometimes it’s 100% intentional.
So what is a purple cow?
Imagine you’re driving through farmland, passing field after field of regular cows.
They’re fine. Brown, white, maybe some black spots.
But here’s the thing — after a few miles, you stop noticing them.
Now, imagine one of those cows is bright purple.
You slam the brakes, pull over, take a picture, and text your friends like, ‘WTF, check this out!’
That’s what Seth Godin was trying point out in his book Purple Cow: in a crowded world, doing the same thing as everyone else makes you invisible.
The key to standing out isn’t to just be better — it’s to be remarkable.
A ‘purple cow’ business is about creating something so fresh, so unexpected, that people can’t help but talk about it.
Whether it’s a weird product, killer design, or insane customer service, if you’re not standing out, you’re getting forgotten.
So today I thought I would share 9 of my favorite purple cows.
Some of these may not seem like purple cows now, but at the time of their release, they were head turners.
I hope they give you some inspiration 👇
Purple Cow 1 - Liquid Death
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Purple Cow 2 - The Boring Company
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Purple Cow 3 - Zappos
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Purple Cow 4 - Salt & Straw
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Purple Cow 5 - Slack
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Purple Cow 6 - Rad Power Bikes
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Purple Cow 7 - SAXX
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Purple Cow 8 - ChatGPT
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Purple Cow 9 - I mean cmon… How does this not get your attention?!
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Be remarkable.
Interesting find/tool of the week
AI tools like Machined.ai are blowing my mind. We’re not quite at the ‘AI-writes-like-a-human’ level yet, but damn—watching the progress unfold in real-time is wild. It’s like seeing a clunky robot toddler learning to sprint. Not perfect, but you know it’s coming.
Image from my life
The great grandmas came to visit!