The Purple Cow Paradox: Why Being Remarkable Isn’t Enough Anymore. This is an important issue that will change your mind on marketing
Post by Peter Hanley bizbitspro.com
In a world where everyone is trying to be remarkable, remarkable has become unremarkable.
Twenty years ago, Seth Godin revolutionized marketing thinking with a simple metaphor: if you were driving through the countryside and saw a purple cow, you’d stop and stare. You’d tell everyone about it. That purple cow would be remarkable—literally worthy of remark.
The Purple Cow concept became gospel for marketers: stand out, be different, get noticed. For years, it worked brilliantly. Brands built empires on being weird, unexpected, and attention-grabbing. But something fundamental has shifted in the attention economy, and the original Purple Cow framework is now incomplete—and sometimes counterproductive.
Today’s marketplace isn’t a peaceful countryside with the occasional purple cow. It’s a circus where every cow is purple, some are purple with polka dots, others are floating purple cows, and a few are purple cows that shoot lasers. When everyone is remarkable, no one is remarkable. We’ve reached what we might call the Purple Cow Paradox: the very success of the concept has made it obsolete.
The Attention Economy Has Evolved (And Not in a Good Way)
Godin’s original insight emerged in an era of relative information scarcity. People consumed a handful of TV channels, read local newspapers, and encountered maybe dozens of advertising messages per day. In that environment, being different was genuinely rare and valuable.
Today, the average person encounters over 10,000 brand messages daily. Social media feeds scroll endlessly with brands desperately performing increasingly outrageous acts to capture fleeting attention. TikTok has trained entire generations to expect entertainment every 15 seconds. We’re not just saturated with information—we’re drowning in performative differentiation.
The result? Attention fatigue. Consumers have developed sophisticated filtering mechanisms to ignore anything that feels like it’s trying too hard to be noticed. The more remarkably a brand tries to behave, the more likely it is to be dismissed as another attention-seeking performance.
This creates the paradox: the strategies that made brands remarkable in 2003 now make them invisible in 2025.
The New Currency: Valuable Differentiation
The evolution beyond the Purple Cow isn’t about abandoning differentiation—it’s about upgrading from attention-based differentiation to value-based differentiation. The question has shifted from “How can we be remarkable?” to “How can we be remarkably useful?”
This isn’t semantic nitpicking. It represents a fundamental change in how brands must approach market positioning. In an attention-saturated environment, the scarcest resource isn’t attention—it’s trust, time, and meaningful value. Consumers will give their attention to brands that consistently deliver something they genuinely need, not just something different.
The Value-First Framework
Instead of starting with “How can we be different?” successful modern brands start with:
- What problem can we solve better than anyone else?
- What experience can we deliver that competitors can’t or won’t?
- What meaningful value can we create that happens to be differentiated?
The differentiation becomes a byproduct of value creation, not the primary goal. This subtle shift changes everything about how brands develop products, communicate, and build relationships with customers.
Case Studies: Purple Cows vs. Valuable Differentiators
The Purple Cow Trap: Dollar Shave Club vs. Harry’s
Dollar Shave Club launched with a hilariously irreverent video that went viral instantly. It was a perfect purple cow—remarkable, shareable, attention-grabbing. The brand built its entire identity around being the anti-Gillette: irreverent, cheap, and disruptive.
But here’s what happened: once the novelty wore off, customers realized they were just buying slightly cheaper razors with edgy marketing. The remarkable positioning didn’t translate to remarkable value. When Amazon acquired them, much of the edgy differentiation was quietly abandoned.
Compare this to Harry’s, which launched around the same time with a more subtle approach. Instead of focusing on being remarkable, Harry’s focused on being remarkably well-designed. They invested in beautiful packaging, high-quality products, and thoughtful customer experience. Their differentiation wasn’t performative—it was experiential.
Harry’s built sustainable value that customers actually cared about beyond the initial novelty. Their approach was less viral but more valuable, leading to stronger customer retention and eventually a $1.37 billion acquisition offer.
The Netflix Evolution: From Purple Cow to Value Engine
Netflix’s original purple cow was DVD-by-mail—remarkable because it eliminated late fees and trip to Blockbuster. But they didn’t stop at being remarkable. They continuously evolved their value proposition: streaming, original content, personalized recommendations, global expansion.
Each evolution maintained differentiation while deepening value. They didn’t just want to be the remarkable alternative to Blockbuster—they wanted to be indispensable to how people consume entertainment. Today, their differentiation comes from their unique content and recommendation algorithms, not from being quirky or attention-grabbing.
Apple: The Master of Valuable Differentiation
Apple has never positioned itself as the purple cow. They’ve positioned themselves as the most valuable cow—the one that delivers the most meaningful experience. Their differentiation isn’t performative; it’s functional, emotional, and experiential.
The iPhone wasn’t remarkable because it was weird or attention-grabbing. It was remarkable because it fundamentally changed what people could do with a phone. The differentiation served value, not the other way around.
The Four Pillars of Valuable Differentiation
1. Functional Superiority
Your product or service must actually be better at solving a specific problem. This isn’t about having more features—it’s about delivering superior outcomes for customers.
Example: Zoom didn’t succeed because it was remarkably different from other video conferencing tools. It succeeded because it worked reliably when others didn’t, especially under high demand.
2. Experiential Design
The entire customer journey should feel noticeably better than alternatives. This includes everything from initial discovery to post-purchase support.
Example: Airbnb didn’t just create a platform for home rentals. They designed an entire experience around “belonging anywhere,” from beautiful photography standards to host community building.
3. Emotional Resonance
Your brand should connect with customers’ identity, values, or aspirations in a way that feels authentic and meaningful.
Example: Patagonia’s environmental activism isn’t a purple cow marketing stunt—it’s a core value that attracts customers who share those values and influences product development decisions.
4. Systemic Innovation
Instead of adding remarkable features to existing solutions, create entirely new systems that deliver value in previously impossible ways.
Example: Tesla didn’t just make electric cars—they built an integrated system of sustainable transport, energy, and infrastructure that traditional car companies couldn’t replicate.
The Death of Purple Cow Marketing Tactics
Several once-effective purple cow tactics have not only stopped working but actively harm brand perception:
Shock Value Marketing
Brands trying to go viral through controversial or outrageous content now face immediate backlash and cancellation risks. Attention gained through shock rarely translates to sustainable business value.
Quirky Brand Personalities
The “we’re not like other brands” positioning has become so common that it’s now the norm. Customers can spot performative quirkiness instantly and find it inauthentic.
Publicity Stunts
Grand gestures designed purely for media coverage often backfire because consumers recognize them as attention-seeking rather than value-creating activities.
Contrarian Positioning
Simply being the opposite of the market leader is no longer sufficient. Customers want to know what you’re for, not just what you’re against.
The New Rules of Remarkable
Rule 1: Earn Attention Through Value
Instead of demanding attention through novelty, earn attention by consistently solving problems better than anyone else. Attention becomes a byproduct of value delivery.
Rule 2: Be Remarkable to Your Customers, Not to Everyone
Focus on being extraordinary for your specific audience rather than trying to impress the general public. Deep customer satisfaction trumps broad awareness.
Rule 3: Differentiate on Dimensions That Matter
Stand out in ways that directly impact customer outcomes, not just ways that are noticeable. Functional differentiation beats cosmetic differentiation.
Rule 4: Build Systematic Advantages
Create differentiation that compounds over time and becomes harder for competitors to copy. Network effects, data advantages, and ecosystem benefits are more sustainable than clever positioning.
Rule 5: Let Your Work Do the Talking
Instead of talking about how different you are, let customers experience the difference. Word-of-mouth from satisfied customers is more powerful than any purple cow marketing campaign.
Implementing Valuable Differentiation: A Strategic Framework
Step 1: Value Audit
Before thinking about differentiation, audit the actual value you deliver to customers. What problems do you solve? Then what outcomes do you enable? What experiences do you improve?
Map these against customer priorities. Are you differentiated on dimensions that customers actually care about, or just dimensions that make you feel unique?
Step 2: Competitor Value Analysis
Analyze not just what competitors offer, but how customers experience value from those offerings. Look for gaps between what competitors promise and what they deliver.
The best opportunities often lie in delivering consistently on promises that competitors make but fail to keep.
Step 3: Systematic Value Creation
Identify ways to create value that naturally lead to differentiation rather than the reverse. What capabilities could you build that would simultaneously serve customers better and be difficult for competitors to replicate?
Step 4: Experience Design
Map the entire customer journey and identify moments where you can deliver notably superior experiences. Often, the biggest differentiation opportunities lie in traditionally overlooked touchpoints.
Step 5: Value Communication
Develop messaging that leads with value delivery and lets differentiation emerge naturally. Instead of “We’re different because…” try “We help you achieve… in ways that…”
The Measurement Problem: Beyond Purple Cow Metrics
Traditional purple cow metrics focus on attention: impressions, reach, virality, brand awareness. Valuable differentiation requires different metrics:
Value Delivery Metrics:
- Customer success rates
- Problem resolution times
- Outcome improvement measurements
- Customer effort scores
Sustainable Differentiation Metrics:
- Customer retention rates
- Net Promoter Scores
- Customer lifetime value
- Repeat purchase rates
Market Position Metrics:
- Share of customer wallet
- Price premium sustainability
- Competitive win rates
- Customer acquisition costs
These metrics tell you whether your differentiation is actually valuable to customers, not just noticeable to the market.
Common Purple Cow 2.0 Mistakes
Mistake 1: Adding Value as an Afterthought
Some brands try to add value to existing purple cow strategies rather than rebuilding from value up. This creates confused positioning and diluted messages.
Mistake 2: Confusing Features with Value
Having more features or capabilities doesn’t automatically create value. Value comes from better outcomes, not better specifications.
Mistake 3: Ignoring the Sustainability Question
Short-term valuable differentiation is just as problematic as short-term attention-grabbing. True valuable differentiation must be defensible over time.
Mistake 4: Value Without Differentiation
Some brands focus so much on delivering value that they forget to differentiate at all, becoming commoditized despite their value delivery.
The Future of Remarkable: Integration Over Attention
The brands that will thrive in the post-Purple Cow era are those that integrate value creation with natural differentiation. They don’t try to be remarkable—they become remarkable through consistently delivering disproportionate value.
This requires a fundamental shift in how marketing and product development work together. Instead of marketing figuring out how to make ordinary products seem remarkable, companies must build remarkable value into their core offerings and let marketing communicate that value effectively.
The purple cow was never really about the cow being purple—it was about the cow being worth talking about. In today’s market, the only thing worth talking about is genuine, sustained value creation.
The new purple cow isn’t purple at all. It’s the cow that gives the best milk, most consistently, with the least hassle. And that cow will always be remarkable, no matter how crowded the field becomes.
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