Ernie's Games & The Purple Cow

I really liked the article of the purple cow, it encapsulates much of what we have been learning throughout the class. The big trigger, as we have been talking about, is focusing not on traditional marketing channels and "spin" - rather, focus on making a purple cow, a truly remarkable product.

1. "A unique challenge" My business that I'm choosing is my own, and for this purpose the purple cow is a real unique challenge. We are a retail store, so we are not creating nor selling one or a few specific products that we can simply focus on to make extraordinary. As a retail store our product is everything beyond the products we sell as a value add on for our customers. It is our physical location and experience inside our store. It is our outreach and word of mouth marketing. It is the events and tournaments that we run for our customers. And of course, it is the service that we give to our customers. For me I truly believe the purple cow are all these elements, these elements we have to push hard on to excel at, to give our customers a wow factor, to give them that feeling of extraordinary that they need to tell their friends about us, including the feeling that they cant wait to come do business with us again.

2. "The Seezers" It is no secret that each business has those precious few who are really the "fan boys" - those who love the product/experience and also who have great knowledge and desire to spread the word. Each business has to take advantage of these individuals and mine is no different. With the development of my new web site and push towords social media, I really believe I have to find a way to incorporate these individuals in this effort. It is not enough to tell them I have a new site, I really need to find a way for them to get actively involved. Maybe I give a few individuals the login info for my ernies games twitter account and have them all be a part of the posting, so that if you are following my twitter, you are following 4 of my most prominent, outspoken, entrenched and knowledgeable customers, all posting unique content. Maybe I create a section for each game night under facebook section and have the leaders post a few pictures each night into their own category. I will be brainstorming more ideas on how I may do this to include in my final report.

3. "Proactive Press" The press report says lot about just how important ours peers are in telling us about new products, as we have been learning. Facebook certainly is at the heart of the matter, and I think I need to take this into account, I should be channeling positive reviews right into facebook, not just let them sit one whatever site they may pop up on. Being proactive in this manner is going to help me generate positive momentum moving forward, good press is always better than no press! :)