A Purple Cow (with stripes) for ECHO Community Foundation

After reading the executive summary of Purple Cow by Seth Godin and overview of the CityGrid Media Online Consumer Behavior Study, here are some of the principles that I think ECHO Community Foundation should be considering.

How do I create a Purple Cow? Seth Godin argues why companies need a purple cow and the benefits of being a purple cow and I now know that I want purple cow with stripes. But how do we turn ECHO Community Foundation into a Purple Cow? Seth tells us to go for the edges, “the process a company uses to discover the fringes makes a product remarkable.” How do we make a scholarship remarkable? Is it what we offer as the prize? Is it the application process? Is it the manner in which we raise money? How can we become a Purple Cow?

It is hard to be more boring than salt, but somehow salt has become a purple cow. Seth talks about the popularity of handmade sea salt but additionally flavored salt (like bacon salt) has become a new rage. Seth offers some suggestions on how to change your thinking to “purple cow thinking.” Here are the ways Seth suggests to appeal to a specific segment that ECHO might benefit from following. Think small – rather than appealing to all high school seniors, is there a niche where we can be remarkable. Copy from another industry, not yours – innovate on customer experience like Nordstrom or Google; how can we make donors feel like they are truly apart of ECHO?

Show our true colors. A Harris Interactive study shows that almost half of adults under 35 are more influenced to try an establishment from the owner than a friend. For ECHO this means that we need to start communicating, interacting and getting our ‘voice’ out there in order to be influential. This study shows that almost half of our target demographic will listen, now we just need to start talking.