I recently started reading Purple Cow by Seth Godin for the second time. There’s so much good info in there, I felt I needed a refresher course, and I’m glad I did because the synapses are popping with thoughts and ideas.

If you’ve never read Purple Cow, and you’re a business owner, marketing professional, designer, or have any influence over products and services with your company, this is a MUST READ. A really short synopsis would be to say that the old methods of marketing and advertising don’t work nearly as well as they used to. To really make an impact, you need a more remarkable product focused at a more direct niche. Pleasing the masses is boring. Satisfying an urgent need in an area that had no service is the hot ticket. It’s time to get with the program.

At lunch, I was craving a cheeseburger and assessing all the burger joints in relative proximity to my office. There’s a MacDonald’s across the street, but if I got in the car and drove a couple blocks, I could go to Carl’s Jr. (Hardee’s to some on the East coast). I like Carls because of their “Six Dollar” Burgers that claim to have the quality of a burger from a finer eating establishment without the big price tag. They’re really about $4 and change. Smell the irony?

As I began to salivate over the thought of that slab of meat grilled over an open flame, it occurred to me that Carl’s Jr./Hardees figured out how to make their Purple Cow. Their “don’t bother me, I’m eating” ad campaign sums it up. They make the burgers other shops won’t make, big, overstuffed with ingredients like cheese, chili, pastrami, onion rings or whatever the latest version offers. They don’t make any excuses for their burgers. They don’t shoot for the full market, but instead go right to the folks that don’t care how others think about them eating a huge, cheese-filled, cardiac-arrest-waiting-to-happen. Yeah, they’re not the best offering you could put into the temple, but they’re tasting and satisfying and sometimes people want to stop making excuses and just have a tasty burger.

Carls says, “This burger is too big for you” and laughs. They’re daring you to step up. Let MacDonalds, Burger King and Whataburger have the middle of the road. CJ fans want their meat.

Enough talk. Time for lunch!

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