Purple Cow II - Where Does Your Product End and Marketing Hype Begin? - Business

In my previous blog post on Seth Godin’s book Purple Cow, I described Godin’s challenge for businesses to not settle for being “very good” but to reach for being “remarkable”. He questions the entrepreneur on whether the business is marketing merely for hype rather than excellence. He asks the reader “Where does your product end and marketing hype begin?” (as a business law attorney I have seen this line often blurred in business plans). He provides this case study on Dutch Boy:

Case Study: How Dutch Boy Stirred Up the Paint Business

It’s so simple it’s scary. They changed the can.

Paint cans are heavy, hard to carry, hard to close, hard to open, hard to pour from, and no fun. Yet they’ve been around for a long time, and most people assumed there had to be a reason.

Dutch Boy realized that there was no reason. They also realized that the can was an integral part of the product – people don’t buy paint; they buy pained walls, and the can makes the painting process much easier.

Dutch Boy used this insight and introduced an easier-to-carry, easier-to-pour-from, easier-to-close paint jug. Not only did the new packaging increase sales, but it also got Dutch Boy paint more distribution (at a higher retail price!).

This is marketing done right. Marketing where the marketer changes the product, not the ads.

Where does your product end and marketing hype begin? The Dutch Boy can is clearly product, not hype. Can you redefine what you sell in a similar way?