Purple Cow by Seth Godin > BzzReport by stpgator

BzzReport by stpgator

Note – I was waiting to see how far along the Purple Cow went in our company but I’ve run up against the Buzz deadline so file this under “To be continued”

Let me start this report by stating that I work for a major car rental company. About the only difference between my company and our competitors is the color of our signs. The companies could easily be known by their color. Red rent-a-car, Gold rent-a-car, Green, Blue, Orange, Yellow, Rainbow and so on. But nowhere in the industry is there a Purple rent-a-car. At least not yet.

The night I received Purple Cow I read it straight through. As soon as I had started reading I knew who the perfect sneezer in my company would be. My bosses boss, who has been with us for 40 years and she loves books like Purple Cow and the lessons they teach. Her office bookshelf is lined with such books as “The 60 Second Manager,” “The :59 Second Employee,” “In Search of Excellence,” “13 Fatal Errors Managers Make,” “Who Moved My Cheese,” “ Stop Telling and Start Selling,” “1000 Things you Never Learned in Business School” and so on. Some of these books she bought herself but most have been purchased by the company and sent out to different management levels. I knew if she read Purple Cow she might just champion this book as the next company read.

The following Monday we had our weekly lunch meeting so I made sure to bring in the book along with my notes for that days pow-wow. She saw the book and asked if that was part of the new MOO. I didn’t even realize how well this cow theme would work in my favor. Our company is running a Moments Of Opportunity (MOO) with our front line employees to expand our small client contract base and of course with a program called MOO the theme and mascot is a cow. Purple Cow is going to have an easy time getting noticed as we are already cow programmed.

I took the opportunity to respond to her MOO comment by introducing her to the book and Seth Godin. She took an immediate interest and asked where I bought it. I said “Here, take my copy and just let me know what you think.”

Thursday morning she brought me a cup of coffee and a piece of her homemade coffee cake to my office and started to rave about the book. We joked about changing the color of our company to purple but her always practical side did a quick shoot down of that idea, “Just image the incredible cost of changing our colors worldwide.” she said.

Her practical side was also showing when she asked if she could pass along the book to Scott, our VP of marketing. I knew she was looking to make some brownie points with Scott and I knew that Scott was the one that would have the say if this book went out to the field managers. So of course I was also looking to make some brownie points with her and anyone that the book would get passed onto. I told here that I just wanted to put a “return to me” note in the book and she was free to pass it along to whomever she wanted it to go to.

I asked her if she thought Purple Cow might be a book that would be purchased for the company and her response was “I think it just might be.”

So I’m waiting to here what the upper managers at our HQ think of the book. Until then…