April 5, 2023

Before Seth Godin’s famous marketing book, Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable, hit the market, we were first treated to the concept of the purple cow in a short 1895 poem by Gelett Burgess: 

I never saw a purple cow, 

I never hope to see one; 

But I can tell you, anyhow, 

I’d rather see than be one. 

A fair point—being a purple cow means standing out and having people take notice of you. But this can also be a good thing. Godin falls on the positive side of the purple cow and recommends that businesses need to both identify their purple cow and then go all in with promoting it. The purple cow is the differentiator—after all, who wouldn’t stop at the side of the road to take a picture of something so extraordinary? Businesses that take the time to identify and then promote their purple cow are businesses that will be visible in a day and age when traditional methods of marketing have failed. 

While this is applicable to businesses in all industries, it is perhaps even more applicable to independent schools. In a day and age driven…