Quality vs. advertising needed
This post is a response to Zac reposting this diagram with the title “Purple Cow”:
The sentiment here is right. It reflects this quote I posted a while ago, attributed to industrial designer Yyves Behar:
“Advertising is the price you pay for being unoriginal.”
Of course, while they ring true to some degree, both the quote and the graph are overly simplistic - but that’s not the point. What they’re getting at is that if you have a great, well-designed, quality product, it won’t need as much advertising to be successful. So I made the following graph to perhaps better identify how this relationship really works. I’ve divided it into three stages.
Stage A represents crappy products. There’s a number of strategies you can take, and I guess this depends on the product. Some crappy products succeed through relentless marketing. Crazy Frog springs to mind, as well as a lot of products sold by infomercial. But you can also take a zero advertising strategy. Take Coles $mart Buy. Advertising would almost damage this brand - as its seen as a brand where all costs are cut. The perceived cheapness of this brand means we often don’t even look at the price tags, we just grab it because we assume it’s the cheapest. JB Hi-Fi do some advertising, but they certainly don’t want us to think they’ve spent any money putting their ads together - they intentionally look cheaply done. So a whole range of strategies can be adopted for a crappy product.
Stage B represents regular products. Better quality products will need a little less advertising to sell. People will be more likely to repeat purchase, and if asked by a friend, may recommend a product further along on the Quality axis. The cow here is not purple, merely bigger, healthier and meatier.
Stage C is where it starts to get interesting. This stage is represented by a precipitous drop on the graph. This is the Purple Cow that Zac picked up on. The product is so good, it’s remarkable. People will bring it up in conversations with friends. Some may even evangelise the product, “you have to get this!”. Most Apple products probably fall in this category. Of course, there are other factors that make something a Purple Cow, but quality is certainly an important one.
Your thoughts?
