The Original Purple Cow

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purple_Cow#/media/File:Burgess-cow.jpg

Did you know that the original purple cow was black?

Ask a marketer about a purple cow, and you likely will elicit a proud reference to Seth Godin, the marketing maven who published Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable in 2003. Based on the premise that you either stand out or remain invisible, Godin's declared that you must aspire to be as different as a purple cow.

But why that animal and that color? He could have said a pink horse or a green dog. Had he written a bit later when billion dollar startups were granted their own mythical animal, he may have even opted for the unicorn. But the thing is that he didn't dream up the image of a purple cow. It was already kicking around for over a century.

A short poem with a long life

Back in 1895 Gelett Burgess published the nonsense poem in The Lark:

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.

Interestingly, the various texts of the poem capitalize "Purple Cow, and most insert commas as rendered above, though some also put in semi-colons at the end of lines and end the declaration with an exclamation point instead of period.

However, the way it first appeared with this illustration as shown here, you see no punctuation at all, and all the letters were capitalized. You have to possess my kind of curiosity and obsession with the mechanics of writing to take note of these things. 

What would strike most people is the more obviously striking point that the cow in the illustration is not purple -- likely because adding in the color would have rendered printing rather too pricey. ing up this blog, I saw the Purple Cow live!

That is, I saw this copy of a book version that Burgesse put out on exhibit at

the Morgan Library. The explanation on the exhibit says this:

GOING VIRAL IN 1895

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!

Burgess became famous in 1895 when he published these four lines of verse with an illustration of a cartoonish cow in the first issue of his humor magazine The Lark. Despite the periodical’s modest print run, the poem went viral. Journalists reproduced it across the country and in Europe, sometimes changing the words to suit specific situations (think memes). 

Purple Cow branding

Now recall that the poem declares it's better to see the cow than be it, while Godin declared the opposite. But he wasn't the first one to think of a purple cow as a great visualization for a brand.

Purple Cow ice cream since 1934

As Hank Mejer says in the video above, his father, Fred, loved the poem and decided that it was the name he must use for the ice cream shops within the Mejer stores back in 1960. The Purple Cow Creamery dates back even further to 1934 and lives on in ice cream today.  Alas, those quaint ice cream shops are gone.

From the flight of fancy of a poet in the 19th century and to an enduring brand name for ice cream sold in specialty shops in the 20th century and and a way of visualizing positioning to marketers in the 21st century idea, the purple cow concept certainly has legs. One may even say four of them! 

Related:

Most memorable brand slogans

What do Cynthia Ozick and Snoopy have in common?

Their writing style and experience of  rejection

Cynthia Ozick's response to the routine of rejection from The New Yorker 

in a letter written on January 5, 1962 is one of the discoveries from the magazine's files shared in from   It opens just like Snoopy's query letters

Gentlemen,
For a number of years now I have been sending you poems, and until very recently I have always found you entirely reliable. Exactly seven days after each new poem has been dropped into the mail, it has come punctually home, accompanied by that little rejection slip of yours marked with the number 1 in the left-hand bottom corner. (You know the one.) You have, as I say, been altogether faithful and dependable. For example, it is never six days, it is certainly never eight or nine days. It is always seven days to the minute, and your conscientious devotion to precision all these years has been matched, to my knowledge, only by the butcher's deliver-boy, whose appearance is also predicated on a seven-day cycle.

This time, however, you have failed me. A poem of mine, entitled "An Urgent Exhortation to His Admirers and Dignifiers: Being the Transcript of an Address Before the Mark Twain Association by Samuel Clemens, Shade," reached you on December 18, 1961, and, though eighteen days have already passed, a daily inspection of my letterbox yields nothing. I have enough confidence in your hitherto clean record of never considering anything I have submitted not to be tempted into the unworthy suspicion that the delay is actually caused by your liking this poem. What has been shattered, I must admit, is my sense of serenity, of certitude, nay, of security — not to mention my sense of rhythm. Does this mean you can no longer be relied on to conform to the seven-day schedule you have consistently adhered to in the past? In short, is the Age of Doubt truly upon us? O tempora!

Or (but I venture this with a cheery hopefulness I do not dare to feel) is it only that you have finally gone and lost my manuscript? I realize I am probably being too sanguine in putting forth this rosy possibility, but I guess I am just basically an optimistic sort. Please reassure me that this, rather than some flaw in your clockworks (even to contemplate which disillusions me hideously), is the real nature of the difficulty.

I expect your answer in seven days. Seven days later, she must have found herself in Snoopy's position here:
According to Yagoda, there was no answer in the files, though Ozick's stories were, eventually, published by the magazine.

As we know, Ozick went go on to achieve fame as a writer. Snoopy also achieved fame, though not necessarily for his literary endeavors. Still, his persistence remains an object lesson and inspiration in the book Snoopy's Guide to the Writing Life