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Thanks to a recommendation from David over at Voice, I went and ordered Seth Godin’s Purple Cow. I highly recommend this book for anyone who works in marketing or has their own business (and guess what, if you have your own business, then you definitely are a marketer).

Purple Cow is short and easy to read. In fact most people could probably finish the entire book during a two hour plane ride. What Godin’s book lacks in number of pages and bulk (and who has time anymore for a big, heavy business book), it more than makes up for it in quality of content. Godin does an excellent job in describing just how much advertising has changed over the last 20 years and what it will take to grow and market a business in today’s business environment. Here’s clue - find out who the “sneezers” are in your community. I’m beginning to get a good idea of who in Dayton is effective at spreading an “ideavirus.” Unfortunately, they are far and few between.

Anyway, what caught my attention while reading the Cow last evening was one of Godin’s examples of a “purple cow” in the elevator industry. It was his reference to Schindler Elevator’s innovative way to market themselves ahead of of their competition by simply changing the way their customers use their product, versus changing the product. Makes perfect sense in an industry where getting the customer excited about the product can be, well, challenging at best. I know because I’ve been there.

My last job back in the “corporate world” was that of Marketing Communications Specialist for Fujitec Co., Ltd., the parent company of Fujitec America, Inc. And what is Fujitec you may be asking? Their one of Schindler’s competitors in the elevator and escalator industry, along with Otis and Kone. Fujitec is a Japanese owned and managed company with operations in Asia, Europe, South America and North America. They’re a good, well-managed company with an emphasis on technical innovation and quality. Fujitec was also a good learning experience for me, not only about the Japanese style of business and management but also about business-to-business marketing in the commercial construction industry.

I didn’t know too much about elevators before joining Fujitec, but I soon learned that the operated in a very competitive industry with limited methods to market their products. For all practical purposes elevator companies are engineering-based organizations. In other words marketing is often an afterthought. The big, industry trade shows is where many of these firms place the bulk of their advertising dollars, if they decide to spend any at all.

I wish I would have been exposed to more thought-leaders like Seth Godin when I was with Fujitec. The best I could come up with was an advertising campaign, with logos and a slogan, promoting the service side of their business. I thought this is where the Company could gain some distance from their competition in the elevator industry. I think I made some progress with my idea. The website for Fujitec America still has the press release about the campaign as being the most recent posted on their website, and it’s dated June 22, 2001!

Hey, maybe my idea was a purple cow ?!?! Not.