Seth Godin, editor of the book, has collected 33 inspiring ideas and they become The Big Moo. The Group of 33, as the book references these successful business people, includes Mark Cuban, Dave Balter, Malcolm Gladwell, Tom Peters, and Guy Kawasaki. The aim of the stories or ideas is to show what it takes to become remarkable.
The book’s title comes from Godin’s previous best seller, Purple Cow which shows how to stand out in a world of brown cows. According to the book’s synopsis, “… sometimes you need something even bigger than a purple cow. You need a big moo — an insight so astounding that people can’t help but remark on it.”
While Purple Cow focuses on standing out, it lacks the second and very important step — getting others to talk about your business. Standing out alone doesn’t lead to business. How do people find out about you? That’s what The Big Moo is about — sharing ideas and real-life examples of how to get people talking.
“Some Things Just Don’t Translate” points that the way we see our products may not be the way customers see them. Sounds obvious, but it isn’t. An Italian in the house ware business opened a store in the U.S. His foot traffic wasn’t match by sales. He observed his customers and remained baffled as to why they were looking and taking an interest, but not buying.
He asked a customer how she liked the store and merchandise. It turned out that what Americans considered vases, Italians saw as glasses — and vice versa. The owner, of course, was selling glasses of six in a case and vases as singles. Americans didn’t want to buy six vases — they could’ve bought six glasses with ease, though. This type of valuable advice appears throughout the book.
Most essays clearly get the point across although a couple aren’t as strong. The book does what it sets out to do: motivate the reader to get out there to put ideas to work to develop a remarkable organization that gets everyone buzzing.
Though the book explains the contributors gave up their by-lines for the book, I would’ve liked to know who wrote each story. There’s no way to guess who wrote which story as few of them relate to the businesses associated with the people. What does knowing who wrote it do for me? It tells me who made the observation or how the person thinks. It’s like sharing a quote without the author’s name.
It’s an easy, gratifying, and fast read. I read the whole thing in about an hour. Each essay is about two pages on the average. All the proceeds from the book go to three charities.
Title: The Big Moo
Author: group of 33, Seth Godin
Publisher: Portfolio Hardcover
ISBN: 1591841038
Date: October 2005
Format: Hardcover
Pages: 208
Cover Price: USD: $19.95 Amazon: $13.57
