Remarkability

Seth Godin published Purple Cow in 2003 with an argument that felt like provocation and turned out to be prophecy: in a world of brown cows, only a purple cow gets noticed. The metaphor is deliberately absurd. Drive past a field of cows and you register nothing — brown, brown, brown, brown. A purple cow would stop the car. You would take a photo. You would tell someone. The cow did nothing to earn your attention except be impossible to ignore. Godin's claim was that products work the same way. In a marketplace saturated with adequate options — adequate coffee shops, adequate project management tools, adequate running shoes — "adequate" is invisible. The only products that generate organic attention are the ones that are remarkable: literally worth making a remark about.

The word is precise and Godin chose it deliberately. Remarkable does not mean "good." Remarkable does not mean "high quality." Remarkable means someone encounters your product and feels compelled to tell another person about it. The Cybertruck is remarkable. It is not conventionally attractive. Automotive critics called it polarising, impractical, and bizarre. Tesla received over 1.9 million reservations. The design violates every principle of mainstream automotive styling — the angular stainless steel exoskeleton, the absence of curves, the science-fiction aesthetic. People either love it or hate it. Nobody ignores it. That is remarkability. A Toyota Camry is an excellent car. It is reliable, efficient, and well-engineered. It generates zero conversation. The Camry sells on distribution and reputation. The Cybertruck sells on remarkability — every photo shared, every argument started, every meme created is free distribution that Toyota's $4.7 billion annual advertising budget cannot replicate.

Airbnb's "Bélo" logo redesign in 2014 demonstrated the same dynamic from a different angle. The new logo — an abstract symbol that critics immediately compared to anatomy — generated 3 billion media impressions in the first week. Some of those impressions were mockery. Some were genuine enthusiasm. None were indifference. Brian Chesky and his team understood that controversy is a feature, not a bug. The redesign cost Airbnb nothing in paid media and generated the equivalent of tens of millions of dollars in earned press coverage. A "safe" logo redesign — inoffensive, professional, forgettable — would have generated a press release and silence. The remarkable logo generated a cultural conversation.

Basecamp (formerly 37signals) has made public contrarianism its operating strategy for two decades. Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson wrote books arguing against venture capital, against long work hours, against growth-at-all-costs, against remote work scepticism — each position designed to provoke disagreement from a large audience and fierce agreement from a smaller one. Rework (2010) sold over 500,000 copies. The company has never taken venture funding. Basecamp's remarkability is not in the product — it is a competent project management tool in a crowded category. The remarkability is in the ideology. The company's public positions generate press, podcast appearances, blog traffic, and social media debate that drive awareness of the product without a dollar of advertising spend.

The strategic insight beneath all three examples: being polarising is often better than being liked. A product that 10% of people love and 90% ignore outperforms a product that 100% of people think is "fine." The 10% who love it become evangelists — they recommend it, defend it, identify with it. The 90% who ignore it were never going to buy anyway. The product that everyone thinks is "fine" has no evangelists. Nobody recommends "fine." Nobody tweets about "fine." "Fine" is the most expensive position in the market because it generates zero organic distribution and requires paid marketing to maintain awareness. Remarkability replaces advertising spend with human conversation — the oldest, cheapest, and most trusted distribution channel in existence.