I saw this talk a while back and liked it but the second time a saw it I got a lot more out of it.
It is based on ideas he pubished in a book in 2003 called 'Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable 'He outlines the decline of maintsream media advertising to the middle section of the population who are increasingly ignoring adverts because they have vastly increasing choice and decreasing time. Instead he suggests a more fruitful aproach is to market something unusual, with a new angle the is worthy of a remark, and market this to the people who care, the nerds, the early adopters, as the likelyhood is they will tell people about it and their you have the the product that sells itself by word of mouth.
Today's social media make this approach essential. You can research and target these type of people fairly easily as they usually are the type to have a fairly active online presence. The trick is to present them with something suitably remarkable for them to comment on. I'm going to buy some paint and paint a cow purple...
[First published 21 October 2013]