JKR

In his presentation at TEDtalks a while ago, Seth Godin (author of the world’s most popular marketing blog), made a case for the selling power of being remarkable. By this he meant, broadly, being “game changing” and arrestingly different. His analogy was that if one drove past a bunch of cows it would be without comment, but if you went past a purple cow you would, literally, remark upon it. The point was that remarkable things catch the attention of the more switched on in society, they talk about it and so create a more mass appeal.*

I don’t know if I’m switched on, but I am remarking on this new Japanese beer – Okhotsk Blue. It’s “made using water melted from icebergs that float each year onto Hokkaido beaches from the chilly Sea of Okhotsk”. For me it poses the question of how does one define the boundary between remarkable and a gimmick? Context seems to be everything – we Europeans revere natural brewing and heritage in our beers (Guinness might be black, but that’s no issue because this is simply a result of the barley being roasted in the brewing process), whereas I assume the Japanese culture is more open to a blue drink as it places a premium on bold innovation generally. And younger European drinkers are also becoming less in thrall to “authenticity” (as WKD and the rise of Sailor Jerry with his rather imaginative provenance attest to). In other words, one culture’s gimmick is another’s cool new brand.

But I would suggest that the most convincingly “remarkable” innovations have more than novelty appeal – they tend to be built on solid conventional foundations – for example it is the elegant and authentic looking superior bottle which supports the eccentricity of Bacardi’s bat device, or Burberry’s heritage which makes their decision to put the brand’s lining on the garments’ outside remarkable not weird. Meanwhile, to return to Godin’s analogy, a purple cow never did Milka any harm!

*For the full and probably more lucid version, it’s talk 261, free on the TEDtalks podcast