How to Be a Purple Cow: Marketing in the COVID-19 Era

When the Duke Special Event Planners Council reached out to me and Herleen Kaur, my then-fellow Director of Creative Services at Pitch Story Lab, to present on a topic of our choosing in September 2020, we immediately knew we wanted to talk about one thing: Seth Godin's Purple Cow. Under normal circumstances, Godin's framework encourages marketers to differentiate themselves in a crowded landscape by keeping a keen eye on what's remarkable, but in a year marked by transformation, Herleen and I wanted to delve deeper, exploring what it means to be a "purple cow" in the era of COVID-19—and how marketers can leverage simple, authentic narratives to become one.