The Purple Cow Effect: What Makes Your Personal Brand Remarkable?
Sep 19, 2026
The Purple Cow Effect
Imagine driving past a field filled with cows.
You probably wouldn’t give them a second thought.
But what if one of them was purple?
You’d notice it.
You’d probably remember it.
You might even tell someone else about it.
That’s the idea behind Seth Godin’s famous Purple Cow concept.
Remarkable things get remarked upon.
And I think there is a powerful lesson in that for personal branding.
Because most people don’t have a capability problem.
They have a distinctiveness problem.
They’re experienced.
Talented.
Qualified.
Hardworking.
Knowledgeable.
But so are thousands of other people competing for the same opportunities, attention and recognition.
So the question becomes:
Why you?
Not why are you good.
What makes you distinctly you?
Your Purple Cow probably already exists
This is where I think personal branding often goes wrong.
People start looking outside themselves for something that will make them different.
A clever positioning statement.
A content niche.
A new visual identity.
A louder opinion.
But genuine differentiation rarely needs to be manufactured.
Often, it’s already there.
It might be an unusual combination of experiences.
A perspective developed through your career.
A way of solving problems.
A particular strength.
Your personality.
Your values.
Your story.
Or something you do so naturally that you’ve never considered it particularly remarkable.
The problem is that familiarity makes our own distinctiveness difficult to see.
What feels ordinary to you may be precisely what somebody else finds extraordinary.
Different doesn’t mean louder
Standing out doesn’t mean becoming controversial for the sake of attention.
It doesn’t mean shouting louder.
And it certainly doesn’t mean creating a version of yourself specifically designed for LinkedIn.
The goal isn’t to become different.
It’s to understand where you already are.
Because the strongest personal brands don’t simply attract attention.
They create recognition.
People begin associating your name with something.
A skill.
A perspective.
An idea.
A way of thinking.
And when that happens consistently, distinctiveness becomes reputation.
In my latest article, I explore The Purple Cow Effect and why discovering what makes you remarkable might be one of the most important steps in building a personal brand people actually remember.