To be remarkable is to be noticed and Meaning Factcheck Usage

You know, that idea from Seth Godin, “To be remarkable is to be noticed…” it’s not just marketing fluff. It’s the core engine of modern growth. If you’re not getting talked about, you’re simply not growing.

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Table of Contents

• Meaning
• Explanation
• Origin & Factcheck
• Context
• Usage Examples
• FAQ

Meaning

The core message is brutally simple: being remarkable isn’t the end goal. It’s the spark. The real prize, the thing that builds a business or a career, is word-of-mouth. Remarkability is just the price of entry for that conversation.

Explanation

Look, I’ve seen so many companies get this wrong. They think “remarkable” means being a little better, a little shinier. No. Godin is talking about creating a Purple Cow. You drive past a field of brown cows every day, you don’t even look. But a purple one? You’d stop. You’d take a picture. You’d tell your friends. That’s the sequence. Create something truly worth noticing—something that solves a real, specific problem in a unique way or brings unexpected joy—and you earn the right to be a topic of conversation. And that conversation, that organic talk, is the most valuable asset you can possibly have. It’s marketing that you don’t have to pay for.

Quote Summary

Context	Attributes
Original Language	English (3668)
Category	Business (233)
Topics	branding (15), communication (196), visibility (7)
Literary Style	clear (348), logical (24)
Emotion / Mood	encouraging (304)
Overall Quote Score	80 (256)

Origin & Factcheck

This quote comes straight from Godin’s 2003 book, Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable. It was published in the United States and it really captured the shift in the early internet era. Sometimes people mistakenly attribute similar ideas to folks like Steve Jobs, but the specific framing of this cause-and-effect chain—remarkable → noticed → talked about—is pure Godin.

Attribution Summary

Context	Attributes
Author	Seth Godin (100)
Source Type	Book (4032)
Source/Book Name	Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable (43)
Origin Timeperiod	21st Century (1892)
Original Language	English (3668)
Authenticity	Verified (4032)

Where is this quotation located?

Quotation	To be remarkable is to be noticed, and to be noticed is to be talked about
Book Details	Publication Year/Date: 2003; ISBN/Unique Identifier: 9781591843177; Last edition: 2010; Number of pages: 160.
Where is it?	Chapter 31: Noticeability, page 152/160

Context

Godin was pushing back hard against the old model of “Safe” marketing—the idea that you could just run enough TV ads and buy enough billboards to bully your way into people’s minds. He argued that the TV-industrial complex was dead, that attention was the new scarce resource, and that the only path forward was to build remarkability directly into your product or service from the start. The Purple Cow wasn’t an add-on; it was the product itself.

Usage Examples

So how do you use this? It’s a lens for decision-making. Ask yourself: “Is this thing we’re about to do…remarkable? Is it worth a conversation?”

• For a Marketer: Stop asking “How do we get more clicks?” and start asking “What can we create that our ideal customer would feel compelled to share with a colleague?”
• For a Product Manager: Don’t just add another standard feature. Find one thing you can do that no one else in your category is doing, and do it so well it becomes your defining story.
• For a Job Seeker: Your resume is a brown cow. Your personal project, your unique approach to solving a problem in your cover letter, your portfolio that tells a story—that’s your purple cow. That’s what gets you talked about in the hiring manager’s meeting.

To whom it appeals?

Context	Attributes
Theme	Principle (838)
Audiences	advertisers (12), brand strategists (10), business owners (16), marketers (166), students (3111)
Usage Context/Scenario	advertising lectures (1), brand storytelling workshops (3), creative strategy meetings (1), marketing classes (3), public speaking (57)

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FAQ

Question: Does “remarkable” always mean being weird or outrageous?

Answer: Not at all. It means being meaningfully different for a specific audience. Incredible, no-questions-asked customer service is remarkable. A product that is radically simple can be remarkable. It’s about being exceptional in a way that your target customer truly values.

Question: What if my product is in a boring industry? Can it still be remarkable?

Answer: This is the best place for it! In a sea of sameness, even a small spark of remarkable stands out like a supernova. Look at what companies like Mailchimp did for email marketing—they made it friendly and approachable in a field of dry, corporate tools. That was their purple cow.

Question: Is this just about getting viral buzz?

Answer: No, and this is a critical distinction. Viral buzz is often a one-off. Being remarkable is a strategy. It’s about building a product and an experience that consistently generates positive word-of-mouth over the long term. It’s a sustainable engine, not a fireworks display.