Can we be precisely good enough? Can we be right on the line of meeting expectations?

According to Stan Phelps, co-author of The Purple Goldfish, no you can’t. You either fall below expectations, or you exceed them. That good enough line is imaginary – so stop trying to hit it. Go the extra mile, do those little things that enable you to exceed your customers’ expectations. Surprise them in unexpected ways.

Phelps describes the goal of meeting the expectations of your customers as the biggest myth in marketing. It is a path to mediocrity.

Too often, those extras become systematised and homogenised. Yesterday’s surprise becomes today’s normal. Competitive advantage becomes competitive necessity. We see this in the upward slope of the good enough line, and it is the competitive dynamics of the various players in the market feeding this upward curve, even when customers aren’t asking for it.

The problem, in its essence, is that in an attempt to leapfrog our competition, we innovate in some way that adds value (and often cost) to our offering. This is – supposedly – creative destruction in action. The problem is we just keep adding and adding. And so do many of our competitors. Some competitors may not be able to keep up. They fail or exit the market.

Customers stop finding the current innovations exciting – they come to expect them. These innovations can even create confusion for customers through the explosion of different types of offerings. In too many cases, value is destroyed for the vendors and the customers are indifferent. This is a race to the bottom.

The Purple Goldfish principles are not about feeding this needless cycle. While the idea can be articulated as differentiation via added value, I think the fundamental aspect is that of lagniappe. Phelps describes lagniappe in his book, invoking the term’s New Orleans origin as a small, unexpected, gift given by a merchant to a customer. This isn’t such an add-on that changes the value proposition received and perceived by the customer. It does not alter the minimum standard expected by customers.

It is instructional to return to the ideas underlying good enough. The notion of being good enough should not apply to all aspects of your offering. In the few areas you truly differentiate yourself in the market, you need to excel. Ideally, you want to be the leader. In all the other aspects of your offering, you should aim to be good enough.