Purple Cow.

Once concept we discuss semi-frequently in a Management class I attend at times is the concept of the Purple Cow. The Purple Cow is something that helps a business differentiate itself, or be noticed. I also always think of it as the thing that makes people stop and go, "What is that?" And now you have their attention. The analogy works like this - Let's say you're driving through the midwest or Vermont or something. You're driving through the country and you see cows. You are interested in them at first, but once you drive by farm after farm after farm you start to not see the brown cows, the white cows, and the spotted cows. What you would notice, however, is a purple cow. This is the goal of advertising; to stand out from competitors and be noticed.

The above pic is one of our tourguides, Phanny (pronounced Pah-nee like the Native American Tribe the Pawnee. Or, as her facebook page says, "Not FANNIE!") I just really liked the picture and wanted to post it because it has purple cow written all over it in that you can't look at the picture and not have a reaction. Bonus points go to the guy in the background for being so fired up. More bonus points go to Phanny for wearing a UML sweatshirt while getting this pic taken. Thanks, Phanny.

This week is April vacation for high school students in Massachusetts and our tours are gigantic. I'm going to try and snap a picture of them this afternoon. We love all the visitors, and we thank everyone for coming, but one thing we really like to stress here is that you will not feel like a number if you attend UMass Lowell. On most daily campus tours we give we make sure that people feel like they are given individual attention. With that said, given that our tours are five, six, or even seven times the size of our normal tours this week, we feel that a lot of the personal touch that you normally get with a daily tour is being lost. We understand that there are people who can only make visits during vacation. However, if you are going to be in the area again and want to make time to take another visit during a less busy time we would recommend that. We have daily campus tours at 10:00 a.m. and 2:00 p.m. Please give our office a call and schedule a tour at (978) 934-3931.