Seth Godin
Permission Marketing
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Part 1 - Page 1

THE MARKETING CRISIS THAT MONEY WON'T SOLVE

YOU'RE NOT PAYING ATTENTION. NOBODY IS.

It's not your fault. It's just physically impossible for you
to pay attention to everything that marketers expect you
to-like the 17,000 new grocery store products that were
introduced last year, or the $1,000 worth of advertising
that was directed exclusively at you last year.

Is it any wonder that consumers feel like the fast-moving
world around them is getting blurry? There's TV at the
airport, advertisements in urinals, newsletters on virtually
every topic, and a cellular phone wherever you go.

This is a book about the attention crisis in America and
how marketers can survive and thrive in this harsh new
environment. Smart marketers have discovered that the
old way of advertising and selling products isn't working
as well as it used to, and they're aggressively searching
for a new, enterprising way to increase market share and
profits. Permission Marketing is a fundamentally different
way of thinking about advertising and customers.

There's no more room for all these advertisements!

I remember when I was about five years old and started
watching television seriously. There were only three main
channels-2, 4 and 7, plus a public channel and UHF
channel for when you were feeling adventuresome. I used
to watch Ultraman every day after school on channel 29.

With just five channels to choose from, I quickly
memorized the TV schedule. I loved shows like The
Munsters, and I also had a great time with the TV
commercials. Charlie the Tuna, Tony the Tiger and those
great board games that seemed to magically come alive all
vied for my attention. And they got it.

Growing up, it seemed like everyone I met was part of
the same community. We saw the same commercials,
bought the same stuff, discussed the same TV shows.
Marketing was in a groove - if you invented a decent
product and put enough money into TV advertising you
could be pretty sure you'd get shelf space in stores. And
if the ads were any good at all, people bought the
products.

About ten years ago, I realized that a sea change was
taking place. I had long ago ceased to memorize the TV
schedules, I was unable to keep up with all the magazines
I felt I should be reading, and with new alternatives like
Prodigy and a book superstore, I fell hopelessly behind in
my absorption of media.

I found myself throwing away magazines unopened. I
was no longer interested enough in what a telemarketer
might say to hesitate before hanging up. I discovered that
I could live without hearing every new Bob Dylan album
and that while there were plenty of great restaurants in
New York City, the ones near my house in the suburbs
were just fine.

The clutter, as you know, has only gotten worse. Try
counting how many marketing messages you encounter
today. Don't forget to include giant brand names on T-
shirts, the logos on your computer, the Microsoft start-up
banner on your monitor, radio ads, TV ads, airport ads,
billboards, bumper stickers and even the ads in your local
paper.

For ninety years, marketers have relied on one form of
advertising almost exclusively. I call it Interruption
Marketing. Interruption, because the key to each and
every ad is to interrupt what the viewers are doing in
order to get them to think about something else.

INTERRUPTION MARKETING-THE TRADITIONAL APPROACH TO
GETTING CONSUMER ATTENTION
Almost no one goes home eagerly anticipating junk mail
in their mailbox. Almost no one reads People magazine
for the ads. Almost no one looks forward to a three
minute commercial interruption on Must See TV.

Advertising is not why we pay attention. Yet marketers
must make us pay attention for the ads to work. If they
don't interrupt our train of thought by planting some sort
of seed in our conscious or subconscious, the ads fail.
Wasted money. If an ad falls in the forest and no one
notices, there is no ad.

You can define advertising as the science of creating and
placing media that interrupts the consumer and then gets
him or her to take some action. That's quite a lot to ask of
thirty seconds of TV time or 25 square inches of the
newspaper, but without interruption, there's no chance
for action, and without action, advertising flops.

As the marketplace for advertising gets more and more
cluttered, it becomes increasingly difficult to interrupt the
consumer. Imagine you're in an empty airport, early in
the morning. There's hardly anyone there as you leisurely
stroll towards your plane.

Suddenly, someone walks up to you and says, "Excuse
me, can you tell me how to get to Gate 7?" Obviously,
you weren't hoping for, or expecting, someone to come
up and ask this question, but since he looks nice enough
and you've got a spare second, you interrupt your train of
thought and point him on his way. Continue >

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