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| Permission Marketing,
Seth Godin |
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| Books,
Graham Bower,
20 January 1999 |
Rating: F4
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On the cover of 'Permission Marketing' it proclaims that the author, Seth Godin, has recently been appointed vice-president for direct marketing at Yahoo!
Initially this struck me as odd, since I don't recall ever receiving any direct marketing from Yahoo! Upon reading the book, I realise that maybe that's the point. Godin would not presume to send anything to me directly without first getting my permission. The renowned direct marketing guru Lester Wunderman has described 'Permission Marketing' as a big idea. It's message is single minded, elegantly simple and compelling. In an increasingly cluttered environment, where Godin estimates the average consumer is exposed to about 3,000 marketing messages a day, it is becoming increasingly expensive to reach your customers with traditional advertising (above-the-line), and almost impossible to achieve any standout from your competitor. Godin dismissively refers to above-the-line campaigns as 'interruption marketing'. Instead, he argues for a new approach to recruiting and retaining customers, where the marketer solicits his potential customer into a dialogue, and then establishes a 'marketing curriculum' to educate his customer to the benefits of his products. In order to attract the potential customer's attention, it may be necessary to offer the prospect 'bait'.
Gushing with enthusiasm for his big idea, Godin can at times be rather dismissive of tried and tested marketing formula that do not slot into his vision. Who knows, perhaps he is right, but it seems unlikely the future will be so black and white. There will surely always be a place for some kind of interruptive media,' albiet that above-the-line will be increasingly used as a direct response medium. Equally, whilst it is clear that traditional advertising is becoming increasingly less cost effective, achieving Godin's goals of 'anticipated,' 'personal,' and 'relevant' marketing communications will never be cheap. Technology will play a key part in making Godin's permission marketing techniques truely cost effective - I'll certainly be looking out for Yahoo's permission based campaigns with interest, so Godin has achieved his goal of 'anticipated' already!
Simon & Schuster
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