Consumer, Interrupted

The one constant in the life of the average American consumer is interruption.  The
posters on bus shelters and subway station walls are designed to pull the
commuting consumer out of his morning reverie and to refocus his attention on the
food that he should be eating or the bank that he should be joining.

At his computer, the same consumer, now trying to get some work done, will likely
fall prey to banner ads and other online advertising strategically placed to catch his
eye.  Most obviously, the consumer’s evening escape into the magical worlds of
his favorite television shows will be interrupted with loud encouragements to
spend his hard earned cash on clothes, food, perfume, beer, anything.

And yet, I’m sure that if you asked the average Joe Consumer to recall some of the
ads that he had seen during the day, he would be hard pressed to remember exactly
which companies had been working so hard to interrupt him.

This is the conundrum that traditional marketers currently face.  There are so many
companies vying for the attention of a limited number of consumers that marketers
have devoted increasing energy to devising innovative ways to interrupt consumers
during their daily activities.  But, these same consumers are faced with a deluge of
incoming information and are just as likely to forget even the most carefully
crafted messages.

Think about the Super Bowl, where companies spend obscene amounts of money
to attract customers.  This year, the chance to get the attention of 106.5 million
viewers for 30 seconds was worth just over 3 million dollars.  Now I wouldn’t
necessarily classify Super Bowl commercials as interruptions since viewers have
come to see them as part of the show.  This phenomenon, however, does point to
an underlying issue in the interruption marketing technique.  Advertisers have to be
funnier and more “out there” than ever just to stand out in the crowd.

But, at the end of the day, what do they have to show for it?  Maybe the
“successful” marketers got a few random people out of the crowd to buy their
products but they have failed to create lasting bonds with satisfied customers that
will keep coming back for more.

I just started reading Seth Godin’s Permission Marketing: Turning Strangers into
Friends, and Friends Into Customers.  Godin begins his book by discussing the
interruption techniques that I have outlined above.  He then suggests that there is a
more effective strategy that he calls permission marketing.  Since I don’t want to
give too much away right now, I’ll discuss the basics of permission marketing in
my next post on this book.  Until then, I’m signing off for some much needed
sleep.