From Permission to Engagement

Seth Godin will be in Montreal on April 22nd. I won't.

Seth Godin is seen as a “marketing god” by many young and innovative marketers.   One thing is for certain, however, I will NOT be at his  conference in Montreal on April 22nd.

Here is why.

Godin has written books that were challenging, smart, and often ahead of their times, whether we think of Permission Marketing of Unleashing the Ideavirus.

Godin, however, seems more interested in ideas and concepts than in viable, practical and efficient solutions.  His theory on the Purple Cow, for instance, says that a company needs to come up with a “remarkable product” (“very good” is not enough, in his mind) if it wants to grab people’s attention.  According to Godin, people are too busy and have too many choices today to care about traditional marketing, average companies and average products.

Godin’s position is a nice idea for a perfect world.  Unfortunately, life isn’t perfect, products are not always remarkable, and traditional marketing is not always about interrupting people’s lives.

For me and for more and more contemporary marketers, today’s issue is not so much about permission, but about ENGAGEMENT or PARTICIPATION.

Using an integrated multichannel approach, PARTICIPATION MARKETERS engage customers (and their communities) so deeply and respectfully that PERMISSION here is a given.  By involving the consumers in the co-creation and co-production of a marketing campaign and experience, and by using a bi-directional and viral-rich strategy, marketers are now building amazingly strong ORGANIC BRANDS.

Between the old school of Marketing and Godin’s school, there is room for an approach both strategic and tactical. Thanks to PARTICIPATION MARKETING and its integration of traditional, interactive and mobile medias, we are now defining a space where we market “with people”, not “to people”.