Seth Godin is a smart guy–I read his books and subscribe to his blog.  I wouldn’t mind being his friend, there is a lot to like about his approach. The concept of permission marketing was a great addition to my playbook.

But there is something sugary about his books. They have the feeling of a marketing revivalist movement–excited, passionate, emboldened by inspiring stories, and quickened by chapters no more than a few pages long, yet without a framework, stranded, hopeful but hapless against complex market circumstance.

In Purple Cow mass-media is useless for launching new products–its just too expensive and un-targeted. Of course Seth has motivation to say this–he created permission marketing as an oppositional archetype to interruption marketing (TV, print, web-display).

For most segment specific and niche products this is true (Boutique Shampoo is one example he uses in the book). Your best bet when selling to a small audience is to build a product they can be passionate about and spread to like-minded people. But Seth goes further than this, believing consumers just don’t have any attention span for interruption marketing these days; to him something fundamental has changed about consumer behavior.  He wants to usher in a whole new era, and be the prophet of the change.

Alltell Wireless; ‘Chinese Food’
Alltell wireless is my compelling counter-example to the interruption marketing theory. They took an existing idea (calling circle, anyone remember MCI’s friends and family plan?) and with creative marketing (Chad!) advertised the hell out of it. Yes, it was novel to bring the concept to wireless plans; yes, it was targeted at a more price sensitive segment of the market fitting with Alltell’s rural roots.

They grew subscribers significantly, and were acquired by Verizon wireless, who assumed all of their $22.5B debt from building the network and gave them $5.8B extra in cash for the enterprise value of their subscribers. I wouldn’t call them Google, but if I’d been their CEO I’d put that rise on my resume with pride.

More importantly Verizon has now extended their calling circle concept to all of their members. Alltel thus spread an idea and grew a company on the back of traditional creative impression marketing, with an existing (white and black cow) concept. There is even a study about the effectiveness of Alltel’s impression media.

‘Chinese Food’
Last night I took a walk to find dinner and arrived at a standard grocery store anchored strip mall in the suburbs. There were about 5 food options, many of them name branded, Sub and Pizza stores, etc. I choose one with a simple sign "Chinese Food."  I ordered the same unhealthy meal I always get "Sesame Chicken."

Where was the differentiation here? It was the opposite; it was a standards based pitch. Chinese Food is essentially a franchise without licensing. It is a dominant design, much like entry level Sushi. The attraction for me was adherence to a familiar standard.

Anyone coming from the IT world, as I do, has a robust understanding of the interplay between differentiation and standards; Seth could have done much much more thinking here, but took the easy way out in my opinion. Simple and sugary sells.

Why Defenestration
1). Discussing differentiation and remarkability without reference to the importance of market standards! Talking about the fun part (remarkable!) is easy. Poor Yahoo! has a statue of a purple cow in their lobby; I don’t think their results have been remarkable.

2). Not a totally reliable source on impression marketing given his need to usher in a new era related to his book.

Seth can certainly get all of us excited about the rewards of innovation. As the #1 business writer and blogger in the world I’d say he has staked out a great segment of the market.  (Ironically he has become mass-market, and is milking it for all its worth.)

As such he is an important standard to differentiate against.

* Update: This morning I woke up to a new blog from SG on impression media. Now he says they are good for awareness; which doesn’t make much sense since he spent several books telling us people are just tuned out. Maybe he read that Alltell study I sent him.