Interruptive marketing is on its last legs. People generally don’t want to be interrupted. In the days when traditional advertising ruled the roost - the period Seth Godin defines as ‘During Advertising’ - interruptions were tolerated because it was perceived to be a price worth paying for receiving entertainment (i.e. TV shows) and learning about things to spend money on. Now, though, people face a huge information overload - much of which they choose themselves - and feel able to make their own choices about how to spend their money. That means that they often don’t notice your interruption in the first place. Most of us now record some of our favourite programmes or watch them on catch-up channels. This lets us skip the advertisements. Younger audiences are watching less TV and spending time with YouTube and MySpace instead. Printed advertising in the traditional press is probably in even worse shape: how can advertising thrive in a market that is continually shrinking?

Even companies with the budget for large advertising campaigns are finding it costs more and more to lift sales. This is because they’re still trying to interrupt. They’re like the guy at the cocktail party who wants to talk about himself and wanders round the room butting into conversations. He hasn’t listened to what’s being said in the conversation and he doesn’t care whether they want to hear what he has to say. He just reckons if he tells his story loudly enough and often enough someone will pay his some attention. He usually ends the evening alone by the bar, swaying slightly and feeling sorry for himself. Everyone else appears to be having fun.

But telling a story is good. That makes for interesting conversation. But it’s only a conversation when you tell a story that’s relevant to the listener. Broadcast stories don’t work as a marketing tool. What works is your story being picked up and told by others, one to one. When it becomes many to one and many to many, you know your story has hit gold. The problem for companies wanting their stories to spread is how to tell it without sounding like they’re selling. One way is through listening. How can listening lead to better stories? Simple: by listening to what your prospective market is talking about, you learn what’s important to them, what they want from products and services, and how they want to be approached.

Next problem: how to listen? I’ll cover that in a later post.