“You’re spammers, each and every one of you,” Seth Godin told the Direct Marketing Association this week.

You’re sending me unanticipated, impersonal, irrelevant junk in a format I don’t want to get about a product I’m not interested in and won’t have time to look at. And you’re hoping to persuade enough people to buy so you can go buy more stamps, or call more people, or buy more inserts, or run more ads. And the problem is, spam doesn’t work like it used to.

Godin calls this TV Thinking:

TV thinking says I’m a marketer, I have power. I can interrupt whomever I want, whenever I want because I’ve got money. I can call you at dinner, I can send e-mail, I can buy magazine ads. The entire model of this industry, the model of Proctor and Gamble or any company we grew up with is this: Spend a nickel. Make six cents. Repeat.

The question is, What replaces TV Thinking?

Seth Godin’s answer: The right story told skillfully to the right audience at the time and place of their choosing.

So…

• What is your ideal customer-set like?
• When and where and how do they want to hear from you
• What’s the right story for your customer?
• How skillfully have you told that story?
• How do you know — or how can you find out?
• What do you think it will cost if you don’t?