37Signals (unintended) Advice to the Candidates

The guys at 37Signals blogged today about self-promotion. Seth Godin adds his two cents here.

While the original sentiments were designed to describe ways to promote your product, service or company, it strikes me that during Political "silly season" with caucuses only weeks away, that all the candidates would be well served by reading their posts.

Adherence to their advice might explain why some (non-traditional?) candidates have such a loyal following and are able to raise unbelievable amounts of cash.

Doing the Right Thing for the Wrong Reason

If people like Seth Godin can't convince you that permission marketing is the path to take to grow your business in the 21st Century, you may be persuaded by Catalog Choice.

As reported in Guy Kawaski's blog, Catalog Choice is an organization funded by environmental groups to help reduce the tremendous waste and environmental impact caused by the printing and distributing of 9 Billion (that's with a "B") catalogs per year.

The service is free.

It acts as a slightly more cumbersome "unsubscribe" button - for paper catalogs. The website handles the communications with the catalog publisher. You simply sign up for the service and list the catalogs you no longer want to receive. After about 10 weeks, the catalogs should stop - or you can report "abuse".

I hope the service is effective in forcing those "old school" Direct Mail Marketers to begin to really embrace Web2.0 "permission marketing" - even if they're doing it because they have no choice.