Scientologists 1 Chuggers 0

Out Christmas shopping over the last couple of weeks I've seen two groups of people trying to get money from strangers. One of them is using a much better strategy than the other. One group is the so called 'Charity Muggers', or chuggers for short - the bib clad agents hired by major charities to accost strangers in the street and charm them into signing up for a monthly donation. They operate in packs of about four and it's quite a job to get past them without being spotted. On a quiet day in Lewes I was practically chased by one of them. Twice. Maybe this aggressive style of marketing is seen as unavoidable in a world where there are so many people demanding our attention, but the charities that use it are burning through their social capital, and in a competitive market for attention, chugging won't maintain its advantage for long.

The other group is the scientologists. I hadn't seen the Brighton section out on the streets for some time, but they've been out every day over the Christmas shopping period. They have a couple of tables set out in front of their offices by Churchill square, with a sign reading 'Free stress test', and people are sitting down to talk to them. Voluntarily. Imagine that! People come to you and give you five, ten, fifteen minutes of their time. They're interested in what you're offering and pay attention to what you have to say.

The scientologists' strategy is an example of what Seth Godin has termed permission marketing. In your first contact with a stranger you shouldn't try to sell your ultimate product, you should offer them something for free, like the stress test. That's already qualified your potential customer as someone who might have an interest in your product. The attention your free offer has bought you is then used to sell the next meeting, and that one the next, in a series of exchanges over which you educate your potential customer about your product. It's a much more focused approach than the scattershot techniques of the chuggers and most of mainstream marketing. It takes longer to see results, but you've developed a relationship with your customers where they expect to hear from you and actually want to be sold to.

Perhaps the nature of their product has put evolutionary pressure on the scientologists marketing strategy. It must be a lot easier to get people to give money to save the baby seals than it is to convince them of the merits of joining a UFO cult. It suggests an interesting avenue for research - difficult products produce the best marketing - though I'm not sure I want to investigate too far!