Labor Day is a good time to reflect on why you insist on thwarting the best marketers in the nation. You do it every time you tune out those repetitive, interrupt-driven mass marketing ads. And, you’re not alone.

You’re a walking case study of why mass marketing doesn’t work as well as it used to.

Seth Godin explained it really well at TED a few years ago: “In a world where we have too many choices, and too little time, the obvious thing to do is just ignore stuff.” This is why interrupt-driven mass marketing doesn’t work, while influencer marketing does.

In this talk, Seth characterizes our time as “a century of idea diffusion.” He asserts that people who can spread ideas — regardless of what those ideas are — win.

Even then, to get influencer marketing to work, you need to be remarkable. Hence, Seth’s famous parable about invisible cows and purple cows. “Remarkable is a really cool word. We think it just means ‘neat.’ But it also means worth making a remark about. And that is the essence of where idea diffusion is going.”

I count this TED talk, “Seth Godin: Sliced bread and other marketing delights,” among the influencer marketing classics. See if you agree.