Reality Marketing is a form of Permission marketing

Permission marketing

Permission marketing is a term popularized by Seth Godin used in marketing in general and e-marketing specifically. The undesirable opposite of permission marketing is interruption marketing. Marketers obtain permission before advancing to the next step in the purchasing process. For example, they...

 that blends many types of interactive advertising

Advertising

Advertising is a form of communication used to persuade an audience to take some action with respect to products, ideas, or services. Most commonly, the desired result is to drive consumer behavior with respect to a commercial offering, although political and ideological advertising is also common...

 techniques into a Reality television

Reality television

Reality television is a genre of television programming that presents purportedly unscripted dramatic or humorous situations, documents actual events, and usually features ordinary people instead of professional actors, sometimes in a contest or other situation where a prize is awarded...

 show format.

History

During the 1990s, acquiring and keeping the attention of consumers was becoming more difficult in the face of new media outlets, people's increasing savviness of marketing tactics, and the many new demands on how people spent their time.

In order to "pay" people back for their time spent with an advertiser's message, marketers turned towards Branded content

Branded content

Branded content is a relatively new form of advertising medium that blurs conventional distinctions between what constitutes advertising and what constitutes entertainment. Branded content is essentially a fusion of the two into one product intended to be distributed as entertainment content,...

 to build a new type of relationship with their audience. By giving a consumer something for their time (an educational or entertaining film, for example) the advertiser could be assured to keep their attention while a message was delivered.

This tactic became a new category of marketing virtually overnight with the success in 2001's [BMW films] on the internet.

The Need

While the Branded Content framework provides a great way to develop and maintain a brand image, it typically does little to give consumers a concrete reason to make a purchase. Since consumers have become increasingly media-savvy, hard-sell advertising messages do not function well within this type of program. Advertisers believe that once a branded content program is seen as merely a sales tool, the consumer will stop paying attention.

Reality marketing builds on the branded content and Experiential marketing techniques by producing entertaining experiences and blending in hard-sell advertising into one program in a manner that doesn't violate the trust between the consumer and marketer.