Godin opens by arguing that the traditional marketing playbook — interrupt people with advertising to sell an adequately good, mass-market product — is breaking down, because consumers are overwhelmed with advertising and increasingly skilled at tuning it out.

Why this shift matters:

• The sheer volume of advertising messages people encounter daily has made interruption-based marketing dramatically less effective than it was in previous decades
• Godin argues that being "very good" — the traditional goal of quality-focused business — is no longer differentiated enough, since most competent competitors have already reached that bar
• This sets up the book's central argument: something more than quality and more than advertising spend is needed to actually get noticed in a saturated market

This opening establishes the marketing landscape shift the rest of the book's "Purple Cow" concept is designed to address.