I was watching the Obama infomercial last night, when I received a call from a charity hockey game, asking if I was interested in buying tickets or taking donations. I generally follow my father's example in these situations, which more or less means being polite, hearing them out until I know what they want, and then saying 'No, thank you' ad infinitum until I feel justified in hanging up.
The first thing the woman said to me was 'It's nice to hear a pleasant voice, everyone either hangs up or yells at me.'
This would have been said, but she was essentially opening everything with an imposition at 8:05pm. Irritation is acceptable. But it's difficult to build an outreach and awareness campaign without any imposition whatsoever. 'Permission marketing' is a good idea, but it's also based on existing awareness of a product or service, or a transactional 'for permission you get this newsletter/trinket/exclusive widget' model. People need a core reason to hunt you down, merely offering things for them to learn about or try isn't enough.
Options include being remarkable, indispensable, or controversial.
Another option is to, carefully, impose on people. It's irritating, bothersome, and increasingly being screened out. But the funny thing is, a carefully targeted, remarkable / indispensable / controversial imposition is rarely considered as such.
If someone had called me at that time with a request for funds related to someone I care about deeply, or to ask if I was interested in receiving a package with information on something I care about, I probably would have considered talking to them.
This is why it all comes down to targeting for me. Targeting offers the chance to make impositions, on a consumer level, obsolete. Given, of course, that what you have on offer is of sufficient value to offset the irritation of a ringing phone or unsolicited email.