“The Magnificent Seven” reminded me of Seth Godin’s “Marketing Seven” – SCN Encourager
If your marketing plan calls for “the calvary” to show up at the last minute, you’re in trouble.
Remember the classic western?
It’s a great story.
A village is terrorized by an “evil” group of marauding bandits.
A group of seven “good” cowboys roll into town.
The cowboys befriend the oppressed villagers.
And the cowboys also kinda sorta work out a few of their own individual issues as they nurture their relationships with the villagers, which my wife Cindy said was only possible because the village didn’t have WiFi or 24/7 sports on TV.
In their new and rising atmosphere of trust, the villagers and the seven cowboys are able to create a plan to get rid of the bandits once and for all.
And then bingo!
The movie shifts into all Action. Action. Action.
(as opposed to talk, talk, talk…)
And then finally the movie concludes with a big crescendo and the preferred outcome.
For sure, speedy-kwik and straight-forward resolutions to life’s major problems usually only happen in the movies.
Even I know this much.
But “The Magnificent Seven” demonstrated a good lesson.
It illustrated the importance of constructing “a credible plan.”
Yul Brynner and his six other cowboy compadres were rough and tough and all, but their respective responses to the intolerable situation in the village were far from random.
They were unified in carrying out a goal-oriented plan.
And they improved the odds of success as a result.
Sometimes we forget about the key elements critical to success when we charge an administrative team, a school improvement committee, or a citizen task force to come up with “a plan” of some kind – particularly if the plan is intended to address a school PR or communications area or something else commonly perceived as “intangible.”
This is understandable.
Dang, I often forget about referencing the key elements critical to success myself… and I’m a one person office! (So I can hardly blame anyone else…)
But the point here is, when it comes to effective school marketing, there are fundamentals we shouldn’t quickly brush aside
Communicator and leader-builder Chris Brogan says you’ll never be able to construct a meaningful “executable framework” in your school PR plan if you do.
You’ll only underwhelm.
Uh, oh.
Seth Godin
But thanks to master marketer Seth Godin, we don’t have to guess about what marketing fundamentals should be included in a planned and intentional framework.
Godin spells out his Marketing Magnificent Seven right here.
Every marketing challenge revolves around these questions.
WHO are you trying to reach? (If the answer is ‘everyone’, start over.)
HOW will they become aware of what you have to offer?
WHAT story are you telling – living – spreading?
DOES that story resonate with the worldview these people already have? (What do they believe? Want?)
WHERE is the fear that prevents action?
WHEN do you expect people to take action? If the answer is ‘now’, what keeps people from saying, ‘later’?
WHY? What will these people tell their friends?
Now, Godin’s “Magnificent Seven” above may not seem all that sexy or profound to you, but the fundamentals he describes are executed by the best marketers, repeatedly.
I hope attaching a movie analogy to his exact words made this all more memorable.
To be honest, I dozed off here and there during the movie when I watched it this weekend.
Now I’m worried that I might’ve missed a plot twist (like one of the cowboys joining up with the bandits or something).
That’d be my luck!
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