The Bitter Pill

There had to come a day when I disagreed with Seth Godin on something. Today’s the day.

Godin uses the immaculate and sparkling trucks all fire stations seem to have as an allegory for businesses making busy work for themselves while they wait for the next fire alarm. The polishing-the-brass-on-the-Titanic argument, if you will.

There’s a few problems with Godin’s argument:

First, firemen do a lot more in their spare time than shine up the old hook and ladder. Most businesses could learn a lot from firemen about community outreach, education and public relations.

Second, a clean truck is actually part of that community outreach, education and public relations. It shows pride. Commitment. It’s approachable, even for young children, and reassures us all that the firemen are prepared, paying attention to the little things, and ready to tackle the big things.

Third, as anyone who deals with mechanical devices will tell you, clean machinery performs better. When my house is burning down, I want to know that every inch of that truck has been cleaned, inspected and is operating in top form.

So here’s a few things your organization can really learn from firemen:

• When there’s no fire to put out, how can we be better prepared for the next one?
• Do everything you can to build trust. Don’t squander it with poor presentation and sloppiness
• Educating users makes them happier, and your job easier
• Risking your job is just business. Risking your life is real commitment.

Note: No one got the last one, but 100 points to anyone who can get the song reference in this post title. (The last one was X).

UPDATE:
Seth has backpedalled a bit on this one, writing “I was trying to tell a story with a vivid picture.”
I’m all for vivid pictures, but still think he was using a duck to describe a cow (purple or otherwise) on this one.

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 29th, 2005 at 9:55 am and is filed under General, Business, Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.