Having worked among the rural farmers of America for 10 summers, I have great respect for the hardworking farmer. As this inspirational video illustrates, a farmer is the man or woman who works all days and then heads home to take care of his family, and after that, attends a school board meeting to make a difference in the community.
As this Dodge spot opens, we hear the voice of Paul Harvey, the broadcast voice of a radio program known as "The Rest of the Story", which played 51 years on ABC Radio Network. He was best known for telling an unknown story about a famous person, leaving out who the story was about until the very end.
The audio for this spot is a presentation Paul Harvey made in 1978. He mentions the 8th day of creation, a tongue-in-cheek reference to the seven days of creation as mentioned in the Bible. He tells the story as though God made a farmer to become the caretaker of all that He had made. As Harvey puts it, "Somebody willing to get up before dawn, milk cows, work all day in the field, eat supper, then milk cows again, then stay out until midnight at the meeting of the school board." Harvey later adds about the character of a farmer, "Somebody who would plow deep and straight and not cut corners."
Go here for the full transcript of his broadcast.
This is a tribute to the farmer in all of us. We intuitively recognize that most all lines of work require doing the work of a farmer...even though it's not necessarily planting and ploughing. Harvey says of the farmer, "by Tuesday, he's already put in his 40 hours, then goes ahead and works another 72." Of the farmer, he says, "Somebody to seed, weed, feed, and rake and disc and plow and plant and tie the fleece and strain the milk...".
Obviously, not everyone does each of these things, but in the field of sales, we do seed with phone calls as well as inbound marketing, we do weed by keeping up our database, we feed our minds and those of our clients with opportunities for the future, we rake, disc and plow by checking up on our clients periodically. And of course, we all harvest the work of our hands, graciously provided through our work and the gift of our Creator.
I also love how Harvey refers to the farmer who, "ties the family together with the soft, strong bonds of sharing." This refers to the single person as well as married!
Are you looking to inspire your sales force to keep at it, to press in when the going gets hard, to recognize that we must tie things together with what's available, including our schedules, co-workers and our families? This is a tremendous tribute to the farmer in all of us.
Contact me to license and customize this spot for your organization, as we have done for dozens of other creative spots. Or, perhaps you can request a free creative session to brainstorm about a unique message that directly hits home with your organization.
