“Man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.”

Benjamin Moore paints came up with this very cool marketing program where they committed to repaint 20 Main Streets in America through a crowd-sourced voting process.  They pushed out the marketing of the program on TV and print and then executed a great local ground program to get people in local towns to vote. The program caught my interest because the our closest Main Street to our home here in Rhode Island is Main Street, Westerly, RI.  So, both Patti and I voted online at their “paint what matters” website.  On Monday, Benjamin Moore released the 20 towns, and Westerly was one of them. You can only imagine what this does for a little town.  You might say, it puts them on the map.  Benjamin Moore nailed this campaign. They went big and broad and then got me and tens of thousands of others to take it to the streets for them.  When we think broadly and locally at the same time and put a program together that allows for both the air and ground game to work together, amazing things can happen.  It’s worth thinking about what programs we have that could follow the same pattern and be very effective for our businesses.

I am struck by the lessons that we as believers can learn from something as simple as a business marketing campaign.  God tells us to not pay attention the outward appearances but to what is in our heart.  On the surface (pun intended) the Paint What Matters campaign is all about the outward appearance of a town and won’t fundamentally change how the town functions effectively, or not.  Yet, there is a part of the outward appearance that Samuel recognizes that man does pay attention and if we are to win over the hearts of man for the Lord then that is part of the way into their hearts.  What I know is that if we think that others will be attracted and curious to what God is doing in our lives if our outward appearance is about laziness, unkempt, disrepair, inconsistent, or just plain not caring, then we will have a harder time in convincing others that the control of our lives is by a God who can do restorative work in them.  This is a hard one to balance, but it is worth exploring more, which we will do tomorrow in the next post.

Reference:  1 Samuel 16:7