Wyatt Earp on Gunfighting: 6 Marketing Lessons
Horsethief, lawman, pimp, vengeance rider; Wyatt Earp lived a wild life. But it's his gunfighting wisdom, and what that can teach us about marketing, that made me write this.
I have loved a good Western movie and “Wild West” history since I was a kid. I spent a lot of time reading about men like trapper Jim Bridger, the Texas Rangers, Red Cloud, Geronimo, etc.
A scene from Eastwood’s “Unforgiven” tugged at a memory when I rewatched it a few weeks ago. There’s a scene when Gene Hackman’s sheriff character, Little Bill, is explaining real gunfights to the dime store novelist traveling with the Duke of Death.
The memory is Wyatt Earp’s gunfighting advice, which contradicts most of what you see in many westerns – speed, shooting from the hip, shooting two guns at once, etc.
After finding and reading it again (I’ve embedded it below), I found myself making marketing analogies. So, without further ado, marketing lessons channeled from Wyatt Earp’s gunfighting knowledge.
Substance Over Flash - “Pull the Trigger Once.”
We’ve all seen the Western, the quick draw and shooting from the hip. The real proficient gunfighters looked down on the hip shooters and gun fanners: “what could happen to him in a gunfight was pretty close to murder.”
The trick of gun fanning was impressive, someone good at it could fire five shots and it was so fast it would sound like one. But in a real fight it would also get you killed.
There are always flashing tricks and bright lights in marketing. They’re usually a lot of heat and noise. The basics almost always win.
Wild Bill Hickock (a truly fascinating figure of the Old West, reading a book about him at the moment) was an incredible marksman and trick shooter. He never used those tricks in a gunfight, instead he was cool, calm, and deliberate at speed.
There are always BRAND NEW and EXCITING NEW WAYS to marketing. They’re usually not. Every social media goo-roo is following the basic content marketing playbook laid out by John Deere’s The Furrow Magazine in 1895 or The Michelin Guide in 1900 (originally an enticement to get people to drive for good food so Michelin could sell more tires).
The basics of marketing haven’t changed in hundreds of years; maybe never. Make a good product/service. Know your customers. Provide them great service. Find out where they are and talk to them. Share information about how you can help improve their lives.
That’s pretty much it. Of course the tactics change (though both of those 100 plus year old publications are still going strong) as the technology does.
But the fundamental of servicing YOUR customer never will.
Be Fast, But Don’t Rush - The Winner of Gunplay was usually the man who took his time.
This doesn’t mean move slow. To the contrary, speed IS essential and important. But too much speed, too much hurry, would get you killed That fraction of a second to aim to make sure you were going to hit the target could be the difference between having your next whiskey or being laid out in a pine box.
Your marketing should likewise be quick, but deliberate. You don’t want to launch without taking the time to understand your customers/audience and how you can best help them. Pulling the trigger and firing in all directions isn’t going to help you.
Multiple Tactics Can Work, But Start With One at a Time - Carry Two Guns, Shoot One at a Time
There’s a scene in Silverado (highly recommend – Danny Glover, Scott Glenn, Kevin Kline, Jeff Goldbloom, John Cleese, Linda Hunt; great cast, very underrated Western from 1985) where Kevin Costner’s cocky kid gunslinger’s character stands at a street intersection and shoots two men simultaneously (see the image). Looks cool in a Western movie, but it wasn’t reality.
Gunfighters would carry 2 pistols and often draw them at the same time, but would shoot them one at a time.
Stop trying to hit every target at once. Have multiple options in your marketing arsenal, but “shoot” them one at a time --- especially if you’re a small business. Calm focus will get you farther than frenetic action that both misses that target and burns you out.
There are more marketing tactics and things you “could” do than you have time for. That’s especially true for us solo/small teams types.
You can’t do it all. YouTube AND Instagram AND TikTok AND Facebook AND Substack Live AND LinkedIn Live is a recipe for being reduced to a gibbering husk, babbling in a corner.
Pick your platform. Pick your tactics (and newsletter is ALWAYS a good one!).
And focus.
As Wyatt put it, “I remember quite of a few of these so-called two-gun men who tried to operate everything at once, but like the fanners, they didn’t last long in proficient company.”
Competence Over Show – Don’t Notch Your Pistol
Wyatt noted that the men who killed for the “sake of brag” sometimes notched their pistols. Reputable peace officers didn’t. For the men who tamed the West, it was a job. A task. While some of them certainly enjoyed others’ elevated opinions of them, they were primarily focused on the job at hand. Not like Texas Red in The Marty Robbins song, “the notches on his pistol number one and 19 more.”
The gun was tool and using it a vital skill to stay alive – not for ostentatious show. There are so many websites and company marketing materials that are focused on themselves as opposed to the actual reason to have a website – attracting and gaining the trust of potential customers that remind me of the “wild crew” who notched their weapons.
Details Matter – Thumb the Entire Trigger
I found this fascinating. You would think you’d use the ball of your thumb to cock a pistol, but any moisture from sweat or rain could cause your thumb to slip. And an uncocked gun in a gunfight is not a good thing. Instead, they would use the entire thumb joint as they were drawing to cock the pistol.
Small details like this can make a huge difference. For marketing, pay attention to the details. Do you have alt-text for all of your photos? Do your links work? Are you cross-linking your content (I’ll be doing this for older pieces next week myself)? Is the copyright date on your website correct? Is there a CTA on every post? How’s your grammar and spelling (this doesn’t have to be perfect, but at least master subject-verb agreement and common you/you’re type misspellings)?
Attention to the small details is a good sign that someone has a good grip on the bigger picture too.
Take Marketing Seriously - “Shooting, to them, was considerably more than aiming at a mark and pulling a trigger.”
This one is so basic, I nearly didn’t include it. But. Many companies continue to ignore or give lip service to the value of marketing. That’s a mistake.
Early in his life, Earp spent time with Tom Speers and had first-hand insights from men who survived because they understood the gun was an essential tool that kept them alive. Cheyenne warriors or bandits were ready to take their lives because of encroachment or greed. There weren’t Royal Farms around for buckets of fried chicken. Knowing how to use a gun kept you safe and fed.
Marketing is an essential tool that keeps your business alive. You don’t market? How will people know you exist? Word of mouth. Excellence. Both great things, but your marketing – whether a simple newsletter, your presence on one or more of the various social platforms, email marketing, etc. are essential to keep you in front of customers and potential customers.
I hope you enjoyed this even a little bit as much as I enjoyed writing it.
Are you tired of shooting in all directions? Or being afraid to pull the trigger at all? One of the best, most effective marketing tools for any business is a newsletter. Let me help you with yours. Check out my Newsletter-in-a-Box service or just go ahead and drop me a line: bryant@simplyusefulmarketing.co.
Note on Historical Accuracy: The shoulda-been history major in me has to say that while the advice from Wyatt Earp I shared here is broadly accurate; there’s no way to guarantee that Earp said exactly what is quoted in “Wyatt Earp: Frontier Marshall” by Stuart N. Lake. It’s widely suspected that he was . . . liberal on his quotation policy.
Still, I’ve read enough history of the “Wild West” to have seen various aspects of this advice attributed to different historical figures. So are these 100% Earp’s words? Probably not. Is the advice true and amalgamation of effective gunfighting? Yes.
Here’s the scene from Unforgiven.
And Big Iron, the Marty Robbins song where I pulled the “notches” quote from.