The 700 Club

It’s hard to believe that it’s over fifty years since Pat Robertson launched his own broadcasting network featuring The 700 Club. Frequent guest Jim Bakker would soon, with his wife Tammy Faye, go on to run their own PTL Club.

But this is neither to celebrate nor denounce Robertson and his endeavours, rather to point out the genius of the name “The 700 Club”.

The brilliance of labelling a TV program as a “club” was shown a decade earlier with Disney’s “Mickey Mouse Club”. Clubs are exclusive things, with entrance requirements and privileges, and everybody on the outside wants to get in. I doubt there was a single kid in the English-speaking world who was not glued to the TV for every episode of the Mickey Mouse Club, and who had not applied for (and received) a member’s pin.

Naming or inferring your brand as a “club” instantly gives you a cachet of exclusivity. You get to be the Tom Sawyer letting others help you whitewash the fence, but only for a price.

But there is a second part to the genius of The 700 Club: the magic of numbers.

Let me explain.

In communication, numbers truly are magic. Titles and branding such as “The Three Secrets of Perfect Muffins” or “The Seven Step Program” tell you that what follows is tested and true, that you are being introduced to something which really works and is successful. You wouldn’t call it the Four Stage Formula unless it was the real deal, now, would you? The authentication power of numbers is as old as storytelling itself.

Moreover, by choosing the number 700, Robertson also suggested, without saying so, that the club already had at least seven hundred members, that is, it was already successful. All the more reason you’d want to get in before the door closed. He could have called it the One Hundred Club, but Seven Hundred rolls nicely off the tongue, is pretty big but still modest, and besides, in evangelical circles, seven is a special number. What’s not to like?

Sometimes brilliant branding is a lucky fluke, but more often than not it results from clever application of the art and science of effective communication.

I’d be happy to help.