The short answer is…. Don’t buy media based on a relationship.
As and ad agency we are are constantly evaluating media and its outlets. Not from a relationship standpoint(where most ministries make their decision) but from a cost per thousand or cost per point. We evaluate media buying from a viewership or readership stand point not a popularity contest, relationship, or subscribers.
I appreciate Pastor and media directors who as their sphere of influence their opinions, viewing and readership habits, but please don’t make this buying decision based upon your sphere of influence or popularity. I will occasionally give you my personal reading habits but really as an experienced media buyer you should be looking at third party readership or viewership data, such as Nielson and Arbitron. Here at the agency we don’t have a product we are trying to sell, other than an efficient media plan based upon viewers not subscribers or relationships.
I believe God has called us to be good stewards over our money this means your media buy has to have a level of accountability.
Recently I was watching FOX news and they had Political analyst Carl Rove. He was talking about bounce and bounce time. When he was the campaign manager for President Bush, they new their bounce time was about 4 days. In other words, 8 years ago when they gave a speech they knew the speech would be in the hearts and minds of people for about 4 days, he later went on to explain how today’s rules have drastically changed. He said the bounce time, today its about 1 hour!
Staying in front of the congregation with information and being part of your organization is more and more crucial. As you know… Its a living organization that has continual needs, depending on them to show up week after week to get feed by the Senior Pastor is life time, that is a week to week is a lifetime! Putting together a strategic plan to engage with your audience on a daily basis is a really good idea.
If you have not made the investment in solidifying your brand, now is a great time. Your brand is going to become more and more crucial as we go forward.
As marketers what do we really do? Yes we create a deliverable and deliver for the individual medium. That is the obvious answer.
The difference between a designer and marketer?
A designer designs…. a marketer communicates. As a marketer. I think we really have to understand who we are trying to communicate with and get to know the communicator. Knowing the organization, senior pastor or ministry leader is absolutely essential to the process, I personally like to break bread together and ask them probing questions so that we can understand their long term vision. Once we have that established, we are on the right track. The problem lies in the time period to get this established, and the lack of vision from the top or understand of what the visionary wants to accomplish, this could take years and years. Or what usually happens is that the visionary changes the vision or we misunderstand the vision
Jesse Boulerice is a marginal professional Hockey player at best, but he does understanding branding. Branding in the sense of he knows who he is and is not going to change. October 12,2007 Jesse got handed one of the toughest suspensions in NHL history. He crossed checked a Vancouver player, it was malicious and intentional. He actually went to court and was fined and suspended. After his 25 game suspension, the game he returned on within one minute of his 1st shift on the ice, he got a 10 minute misconduct for fighting. Let me ask you something, when branding your image, church, or Senior Pastor how committed are you to him or her or the organization? Are you 100% committed to the brand? Or are you going to change your thoughts about who you are mid way through the year or design process.
I know hockey, fighting and misconducts are a bad analogy, but you know Jesse Boulerice is committed to who he is, and no one or thing is going to move him off of that rock!
A couple of weeks ago, I heard this quote from Billy Joel — “In an incompetent world…. people that are competent appear to be extraordinary.”
So when we mix incompetent people with bad equipment, bad lighting, or video, or graphics, oh boy, do we have a whopper of a problem. Is it really my job to illustrate or highlight this in the marketing world? I believe it is, for two reasons. The first is that we are the ones who have to clean up the imagery or find a solution to the issue fairly fast. Budgets are tight and not built for experimenting, so as marketers we have to get to the problem quickly, post a solution and then implement the solution. I have often said that if we could change the word marketing we would change it to “Planning” the word right behind it is “Accountability.
The second reason, is that as Christian marketers, we don’t have the flexibility, grace, or budget to make a second impresssion. As wisely once said, you don’t have a 2nd chance to make a good first impression. Churches and Christians, don’t have that kind of luxury with the un-churched, un-saved world. Would you agree or disagree?
Phil Cooke recently ran a poll on his blog about watching (or not watching Christian television). As you can see from the comments, most people don’t watch Christian Television because of one of these two reasons.
As a ministry leader, creative team director, graphic designer, or video editor, I believe its your duty to your church to attend. Every year there is a different theme for the conference, and this year it was about Branding and IPTV.
As a church media advisor board member, I had the privilege of moderating the Branding Session with Jason Faber, VP of Marketing Ministries, Phil Cooke, president of Cooke Pictures, and Eric Ticen, president of Edify Media. Below is a recording of our session.
Each year there is different theme, this year we were blessed to hear the future of IPTV and how to carry your brand from some of the top executives in their field. IPTV is going to really take over how media is being distributed. Any kind of loyalty that you currently have to any of the Networks or Satellite providers will no longer exist. Your programming will be on demand with a host of exciting features. Features like Text messaging, Instant Messaging, Caller ID, and email. right on your television. The future is going to be on demand and its going to be awesome.
There is no way that I could cover all the great things that there are to experience at NRB Convention. Here is what other bloggers had to say. I highly recommend that you do not miss it next year.
 Branding Faith is a must buy for those who are in the minsitry, ministry leaders, and pastors. I was recently reading Church Marketing Sucks and they gave a great review, however I need to stick up for Phil, becuase they did generate some good discussion points that I didn’t quite agree with.
The discussion point was this: “Where do you begin with the branding, on the Church mission, or the Senior Pastor?”. I personally have been very frustrated with the executive team saying “we” when in reality its one mans vision. Usually, “we” is not part of the equation. Its one man in their Prayer closet explaining where he is taking the church. I have learned to accept that the senior Pastor will over rule the executive team and in some cases the executive team doesn’t have the self image to stand up to the Senior Pastor. So where do you start building the brand…. Well….. For me its the Senior Pastor.
Two reasons. One, we live in a Celebrity/Personality driven world, so its easier to build off the Senior Pastor, and lets face it…we stroke his ego at the same time. I know most people would say stroking his ego is the wrong place to be but, lets face the facts. Two, its much much more difficult to extract the purpose/vision with the executive team and the senior pastor and isolate it down to one thing, than it is to understand the pastors vision and the demographics of the congregation.
I personally don’t like my own answer. I think we need to build toward the Church Mission however rather than the Senior Pastor, however, its just not practical in terms of time and money, we are not here today, however my prayer is that we will be there tomorrow.
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, it’s great!
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