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Is Your Church Branding Falling into the “Pretty Woman” Syndrome?
By chris | April 7, 2008
If we are not careful church branding has the potential to change us and our story! You see, it is not the power of our brands that will transform people, it is the power of the story we tell, and the power of the One through whom we tell it that will. In my opinion, churches need to understand communication planning principles in our day, but we also need to recapture our passion for the message of the gospel.
Story telling expert Steve Evans talks about the power technology overwhelming a culture in his blog post about the Bhutan people. Evans believes in the power of story over the power of branding and I can’t help but agree with him. The story he refers to in his blog illustrates what I mean by the “Pretty Woman” syndrome.
(BTW: if you are thinking about the 1990 movie right now, you may be illustrating my point.)
Evans writes, “Dasho Kinley Dorji, chief editor of Bhutan’s Kuensel News Corp, feels his country is going through difficult times, on the road to a complete destruction of the country’s values systems. One way to combat that, he believes, is to create stories calling attention to the situation and ensure that those stories are shared and heard.
His creative non-fiction short story Pretty Woman portrays how the introduction of television to Bhutan in 1999 thrust the country into dramatic and painful change. The story tells how, over a period of seven years, a young boy and a young woman collide with forces much greater than themselves, their community and even their country.
She was the prettiest girl around – strong, sun-darkened, and hard working, with a face as round as the moon and a singing voice that enchanted all the men. He was a young boy, growing up in a volatile climate of change (still continuing today), confused by what he observes.”
Essentially what happened to the Bhutan people is that the stories found in television began to change the self-image of the people and their cultural values began to shift.
Dasho Kinley Dorji writes, “Over a period of seven short years, the country’s hero is no longer the king, but athletic superstars and Bollywood film actors, and the beautiful image of the hard working village girl is replaced by singing and dancing Bollywood stars and bikini-clad Pepsi models.”
You can read the Pretty Women story here (PDF).
I hope in all our branding, we don’t loose sight of our King! I hope our marketing never replaces Him or puts other things in between Him and the ones we want to hear our message (like a lame coffee shop or a “God is my Girlfriend” type rock song–don’t get me started!). I fear some get too close though. We need to be on our guard against this by asking ourselves tougher questions!
Question what is happening when we feel our own stories aren’t enough to convey the meaning of the gospel and we begin to look for other sources to help us connect with people. How does that change our message? How does that change what we value?
Who are our heroes? Do they always have to be the pretty people? Should they be marketing gurus? Do we have to act like polished self-help seminar speakers to reach people? Do you have to be wearing the latest fashions to be relevant to people?
Does our Evangelical church need all the extras we have added in the last seven to ten years to really reach people? Really? (Seriously, I need to know, because I have a really difficult time growing sideburns! I am hoping we don’t! )
Most churches I know that use marketing principles entered into the use of the discipline in order to tell the story of the gospel better to people who are on the outside of the faith. But somewhere along the way, a few of us seem to have fallen in love more with the technology of marketing and appear to have lost their first love.
We Evangelicals are new technology junkies. It seems we’re up for adapting almost any kind of new technology for the advancement of the gospel. But where we get tripped up (IMHO) is how little thought we put into understanding what adopting new technology might be doing to our message.
BTW: Quentin Schultze has a great critique in this area you might like, see my blog post on that.
The way I see it, marketing is merely communication planning, it is a technology that can help organize church outreach in this media-saturated age. It is not the panacea answer to all our church outreach needs.
But lately branding has become the cheesiest thing going in church marketing. I am sorry, but I hate what a lot of churches are doing. I think when we become too much like the world of brands around us we lose our sense of what’s special about us. We lose our stories and our real voice.
If when you go to church you have to ask yourself, “Have I come to church, or did I somehow get tickets to Cirque du Soliel?” I think a church has crossed the line. Some churches are so campy in their pandering to unchurched people, I think they look like idiots to them and don’t realize it.
We have so much more to offer people we don’t need more greasepaint, we need compassion and we need to tell our own stories! To really reach them we need to change our focus to people and their needs and not put as much emphasis on our production values and branding our sermon series.
There is a form of contextualization that is good for Christianity, but it comes from missiology– not so much Madison avenue. Don’t get me wrong, I think there is a lot in marketing that needs to be reclaimed by Christians. (Otherwise I wouldn’t be a marketing coach!) However, marketing needs to be adapted significantly to work for church communications. I find too few people really study marketing deeply enough to understand how to adapt it in our context.
I think there is a sense where there is branding in the church. We need to help define the meaning of our message to outsiders. We need to project and protect our reputation. But the kind of branding we do shouldn’t be the developed the way “Starbucks” branding is done, else the church will come off like “St. Arbucks“—as it does in some quarters.
When I see churches that are more likely to preach out of the TV guide, than they are to preach from the Bible—I have to ask how is media technology changing us and our stories? Has your church branding fallen prey to the “Pretty Woman” syndrome?
Topics: Deliver the Message |
April 7th, 2008 at 4:05 pm
What a great post. Well written, witty and poignant. Meeting the needs of people will have a greater impact than a sweet banner hung on our buildings. But how will people know that you’re in the need meeting business without the banner?
I think the line is crossed when more resources are put into the banner than into the needs.
BTW, your line about preaching out the TV Guide was both funny and like a slap in the face (I really like hollywoodjesus.com) and St. Arbucks…classic!
April 7th, 2008 at 4:38 pm
Eric,
Thanks! I think we are on the same page. I am not against marketing of course, but it’s where our priorities and emphasis are placed. We have to ask ourselves tougher questions.
April 8th, 2008 at 3:59 am
Good going, Chris. Sometimes, our emphasis is too much on connecting with the “First United Church of Starbucks”. Our intentions should be to connect believers and prelievers with the unadulterated love of God. It’s time for church communications teams to unplug from marketing gerus and find a spot where their gadgets can’t get WiFi in order to listen, feel and be still in the presence of God.
April 23rd, 2008 at 9:05 am
As a Graphic Designer and IT Tech, I feel this pressure of turning the church into Cirque du Soliel?” all the time.
Technology is great, but it can so easily be misleading. I have to wonder when churches are replacing missionaries for graphic designers.