Comments on: No excuses for ugly duckling church marketing

By: Calum’s Concise Blog Summary #12 | Calum Henderson

Calum’s Concise Blog Summary #12 | Calum Henderson — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 04:24:34 +0000

[...] No excuses for ugly duckling church marketing [...]

By: Duncan

Duncan — Mon, 10 May 2010 01:00:29 +0000

Cam I think for the longest time we have undervalued art and creativity, in more recent years the church is starting to figure that out. I think conferences like connect are a step in the right direction, it will be speed that is critical moving forward. How quick can we adopt new technology, new design and new marketing. It will be our ability to re-awaken that passion and creativity, that is why things like this website get me excited about stuff in Australia. People are doing it, we just need some fly- wheel momentum happening.

By: Cam

Cam — Sun, 09 May 2010 04:10:52 +0000

@Duncan – The biggest recent disappointed was the art direction of Connect09. A lot of money was spent in Australia on advertising but it lacked quality in many aspects even though a fairly large known advertising company was used. To see the large Eye billboards in Sydney Central Train station was an embarrassment. I commonly hear preachers say Christians are dags but does our marketing have to be daggy too?

By: Duncan

Duncan — Sat, 08 May 2010 13:59:05 +0000

Cam you raise some excellent points. I have noticed recently a look of churches modeling themselves on the Mars Hill site. But they fail to realize Mars Hill site looks like that because of the area, that marketing fits well. We do have a danger of leveraging grunge and copying design to the point of it becoming the new clip art.

Just FYI grunge is done even the IFC king of grunge is moving in a new direction! Good churches invest in marketing, we are finally at a stage where we can start to do that more. I think for smaller churches getting there you can leverage some really good resources, cheaply or free which is really helpful.

Thanks for your thoughts Cam

By: Cam

Cam — Sat, 08 May 2010 05:35:23 +0000

I don’t like to be negative but there is a long way to go in church marketing. $1000 is dirt cheap for a website when compared to real ‘good’ design industry prices where a small basic website costs the price of a small car. There are still some really embarrassing church websites out there which have been not been updated in 10 years.

So visual design can’t change the world but it can definitely change people’s perception of church and their experience with church. My concern is that as churches are being pushed to market themselves better and do it cheaply they are all going to go in a similar visual direction. The template designs and graphics (that always get linked to) all look similar. It’s like the ‘clip art’ of the new generation. It’s either some graphic trying to be edgy with scratches, dirt marks, patterns and grunge type or some cheesy landscape. Churches need to know their target audience and pick a visual style that is expressive of their type of church. Using the guy in the church who knows how to tinker with WordPress or play with Photoshop is not the best option it’s just commonly the easiest and cheapest.