Marketing mainline Christianity
• Hodgepodge
Unitarian Universalist Association and other compassionate middle-of-the-road American churches have decided that if they don't reverse their decades of declining membership they'll cease to exist. What else to do but advertise on TV.
"They [at the ad agency] told us they'd never had a product that conjured up so many negative feelings" as the idea of "church," Mr. Buford said. Many in focus groups said they'd felt hurt or rejected by the church, so "unconditional acceptance" became the target message. ...
Still, to justify even the $212,600 spent on the Kansas City test project, Ms. Robinson-Harris has needed to show a bang for her buck. Her evidence: 100 people joined Unitarian churches in Kansas City last year as a result of the mass media campaign.
"If each [new member] contributes an average of $1,000 for FY04," Robinson-Harris writes in her cost-benefit analysis, "the total new income to the congregations is $100,000. In 16 to 18 months their contributions have more than 'paid back' the cost of the media buys."