What is your perception of the words brand and marketing?
How can you use the principles of branding and marketing to better connect with others and draw them closer to God?
Truth 3
Nobody Will Love Your Brand the Way You Love It
“Thy words were found, and I ate them, and thy words became to me a joy and the delight of my heart.”
— JEREMIAH 15:16
What you do every day often reveals your passions. If you run a religious organization, lead the communications for a ministry, or serve as pastor of a parish, chances are you are passionate about your work. You live and breathe life into it, ensuring work is done, bills are paid, and the organization’s efforts are communicated.
Yet, no matter how much you love your organization — your brand — no one else will love it like that. They can’t. They are happy simply to remember it on occasion.
The truth is, people are busy, and they are bombarded every day with things that need their attention. Think about this fun fact: a study done in 2005 by Yankelovich Inc. showed that the average person saw more than five thousand marketing messages a day,1 and this did not include everything we encounter now on the internet and social media. Now more than ever, your brand is simply one of many things vying for people’s attention.
When you think, hope, and act as if everyone loves your brand the way you do, you run into challenges. People get to your brand at different times in their lives, for different reasons. In particular, faith-based brands seek to awaken a deeper longing for God. If you assume that others love your brand the way you do, you are assuming a level of understanding that they may not have yet. Your role is to gently lead them along the path toward God, and you do that by interesting them in your brand, your work, and your ministry. If you assume that they already know and love your brand the way you do, you risk not connecting with them and potentially losing them.
You may remember the brand Healthy Choice. For a while it was all the rage, and the company’s brand managers, thinking everyone loved their brand, quickly moved to introduce all sorts of product extensions. In short order, you could find Healthy Choice cookies, crackers, snacks, and frozen meals; the list grew exponentially. Unfortunately, it did not take long for the sales to plummet. What was Healthy Choice after all? Could it really be a cookie? Consumers were confused and walked away. They never loved the brand enough to invest the time, energy, and interest in figuring out what Healthy Choice was really all about. Fast-forward a few years, and today Healthy Choice is focused on healthier prepared meals in the frozen or refrigerated food sections. It’s a brand people now understand.
Healthy Choice had great problems because they assumed everyone loved and understood the brand the way they did. As a result, the company moved faster than consumers liked, shifting and changing directions because they could see the possibilities. In the process they lost their consumers, who simply did not love the brand enough to go along for the ride.
Let’s consider a faith-based example. Many parishes have a Eucharistic Adoration ministry. Have you ever talked to people who run that ministry at their parish? Typically, you will find that they absolutely love it — they love spending that quiet time with Christ in prayer. Many who have regular adoration times find these to be “no-skip” events. For those who have never participated in adoration, though, the excitement is much less clear. Often they simply don’t understand. What do you do for an entire hour? Adoration is a simple example of this critical point in marketing. Those who participate absolutely love it. Those who do not participate do not understand it. We can talk about adoration for hours, but until you attend it yourself, you will never love it as much as someone who has already made it part of his or her life.
In St. Louis, there is a beautiful Carmelite monastery that has become an introduction to Eucharistic Adoration for many local Catholics. There, the Blessed Sacrament is exposed throughout each day, and people in the community are invited to stop by, if even for a minute or two. This gentle invitation encourages many to fall in love with adoration.
When it comes to your ministry, organization, or parish, do not worry if no one else loves it as you do quite yet. Stay true to your brand, stay consistent, and build it faithfully. If you are true to your brand and what it has to offer, people will come looking for it. Don’t assume that people know and love it; invite them in slowly, interest them in the potential, and gently lead them. They may never love it as you do, but they will certainly need and appreciate it, and it will delight their hearts.
For Reflection
How can you share God’s liberating love with those you care about without being pushy or overly dogmatic?
What is your response when someone is uninterested in pursuing spiritual growth or being on board with your mission?
1. Mathew Sweezey, “The Future of Marketing 2016: New Roles and Trends,” Infinite Noise, November 30, 2015, https://www.slideshare.net/MathewSweezey/the-future-of-marketing-2016-new-roles-tools-and-trends/15-InfiniteNoiseYankelovich_a_market_researchfirm_estimates
Truth 4
Everyone Needs to Own the Brand
“For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ.”
— 1 CORINTHIANS 12:12
All too often, organizations have a sense that the brand is owned by one person or team — usually the marketing or communications team. Nothing could be further from the truth. Everyone in an organization has responsibility for the brand. Just as many parts make up one body, so all elements of an organization are part of the brand.
The reality that everyone owns the brand can be a very difficult concept. It does not mean that everyone is allowed to direct the brand; that truly needs to exist with marketing or communications. However, all members of an organization need to be committed to understanding the brand and delivering the brand message for their particular department. Organizations are used to having separate departments with a unique focus, such as finance, legal, human resources, operations, etc. However, every single one of these departments plays a role in communicating the company’s brand.
An example of a brand that demonstrates well what happens when everyone owns the brand is Southwest Airlines. If you fly Southwest, you have probably heard a flight attendant sing or tell jokes to you over the plane’s speaker. Most likely, the flight attendant understood the Southwest brand well enough to know that singing that particular ditty was a good thing to do. In other words, no one told the flight attendant to sing on Flight 2369 that morning. Instead, the flight attendant knows how to be a living example of the Southwest brand.
The reverse is true as well. I once worked with a pharmacy organization, and I couldn’t understand why the pharmacists (the company’s customers) were so vitriolic when speaking about the pharmacy corporation. I asked the pharmacists why they had such a strong reaction, and several complained about accounting. “Have you seen the notices they send us?” I looked at the accounting practices and, sure enough, the language was rough,
