Church Brand Architects

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Today I will Be Hosting the phenomenal 9 minutes sermons on leadership from some of the brightest church minds in the country at ChurchBrand Architects and JRichardbyrd.com . Please stop by and enjoy these great preachers.

The ChurchBrand Architect

Urban Church Marketing Specialists

By Richard L Reising

The origins of “branding” are simple. Shape a piece of iron, put it in a fire, and shove it onto the hide of your livestock. It is a byproduct of sweat, fire and pain, but it yields an indelible impression – a lasting mark that creates a sense of belonging and sets one apart.

Over the last 20 years, this concept has been the cornerstone of the world’s greatest brands. When you see a commercial and you know whose it is before the company is mentioned – why is that? It is because they have and are effectively managing their brand. They are differentiating themselves from others and providing a symbol that draws those who favor their brand into a deeper sense of belonging.

When was the last time that you mistook a McDonald’s drink cup for a Starbuck’s one? You haven’t. They have their own brands – their own look, their own color scheme, their own style.

The corporate world has learned that in today’s media-saturated world, inconsistency does not work. Studies show that people are required to see a thing 4-5 times before they begin to remember it. It is a result of media overload. And if you are not consistent, you run the risk of never connecting with them at all. Your multiple efforts might be perceived as being from entirely different sources.

Church branding is the next level of evolution in church marketing. It allows you to accomplish so much more with your internal and external marketing tools than you could if you designed your pieces without the spirit of a brand. While it requires you to commit to a single style, it ensures that your communication carries your predetermined impression everywhere it goes.

When your congregation is proud of your brochure and they hand it to their friends… When the friends recognize the church because they had received a similar direct mail piece recently… When they visit the consistent website and are welcomed by the matching “welcome banners” in the parking lot… When the similar signage directs them to their destination with ease and when they open the complimenting bulletin shell… When these things happen, you truly shape the perception of the candidates for the gospel. You have made them aware that they are in a church that knows who they are and provides their message with the level of professionalism and planning that is due it.

When they give their lives to Christ, they will feel the true sense of belonging that your branding efforts only began to foster.

Create a lasting impression for your church. Provide your congregation with an image of something great – something they can be proud to be associated with – something worthy of this great Gospel!

An excerpt from the ChurchMarketing 101 Seminar, the section “Marketing Secrets of the Big Boys.”
Reising is a consultant to pastors and Christian leaders nationwide. He is also the President of Artistry Marketing Concepts, LLC—a Christian-based marketing and design firm. God called Richard from the corporate marketing arena to combine Biblical principles with marketing strategy in order to assist in seeing God’s Great Commission fulfilled.

While we will probably never have a definite answer, we can look at five principles that have shaped their success in the automobile industry and learn how those same principles can be applied to create a better church. These five principles published by Business 2.0 are:

Know the limits of your brand.
Toyota launched Scion because it recognized the limitations of its existing brands. The average Toyota driver is 50, and buyers of the company’s big Lexus sedans are even older. But Scion is attracting an entirely new cadre of customers with a median age of only 35, extending Toyota’s reach to the 63 million-strong “echo boomer” generation. “You have to be who you are,” says marketing consultant John Winsor, author of Beyond the Brand. “If you’re going to switch directions, you’d better start fresh.”

For Churches: You can’t be something you are not. Your church will not appeal to everyone. Know who you appeal to, and if you need to reach an additional audience, know what must be done in order to reach them. For instance, some churches have discovered that they can appeal to a broader scope of audiences by offering multiple venues each with its own unique worship style while delivering the same message via video feed.

Making great products mean going the extra mile (or 53,000).
An old Toyota proverb goes something like this: To make a better product, get off your rear end and experience the marketplace. Charged with revamping the Sienna minivan for 2004, Toyota chief engineer Yuji Yokoya did just that. To improve on the previous Sienna—small and underpowered—Yokoya embarked on a 53,000-mile North American minivan road trip that included five cross-continent treks, visits to every Mexican state and Canadian province, and loops around Puerto Rico, Hawaii, and the Virgin Islands.

For Churches: The church experience for the staff is quite different than the church experience for the congregation and especially for first-time guests. Experience your church like someone would for the first time. Test drive it. Forget all of your familiarities with your church and its culture, and simply ask the “why” behind everything you experience.

Study their mistakes – and your own.
Mining niches pioneered by others is a Toyota specialty. In 1989, Toyota introduced its high-end Lexus line, which within three years outsold BMW and Mercedes-Benz to become the No. 1 luxury import. The company’s family-oriented Camry sedan out-Taurused the Taurus in quality and function and is still a perennial chart topper.

For Churches: You don’t have to reinvent the wheel. Learn from other churches’ mistakes and successes. Learn what works and what doesn’t and build upon it. And of course, don’t stop there! Always learn from yourself.

To export quality, first export company values.
Toyota has long manufactured cars outside Japan. But to do so for Lexus, the company had to export the brand’s culture of perfection—a level of expectation that surpasses even that of the exacting mother brand.

On a Toyota, for instance, a 1-millimeter gap between hood and grille is acceptable; on a Lexus, the separation can’t be thicker than an eyelash.

For Churches: Communicating your church’s vision, mission, and values will increase the quality of your workers. It will also help you better reach your goals. Purpose unifies and directs.
Act. Improve. Repeat.

• Toyota president, Fujio Cho, shares the following wisdom:
  - “Rather than dealing with problems neatly in our heads, we execute. If our solutions don’t work, we try something else.”
  - “It’s a focus on results, where action is key.”
  - “Good managers never say, ‘Do what you’re told,’ because that tells subordinates that it’s OK not to use their heads.”
  - “Some people think that if they just implement our techniques, they can be as successful as we are. But those that try often fail. That’s because no mere process can turn a poor performer into a star. Rather, you have to address employees’ fundamental way of thinking. At Toyota we start with two questions: ‘Where are we wasting resources like time, people, or material?’ and ‘How can we be less wasteful?’”
  For Churches: The best ideas are worthless without action. Learn to think while acting. And as you do, strive to become more efficient at it.
  Those are the principles that have brought Toyota success. It’s nothing revolutionary. They simply need dedication and consistency to work.

By Richard L. Reising
Taken from Religious Product News magazine, May 2007

What if you could change the way people saw your church? What if you could give it the kind of extreme makeover that would make a new generation take notice and knock on your door? Could you, by communication build a bridge towards a new you? Most assuredly. Can you do it without internally embodying the relevance that your design emanates? Most assuredly not.

Branding is known as the consistent use of design and communication in order or to establish a clearly defined image. It works when that image is consistent with the essence of who you are. When it is not consistent with who and how you are, you come across as a poser—losing more credibility than you know. Church branding is real. It is here and it is at work in your church whether you realize it or not. You are either deliberately telling the world your story, or you are the byproduct of indiscriminant messages—the sum of it all creates your brand—your perceived sense of self through the eyes of your surrounding community.

Strategic church branding is becoming more and more of a necessity. As our previous brand names: Baptist, Methodist, Assemblies of God, and the like, fall off of our churches, a new generation of branding is coming to light. That is, reaching people with the stories our denominations do not tell. Who speaks the language of the community the best? Who speaks to which segments? Who defines cultural relevance and spiritual value? How can we learn what the spirit of your church is from a distance? It is a branding issue. A good starting point: the communication you create yourself. What if you developed a deliberate brand overhaul?

Every church needs a branding strategy. It simply makes sense. It is a commitment to communicate with consistency, established values, and a clear knowledge of the target. It takes less effort to maintain when you reuse the same design and communication threads throughout all you do. It is smart. It is done by every legitimate corporation of our day.

So why don’t more churches have a brand strategy? Why is it that 90% of the churches in the U.S. have logos and design styles that vary in everything they do—often representing the landscape of volunteer designers that have been burnt-out over time? I’ll raise my hand to answer this one. It is because we do not know who we are and we do not know whom we are called to reach or how to reach them. When we do, branding becomes the natural outflow of our successful communication with those people.

Branding cannot cure our inability to connect with a certain audience. If we do not reach them with our music and message, we will not reach them by the repackaging of it. We have to resonate with people. When we do, it becomes the defining point of our brand.

This leads to the big problem with branding. Drum roll please…

The problem with branding is this: to the extent you are consistent—if you are not strategic, then you are consistently un-strategic. In all you do, if you miss the mark, it is difficult and costly to recover. Branding, like anything else we do for God starts with prayer, vision, wise counsel, a passion for the lost, knowledge of who you are and whom you are called to reach. Without these things and proven success in reaching people, branding is often a stab in the dark that alienates more than engages.

Article by Richard Reising
Richard Reising is the author of ChurchMarketing 101: Preparing Your Church for Greater Growth (Baker Books). Reising is a recognized authority on church marketing and branding and the founder and president of the Dallas-based Artistry Marketing Concepts, an organization that helps churches and ministries make wise use of marketing, design, and technology. He has helped hundreds of ministries in the United States and worldwide through speaking engagements and training seminars.

By Richard L. Reising

Have you ever wondered why some churches have existed without an ounce of growth for ten years, where in the same community other churches have multiplied over 10 times within 12 months? Have you ever questioned why?

The mystery of church growth has eluded us far too long.

Many church leaders have struggled with issues of growth for years. They have tried a multitude of promotional strategies, from door hangers to giving prizes for bringing visitors, and, unfortunately, these attempts have had little to no effect over time. Even worse, by promoting a church that was not seeing internal success, many have actually hurt their long-term opportunities for growth.

Church leaders, if your congregants are not actively inviting people there are reasons why. If your visitors are not staying, there are reasons why. These are considerable problems, but have hope—there are solutions. Sometimes little changes can bring about big results—and sometimes these changes can happen very quickly.

The Foundation for Church Growth
The greatest challenges to effective church marketing come well before anything is printed or placed in cyberspace. Those challenges are what I call pre-marketing.

Pre-marketing deals with preparing a church inwardly, long before strategic advertising or promotions take place. Its basis is found in our ability to relate to our communities and alleviate the enormous gap that generally exists between church culture and the world. In spiritual ways different is good; however culturally it can be devastating.

Please understand that there is no suggestion here to compromise the Gospel or suppress the ministry of God’s Spirit. The presence of God and a strong scriptural foundation are prerequisites to any move of God in our churches. I am suggesting that we must focus our efforts on being simple enough to be understood and powerful enough to change lives.

Jesus understood this principle. He spent a good portion of His ministry fellowshipping with sinners. He understood how they thought and acted. He spoke in parables to help them comprehend spiritual things. He invested time into their lives—recognizing what they thought they needed and what they really needed. Jesus ministered to both. That’s the essence of good marketing—knowing what makes people tick. The time it takes to learn this is our investment into our communities.

Connecting with Our Communities
Unfortunately, in most American churches, we have created somewhat of our own Christian counter-culture. We tend to speak in “Christianese,” which leaves visitors thoroughly confused. We are vying for the attention of a generation of media-saturated nonchurch-goers who are accustomed to being communicated to in an extremely well-planned, professional way. Yet, we are at-large poor planners and unprofessional implementers.

How can we relate to this group of people—who represent the primary avenue for healthy church growth and the heartbeat of the Great Commission—if we do not know how they think and understand the language that they speak?

“And unto the Jews I became as a Jew, that I might gain the Jews; to them that are under the law, as under the law, that I might gain them that are under the law,” 1Cor 9:20. The profoundness of what Paul is saying is that in order to reach people we have to adapt our lives and our approach to them—understanding how they think, communicate and perceive things. It is impossible to relate to someone without adapting our communication to his/her understanding.

The ability to relate to our communities and church growth goes hand in hand. When a ministry can successfully relate to the people in its congregation, the church-goers will be willing to invite others because they know it will relate to those they invite.

Marketing from the Inside Out
Effective church marketing starts from the inside and moves out. Churches need to develop a plan that will ignite them internally, before they begin to promote externally. Once your church is lit up on the inside, the right marketing strategies will help your church explode into the community. No matter what stage your church is in, successful outreach begins with putting a finger on the pulse of your community.

I asked a young friend how he was enjoying his church and he admitted that he loved it, but was bothered by the fact that the church wasn’t growing. I asked him why it wasn’t growing and he acted bewildered and said, “I have no idea.”
“Yes, you do.” I challenged him, “You know why it’s not growing.” After a silence, I asked, “When was the last time you invited someone?”
“Well, it’s been a long time,” he said ashamedly.
“Why don’t you invite people?”
He shuffled his feet and said, “I don’t know.”
“Yes, you do,” I said. “The same reason that you don’t invite people is the same reason that your church is not growing.”

It might be simple. A congregant might be embarrassed about the church decorations, the woman who shouts from the back of the church, or feel ashamed that the pastor tells jokes about his wife. The harder it is to invite people, the more challenging church growth is.

You see, I knew my friend loved God and wanted others to experience Christ’s love. The unfortunate fact is that most people are not intimidated about being Christians, they are intimidated to invite people to their church.

This brings up one of the basic foundations of pre-marketing and the springboard to church growth: the easy invite. If an invitation is hard to make, for whatever reason, fewer people will be invited. The battle for growth is first fought in the heart of the church-goer who wants to better the lives of those around him/her. This is actually the desire of the vast majority of church-goers.

By analyzing the temptations and challenges associated with inviting people to church, we found the following to be true. If a church-goer can answer these 5 questions positively, then inviting friends and family will be not only easy it will become a lifestyle. The church will explode with growth!

1. Will my friend feel welcome?
Inviting—The atmosphere, nomenclature and style of service should be comfortable and non-intimidating to the un-churched

2. Can I feel confident that I know how the service will turn out?
Consistent—People need to know what to expect, because they will invite accordingly

3. Will my friend get something out of it?
Relevant—The songs and message should be understandable and applicable for people at all spiritual levels

4. Will my friend understand it?
Simple—Jesus taught through practical illustrations

5. Will anything that could seem strange to the non-church-goer be explained through Scripture?
Sensitive—Scriptural actions should be carried out with clarity and considerate explanation
Most of what stymies church growth in America relates to these fundamental issues. Be honest. Diagnose it. Pray over it. Be willing to change. Once you see substantial growth occurring through your congregation inviting people, you can then start advertising. Until you do, you are not ready to invite the masses!

An excerpt from the ChurchMarketing 101 Seminar, the section “Getting Your Current Members to Invite Friends.”
Reising is a consultant to pastors and Christian leaders nationwide. He is also the President of Artistry Marketing Concepts, LLC—a Christian-based marketing and design
firm. God called Richard from the corporate marketing arena to combine Biblical principles with marketing strategy in order to assist in seeing God’s Great Commission fulfilled.