Two recent newspaper articles in the Des Moines Register and the Washington Times (though the Times doesn’t seem to be loading) talk about the marketing efforts of church denominations. The United Church of Christ and their Still Speaking campaign gets most of the attention, but the United Methodist Church is also attracting attention with their “Open hearts, Open Minds, Open Doors” campaign.
Both campaigns are seeing success:
- The UCC spent $1.7 million on the Still Speaking campaign and have seen visits to their web site soar from 35,000 per month to 500,000 per month last December when their controversial ad aired. So far they’ve had 5 million visits to their web site since the campaign started, and 521,000 have searched for a church in their area. This year they plan to spend $3 million on their Advent campaign.
- The United Methodist Church has seen first-time attendance rise 14% since 2001. They launched a new $2 million national cable TV campaign in September and plan to spend $28 million on advertising by 2008.
It’s cool to see denominations stepping in and doing advertising where local churches can’t always afford to.
