We have an old-style thermal bag in our house. It has some fairly dated fonts on the front that boast its ability to keep hot things warm and cold things cool and even to keep frozen things frozen for three hours. I think that bag is fairly characteristic of where we have come from in our world of marketing. I wasn't around in the 1920s but I can trace the development of advertising fairly accurately. Simply put; advertising used to be based in information.
Initially to sell a product you would need to communicate the relevant information about your goods to your consumer. To sell well, the product needed to perform in a certain way or fullfil a criteria that was needed or expected. In this game if your product could do the best things you were more likely to sell your stock. This is face-value marketing, honest sales-pitches, and it was based on information. But it's not hard to see what happened next. In the game of honest product descriptions came the idea of 'exaggeration' – that is: if the qualities in a product sell that product, then why not add a small magnification to one area, who not just show the good side and forget the drawbacks? White lies. The marketplace shifted and was flooded with great claims boasted by mediocre products that never lived up to the hype. The consumer's job was then to distinguish from a collection of heightened claims which item is worth buying and which is not. The essential skill became 'critical reading'. But if all the information presented by an advertising company wasn't what informed our buying, what was? Marketing moved from 'image with information' to simply 'image'.
The aim and success of a marketing campaign was to convey an experiece to the world. Without merely boasting about specifications, the game had changed;and graphics, fonts and image was a nearly unrivaled authority. The logic was that: products that are worth buying need to come from a company with enough money to package and promote it with tasteful class. This can be simplified as a shift from consumerism residing in the head to now being driven by the heart.
As I sat in the bar with my friend, we thought over the things that attract us; places, products, people. We were certain about what we liked and didn't like, we knew the places we wanted to be and the things we wanted to own, but we weren't completely sure why. We got thinking about church. We considered that the people of God ought to be the most attractive product on the market. It ought to be a community of love and grace and forgiveness; a relaxed and accepting social circle of healing and patience. But at the same time we wondered how you would market church to even begin to compete with the alternatives – the bars and sports clubs and social spheres. Knowing what a treasure we had in the gospel, we still didn't know how to convey that to the world. And maybe it's like trying to market the measels immunisation or antibiotics or invasive but crucial surgery. Maybe church is hard to 'sell' because the gospel is not an optional addition that can fit around you, but it's an essntial procedure that will hurt before it sets you free.
Into an already crowded room of competing voices and sales-pitches; the church struggles to be heard. Even with a neat and simple website and good graphic design the church can come up empty. Even after a list of unparalleled claims and offers, the church cannot be 'sold' or 'retailed'. Because it is not a neutral item in the market of consumerism; the entranceway to the church is a diagnosis of the desparate need for open-heart surgery. How do you sell the essntial amongst a market of luxuries? From an advertising point of view, we need people to not just 'buy' with their feelings, but to revisit the informed-consumers who bought things with their mind. In fact, to 'sell' the gospel, we need people to choose with their heart, minds and souls – for it is the totality of the man who 'buys' the gospel that is in turn transformed by it.
Sam Manchester is a University of Sydney graduate interested in Sociology and Ethnography. He spent a couple of years living and studying in London, but now is home on the North Shore enjoying Sydney's arts and social scene and studying theology.
Sam's archive of articles may be viewed at www.pressserviceinternational.org/sam-manchester.html