Marketing and Management Thoughts

The BBC wrote a short article today about the current pope and his scholastic slant.

Does this strange gilded cage in which the Pope spends his life mean that he has become so detached from the ordinary concerns of the majority of his flock – so immersed in his theological and academic studies – that he is out of touch with ordinary Catholic believers?

I ask the question only because of a series of acts or remarks which have aroused surprise and criticism and have been described (even in the Catholic press) as “papal gaffes”.

While there is no doubt that a void, maybe even a chasm, exists between the academics and scholasticism of the Faith and the laity. Without a bridge between these two groups there will be growing apathy between those in the ‘gilded cage’ and those of us living with laity.

Most obviously, though it needs to be stated, is that those leading our Church can never lock themselves up in a tower without contact with the rest of our Church. It is amazing how much simple day to day interaction helps people to stay connected.

My second thought is that through design we might be able to communicate some of the complexities of our faith to the masses, and the world. There are many difficult and complex questions (many without answers) that people are asking themselves. How can we help them in their journey of understanding?

I believe through an intelligent use of print, web, and film we can communicate and encourage the world. By creating thoughtful projects (like this secular piece describing the financial crisis) we can help people see the unseen and grow.

What are your thoughts? Is this even a chasm that needs bridging? If not, how can we?

Photo: School of Athens by Raphael – Paul Prins

One of the most often overlooked aspects of any large event is how to adequately communicate the numbers involved in a way our minds can understand. For a long time the thought of a million was so much that it couldn’t be comprehended, and then it was billion, and now with all the talk of trillions related to the bailout it is near impossible to understand what these mean.

Often we create mental images using other things that we can understand. How many times around the world can ____ go is a common one. In reference to the trillion mentioned earlier I read in the BBC a couple weeks back that:

A million seconds is 11 days.
A billion seconds is around 32 years.
And a trillion therefore is 32,000 years.

By far my favorite is when people visualize data graphically. I’m not talking about a pie charts and line graphs (which both have their place) but into innovative and visually striking representations. The steam graph to the right is a great example. This particular graph is visualizing the news from 2008. I think that it’s presentation and visual appearance clearly illustrates my point.

If this has peaked your interests, make sure you check out ‘The first sketches of history.’

If it is helping people to understand the budget of the church, the regular giving, or any number of other administrative details graphing is a vital way to accomplish this.

nod: Ned Wright

Sources: I Shot the Sherrif Graph, niemanlab.org

Recently I came across the twitter feed of Erwin McManus, pastor of Mosaic Church in LA. He was lucky enough to attend the annual TED conference (Technology, Education, and Design) which I follow closely through their videos (Highly Recommended). TED is a conference of the best and brightest sharing the latest and greatest from their fields. This leads to many inspiring and challenging talks.

Erwin captures that excitement in the first of these two tweets. Which were given in succession to one another.

Sitting at TED So inspiring. So I thought I would invite you into my TED experience. Today has wonderfully reaffirmed my passion to awaken humanity. February 5

Then the following day this he posted this. (more…)

Only 50% of people surveyed believe that Americans are implicitly christian as it has long been believed (Just as the trend is for someone born in India to be Hindu). This was slightly surprising since  75.2% (51.3% Protestant, and 23.9% Catholic – CIA:FB) of Americans are self proclaimed Christians.

This means that there is a cynical attitude forming in the hearts of American Christendom towards those around us. To further prove this point, the Barna Group reported on the people responsible for the lower demographic as:

Two-thirds of evangelical Christians (64%) and three out of every five Hispanics (60%) embraced that position, making them the groups most convinced of the shift in America’s default faith… People who said they are politically conservative, however, saw things differently than did the rest of the country: a slight majority of conservatives claimed that Christianity remains the natural choice of most Americans.

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On Tuesday this week (3/3/09) President Obama nominated Julius Genachowski as new Chairman for the FCC. While normally this would be of little importance or interest to the Church this time around it should be. With the issue of Net Neutrality (allowing companies to charge for bandwidth placement) that could potentially destroy the ability of any ministry to have a dynamic website.

We can let a big sigh of relief, for now anyway. The Obama nomination of Genachowski is seen as someone who will maintain and push forward the democratization of the Internet.

(more…)

It is hard enough to stand out in this world, and yet how much harder is it to really blend in? I’m not really sure about all of this trickery but it made me smile. Can you see the guy in the picture? He is very colorful.

Their site describes this as:

Urban Camouflage deals with the question how to camouflage oneself and one’s identity in the urban space. Our costumes are inspired by the «ghillie suits», the military camouflage suit. It was an adventure to wear the suit in the stores because of the conflicts with the employees, the reaction of the customers and also to see the pretty well camouflage effect in a real situation.

Make sure to check out the video below as well.

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I have been spending far to many nights lately working that I missed Louis CK (personal – wiki) on Conan O’Brien last week. I want to hear your thoughts.

Louis hit right on the head the entitlement mentality of the majority of Americans under the age of 30. Not only have we never faced any major struggles (as a society), our parents grew up in a similar circumstance except that they had their parents harping on them about the war (WWII). Yes Vietnam was a tragedy for our nation, but it is drastically different than Iraq/Afghanistan in terms of social/cultural impact.

Not only are some of his lines great (“You’re sitting in a chair, in the SKY!”) and potential illustration material, he has address what I believe to be one of the underlying things the current recession has touched on. That we believe we should never have to cut back, or to choose between several ‘good’ things, and that paired with a lack of appreciation spells a recipe for hard times ahead.

This video has been making its rounds on the web, and I’m interested to hear what you feel Louis is touching on during his interview.

(hat nod - swissmiss & DEtF )

We wrote about the re-design failure of Tropicana last week and this week the older style packaging should be showing back up on the store shelves. This video is from CNN showing a discussion over the new brand image. There is a fruitful interview with Linda Kaplan Thaler of the Kaplan Thaler Group Ltd.

While your church doesn’t have the market penetration and exposure that a brand like Tropicana does (or the $35 Million to dump into a re branding strategy) it does raise one last question I believe could prove beneficial for the church.

At what point does the church (any church) change their approach of ministry or marketing due to the response of those around them? Would it take five complaints? fifty? hundreds?

(hat nod Visual Culture)