Marketing and Management Thoughts

The MORE! Conference has come and gone. It was a good conference and we got to meet a lot of great people.  Some of you might know that this was our first official conference and kind of symbolizes our stepping out into the open for business world.

It has been really exciting for us over the last 18 months of development, dreaming, planning, and working along side substance church in developing the software to the point that it is at.

The feedback we received from people visiting our booth was amazing. We loved getting to connect with people and hear about what God is doing in their ministries and churches.  It’s always a great reminder of just how big and awesome our God is.

Our plan from here is to continuing to develop the software to be even more cutting edge and integrative than it already is. There are some big plans in the works that we’ll be unveiling over the next several weeks here on the blog and over at nineteen05.com. So if you haven’t subscribed already… make sure you do!

Photo Left: Pastors Carolyn, Peter Haas, and Mark Mellen (Substance Church Staffers)
Photo Right: Haas’ with Myself and Jordan Prins (Nineteen05 Staff)

Back in February we wrote about the failure Pepsi company ran into while re-branding their orange juice line, Tropicana. Today there was an unveiling of an updated redesign that is much more faithful to the original design that consumers rebelled so strongly to have back for their Trop50 product.

One of the interesting points that wasn’t mentioned in our previous post was the effect that the current economic situation might have had on this re-branding effort. It was referenced to during a CNN interview back in February and felt its premise relevant to share here.

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There is something about being inspired by beautiful things that is just amazing, encouraging, and musing. Here are two videos that are visually stunning.

Kuroshio Sea – 2nd largest aquarium tank in the world

Niagara Falls in Motion

We are in the process of polishing everything up to high gloss so we can put our best foot forward this next week at the MORE conference. While it isn’t the largest conference or even one all that focused on what we are doing it will be a great opportunity for us to get our feet in the water, and for the first time announce publicly that we’re open for business.

It is really exciting for us. We are still working on getting our toll-free number set up (and will post reviews of our service provider in time), getting the 10′x8′ backdrop in, and setting up our demo computers this coming Monday with one of our freelance designers (Ben Moren).

More photos to come, if you aren’t already make sure to follow us on Twitter and Facebook.

There is no doubt that Facebook is an online mega-site that every person and ministry needs to decide how they will interact with. I realize there are many opinions on how and in what ways you should use these sites, how much information to publish, and how much time to invest in it.

This post isn’t about that, but rather how facebook came about. How did a kid, who dropped out of Harvard, reach a net-worth of 1.5 billion by the age of 24. Mark Zuckerberg (pictured) has done just that.

Times Online article | Rolling Stones article

Today marks Bastille Day, the French day of Independence, which took place in 1790. So to our brethren who live across the sea we wish your country a happy 219th anniversary.

For those of you who haven’t read about our name (nineteen05) and the french connection. It is really simple. I was serving along with Agape France in Toulouse back in 2005-6 when they celebrated the 100th anniversary of the law of 1905 that legally separated Church and state.

While in America there is ambiguity as to the relationship, this law removed all state influence from the church. It allowed the church to be free to elect offices without the corrupt influence of the state.

So on this Bastille day we celebrate the revolution that ended the monarchy in France.

Enjoy this painting by Monet of La Rue Montorgueil on Bastille day (though I believe this version to be an artists copy).

Communicating the meaning and value of an idea (and the Gospel) has been a goal for as long as civilization has existed. This video takes a look at some of the physiological factors that cause our brains to create meaning. Understanding this can help us create more impacting messages and better forms of communication.

Watch the 6 minute video for all the details

Keys to help the brain understand meaning are:

1. Use Images to Clarify Ideas
2. Interact with images to create engagement
3. Augment Memory with Persistent & Evolving Views

If you have been reading here for a while you’ll know that I love the TED conference (Technology Education and Design). I love even more that I don’t have to shell out thousands of dollars to attend plus the cost of room+board and can instead watch video of the talks online or through iTunes.

It seems that the mega church phenomena isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. A 2008 study of 12 of the largest churches in america found that it was these churches that we attracting young and single adults, and that 25% of their congrigations hadn’t been to church for a ‘long time’ before attending.

While some remain on the fence about the whole mega church movement, these numbers seem to indicate that the movement will remain a part of the American church landscape for quite a while.

Some of the interesting findings from the study are that:

• Young and single adults are more likely to be in mega churches than in smaller churches.
• Nearly two-thirds of attenders have been at these churches 5 years or less.
• Many attenders come from other churches, but nearly a quarter haven’t been in any church for a long time before coming to a mega church.
• Attenders report a considerable increase in their involvement in church, in their spiritual growth, and in their needs being met.
• Forty-five percent of mega church attenders never volunteer at the church.
• New people almost always come to the mega church because family, friends or coworkers invited them.
• What first attracted attenders were the worship style, the senior pastor and the church’s reputation.
• These same factors also influenced long-term attendance, as did the music/arts, social and community outreach and adult-oriented programs.
• Attenders can craft unique, customized spiritual experiences through the multitude of ministry choices and diverse avenues for involvement that mega churches offer

Check the study (linked to below) for all the stats and numbers, it is really interesting.

Download a copy of the study, “Not Who You Think They Are: The Real Story of People Who Attend America’s Megachurches”, free at www.leadnet.org/megachurch.

via Catalystspace

One of the hardest parts of communication revolves around things that are so much bigger than we are. How do you communicate realities that are out of our grasp. This often has to do with large numbers (number of stars/people/bottles used etc), or with abstract concepts.

This video will inspire you as it does a brilliant job conveying a number of statistics in a visually complimentary way to the imagery already exists in the voice over/script. You’d be missing out not to watch it.