Marketing and Management Thoughts

Churches, and every non-profit, can always use stuff for free. With that in mind I knew I had to re-post this from swissmiss earlier today. There seem to be some great free sites listed so check it out!

55 Great Websites To Download Free Sound Effects

Note: Some of these sound effects have limited rights. That means they are not allowed for commercial usage. We urge that you check the rights before using them for business purposes.

HatNod (swissmiss)

This video has just astounded me by the brilliant colors and how well the kaleidoscope effect worked. If you have ever been to a fair/carnival after dark you gotta check out this video. It’s a bit long, but just visually stunning.

Imagine asking someone in your church to make a promo video for a church night out and getting this back. I love it (though I do realize it’s a bit abstract and flashy for some tastes/settings).

Visual by: Sai
Music by: Wanderlust -Björk (Ratatat Remix)

hat not (Fubiz)

Following up our post on the Evolution of Video is this 4 minute video (by MadV)  that uses a communities response to a video to form this compilation of hope. I found it very inspiring, I also tried to find the original video clip but it was taken offline for some reason (likely when the owners account was hacked last week).

While there is a lower production value due to the heavy use of web-cams, the impact more than outweighs that drawback in my opinion. Your thoughts?

Christianity Today posted an article by Tyler Wigg-Stevenson today titled “Jesus is not a Brand“. He basically explains over 8 pages that because the message and hope of Christ is so superior to that of our consumerist culture that we should handle this message in a special way. In more or less terms, he plays the God card and tells us that it’s blasphemy to market Jesus/Church/Christianity (on the middle of page 4).

Tyler Wigg-Stevenson’s Argument

His four main points boil down into (in my summary):

1. The christian life is about Grace and Love not your personal goals, so we can’t sell you something to help you attain your goals.
2. Since consumerism is based on perpetuating discontentment and satisfaction from new purchases, marketing the church follows the same model. This doesn’t reflect the biblical push to find contentment in God alone (IE not needing anything but God for our contentment).
3. Brand Relativism (um, commonly known as Brand Affiliation or Brand Association) leads people to believe that something is better than something else when they are just cars, cities, and computers. The only difference is preference. Thus ’spiritual shoppers’ think of Christianity as only one option among many.
4. Fragmentation/Niches that are the focus of marketing campaigns are the reason for the distention and lack of unity in the church. Because we market to individual groups in relevant ways (that likely don’t appeal to everyone) we are conforming to the pattern of the world.

His conclusion cutting it down, but never the less in his words.

Consumerism is here to stay. The habits described above—self-creation, discontent, relativism, fragmentation—will become more dominant, not less, in years to come. That’s the way of the globalized economy and ascendant transnational commercial interests. We cannot defeat our situation; we can only seek to live faithfully in it…

But problems begin when we define the church as a whole using a comparison that just describes one of its attributes: i.e., treating the church as a business with a brand to promote. And then, even though there are all sorts of ways the church isn’t like a business, we begin to employ all the tools of commercial enterprise as though we were paying the body of Christ some compliment by treating it like a Fortune 500 company, with a bottom line, investor returns, supply chain, CEOS, market share, and so on. If we treat the gospel like a commodity, can we fault nonbelievers for thinking that the cross is just another logo?

My Response

While I have loads to say about his 8 page article, I will be brief, if anyone wishes me to write more on any point please simply ask in the comments section.

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I came across this amazing letter form project by Cameron Moll of the Temple in Salt Lake City. It is inspiring to see the detail and the level of perfection that he achieved in his poster project. While it used to be for sale at his website, it is now sold out (very short run of 50 or 100).

I hope seeing this work will inspire you to think twice about how you use type in your work for your church. It can have a very dynamic and powerful impact on the final presentation of your project.

via VisualCulture

It is stunning how many brands we interact with on a daily basis. Former ASU under-grad student Tanner Woodford wrote about how he logged all 1,035 brand identities he interacted with during one day the last October.

Incredible how many brands we see, use, experience on a daily basis. The image to the left is from his post where he laid the brands out for a 24 hr clock. Its an intuitive way to display the brands even without the clock arms spinning away on it.

With so many brands being experienced on a daily basis from the commercial segment of society I would contend that as a church as a whole we need to do a better job at:

1. Developing stronger brand identity where needed
2. Exposing that brand broadly in the public arena

Until we make these concerted focal points we should expect people to maintain the priorities that the currently have. The more frequently we as a church interact with the culture (in a positive light) we will only be helping them to make positive decisions on a regular basis.

I have to share one last image of this clock as a more finished product, so beautifully done.

Make sure you check his post out over at fillslashstroke.com

One of the great things about this whole web 2.0 thing is how different websites work together. This is done by them providing access to their system through something called an API. But what it means for us, less work!

So how does it mean less work? As someone in ministry (or even working full time) the prospect of being able to trim time off of our list of to-dos is very exciting. So here is how you can post on your blog, and have that update your twitter account, and Facebook status for free. Follow these 3 simple steps. (more…)

Jeffrey Zeldman comes up with a pretty insightful and funny/painful list of top cues for a designer/developer to walk away from a project before it every starts.

Some favorites are:

#7: Client can’t articulate a single desired user goal. He also can’t articulate a business strategy, an online strategy, a reason for the site’s existence, or a goal or metric for improving the website. In spite of all that, client has designed his own heavily detailed wireframes.

And

#20: Client begins first meeting by making a big show of telling you that you are the expert. You are in charge, he says: he will defer to you in all things, because you understand the web and he does not. (Trust your uncle Jeffrey: this man will micromanage every hair on the project’s head.)

Make sure you check it out if you are a designer for a smile.

If you aren’t a designer/developer check it out to get some insight into that world. Make sure to glance over some of the comments to hear their thoughts.

It’s important in any line of work (professional or hobby) to keep tabs on what others are doing. I follow all these blogs (and then some) to keep my eyes sharp and my mind inspired in the realm of design. If you aren’t currently using a feed aggregator like Google Reader you should really start (lets you keep up with news/blog updates all in one place). Subscribe to our blog, and the blogs listed below.

6 Blogs You’ve Gotta Read

1. Swiss Miss - General Design (http://swissmiss.typepad.com/weblog/)
   Tina Roth Eisenberg keeps this blog packed full of great design work on a daily basis.
2. notcot - General Design (http://www.notcot.com/)
   Kept up by a teamof bloggers who post about all things design. Worth checking out (and they are doing christmas product give aways right now, and it’s free to enter!).
3. Brand New - Brand/Identity (http://www.underconsideration.com/brandnew/)
   A beautiful blog when it comes to brand identities. They focus mainly on re-branding of large brands (like Pepsi, Delta, banks, ect). The insights shared on the new brands are really helpful to start/continue forming an eye for identify/brand development.
4. Fubiz - Video/Motion Design (http://www.fubiz.net/blog/)
   Most of what they post at Fubiz involves motion art. These videos are really well done and an inspiration to the multi-media designer inside me. I do realize this site is in french, but they post such visually stunning work (much of which is actually in English).
5. TypeNEU - Type Design (http://www.typeneu.com/)
   Type faces are gorgeous. The right type face changes everything. The days of papyrus and comic sans are long gone. This blog will help you realize the current trends in fonts, and gain an appreciation for this, all to often, overlooked art of typeface design.
6. I Love Typography - Type Design (http://ilovetypography.com/)
   Similar to TypeNEU, focuses on typography and has a lot of stunning content for inspiration.

Still not enough designy goodness?

Below are even more blogs to check out.

• http://www.productdose.com/
• http://www.oberholtzer-creative.com/visualculture/
• http://www.designspotter.com/
• http://designnotes.info/
• http://mocoloco.com/

In terms of building community this is probably the least effective method of those listed in the original post for the series. I make this statement because the main purpose of these sites is entertainment. For this purpose I’m going to break this down into three sections; Promotional Videos, Follow-up Videos, and Documentaries.

I would first post all of these video on your churches website for your members before heading over to a site like You Tube. If you’re interested in posting to multiple video sharing sites at once check out our post on tube mogul. (more…)