“I operate a travel agency and tour planning company. I have been thinking about packaging trips to Native American sacred places and Muslim destinations and selling them to Christians. That’ll work, won’t it? I mean, we all worship the same God, right?”

I had to explain to him that, technically, no, we don’t all worship the same God and that differences he may not have noticed, matter a great deal to Christians.

So, how can you know which religions are compatible with Christianity and which are not? The Bible provides a simple test in 2 Corinthians 11:14.

“For if someone comes to you and preaches a Jesus other than the Jesus we preached, or if you receive a different spirit from the one you received, or a different gospel from the one you accepted, you put up with it easily enough.”

This passage is taken from a letter written by the Apostle Paul to the church at Corinth.  In it he is teaching them how to discern false teaching with a three point test. 1. Do they teach a different Jesus? 2. Do they teach a different spirit? 3. Do they teach a different Gospel?

For our purposes, let’s keep things simple and focus on numbers 1 and 3 as they will effectively cover most situations.

1. Do they teach a different Jesus? The Bible teaches and Christians believe that Jesus is the son of God.  Not only that, but Jesus is both fully God and fully man.  He was conceived supernaturally and born to a virgin named Mary.  He lived a sinless life on Earth, was crucified, died, was buried, and descended into Hell, paying the penalty for our sins.  Three days later he rose from the dead in victory over sin and death.  He later ascended into Heaven and will return again to judge the living and the dead.

A conflict with any of the points in the preceding paragraph would mean a different Jesus was being taught and would create a conflict with Christianity. For example, if a religion taught that Jesus was merely a prophet or a messenger (as Islam believes) and not fully God, or that Jesus didn’t really die (again, as Islam teaches), then it is teaching a “different Jesus” and is incompatible with Christianity.

2. Do they teach a different Gospel? Christianity teaches that all have sinned and because of that sin are separated from a Holy God.  The penalty for sin is death and no amount of good deeds can erase our sin or repair the breach.  In short, we are lost and there is nothing we can do to save ourselves.

The Bible teaches that because God loved us, he sent Jesus to pay the penalty for our sins by dying on the cross.  Jesus picked up our tab.  Those who confess their sins and accept Jesus’ gift, are forgiven and reconciled with God.  When they die, it is as if they had never sinned and they spend eternity with God.  Those who reject God’s free gift, remain eternally separated from God.

The important thing to remember is this: Christians are saved by grace through faith.  They believe we do not–cannot–merit salvation.  They believe we receive salvation as a free gift from God because of what Christ did for us and NOT because of anything we can do for ourselves.

Christianity is unique in teaching that we are saved by grace alone.  All other religions teach either that we are saved by works (do enough good deeds) or some combination of works and grace.  Therefore, if a religion teaches that salvation can be earned, it would be incompatible with Christianity.

When attempting to mix your marketing to Christians with other faiths, run this compatibility test to be sure you’re on the right track.  GS

This article is sure to infuriate a number of Christians who, I’m equally certain, will be mad at all the wrong parties. Most will blame Pepsi and Macy’s for reaching out to gays and probably threaten to boycott. But, why would we expect Pepsi to do anything else? Its motives are business related. It’s just trying to sell more cola and happened to learn that gays, who spend $700 billion dollars annually, also get thirsty. Pepsi cares about sales first and only begins caring about a group’s faith or sexual orientation once it understands that by caring it can increase its business at which point it cares. A lot!

Instead of faulting companies for trying to sell more of their stuff to customer groups whose behavior Christians don’t approve, Christians should be mad at themselves for failing to make inroads with those same organizations in the name of Jesus. Maybe the problem isn’t that Pepsi has a gay agenda. Maybe the problem is that Christians lack a business agenda. If those corporations knew that Christians spent $5.1 trillion annually and also got thirsty, then it might be Christians and not gays that they were trying to please. It might be the believer’s lifestyle featured on the cover of Fast Company.

But where are the believers? Oh, they are probably picketing in front of the building incurring a company’s wrath, while gays and lesbians are meeting in the boardroom trading brand loyalty for preferential treatment. That could be Christians. That SHOULD BE CHRISTIANS!

Faith-Based Marketing is more than a way for companies to reach Christians product news, it may also be the most effective way for Christians to reach reach the world with the Good News.
-Greg Stielstra

Bob Hutchins and Greg Stielstra have a combined 30 plus years of expereince in the faith based marketing arena and just wrote Faith-Based Marketing: The Guide to Reaching 140 Million Christian Customers. The new book is an innovative manual to help business people understand, and reach this untapped group. I spoke with them about the best, and most efficient, way to reach this demographic.

There are 140 million weekly churchgoers who make up the largest, most faithful, highest spending market segment in the United States. Yet, you write that most businesses don’t market to this group. Why not?

Businesses don’t target Christians because most are still using demographic data to define their customers. Demographics were the market segmentation choice of the last century, but ideology will rule this one.

For most of history, markets were conversations between a buyer and a seller. It was a face-to-face dialogue focused on people and their needs.

The advent of mass media allowed sellers to speak to millions at once. But, the crowd couldn’t reply. Consequently, mass advertising was a monologue that shifted the focus from people to products.

Initially mass media audiences were so vast and affordable it didn’t make sense to segment them. But as programming choices increased, audiences splintered. As they did, it became useful to target the segments most likely to buy. Since only demographic data was available, marketers fixated on a person’s age, sex, income, and education as if they alone predicted a person’s behavior.

The modern digital era moves marketers beyond demographics by letting them glimpse people’s beliefs, passions and interests according to their behavior online. These predict behavior much more accurately.

Online behavior reveals that people don’t define themselves demographically. That explains why there are no Facebook groups for traditional segments like women 25-54 or households making $75k+/yr. Instead, people define themselves according to their interests and gather with others who share them which is why there are Facebook groups for Scrapbooking, Yoga, and fans of the Green Bay Packers.

Beliefs drive behavior and Christians are the largest belief group in the world (2.1 billion) and in the United States (231 million). As marketers stop relying on out-dated demographics and begin to monitor belief instead, they will recognize the value of Faith-Based Marketing.

You say most businesses do not understand faith communities. What do you think is the biggest misunderstanding?

Many businesses underestimate how many of their current customers are Christians and how important their faith is to every aspect of their lives. This can cause them to make silly decisions and to be honestly surprised when their customers complain or their business suffers.

That’s what happened when Lowes changed the name of “Christmas Trees” to “Family Trees” in a flyer a couple of years ago. The switch created a gigantic backlash from upset customers causing the chain to quickly apologize and return to calling them Christmas trees.

By understanding the size and sensibility of your Christian customers companies like Lowes can not only avoid embarrassing mistakes but they can proactively work to increase business with that important segment.

What companies do market themselves to these communities the best?

I think Chick-fil-A is an example of a company that has done a good job with faith-based marketing. It has acknowledged its many Christian customers by including CD’s and toys with Christian messages, like those from Veggie Tales and Adventures in Odyssey, in children’s meals.

Chick-fil-A also supports several Christian organizations like Athletes in Action and Campus Crusade for Christ with donations.

Perhaps the most significant evidence that Chick-fil-A’s understands and respects its Christian consumers is its decision to honor the fourth commandment to honor the Sabbath. Chick-fil-A does this by closing on Sundays. Company founder S. Truett Cathy described the decision this way: “Our decision to close on Sunday was our way of honoring God and directing our attention to things more important than our business. If it took seven days to make a living with a restaurant, then we needed to be in some other line of work. Through the years, I have never wavered from that position.”

Bob, you were behind the online marketing campaign of “The Chronicles of Narnia” and “The Passion of the Christ.” How did you structure that campaign (I believe this was before the days of Twitter) and is there a lesson to take away from the movie’s successful online campaign?

The main thing we wanted to do was to connect with people who were fans of CS Lewis and specifically his Chronicles of Narnia series. His books are very popular amongst Christians.
By reaching out to the Christian market via email lists, blogs, and paid advertising, we were able to create ongoing updates about the movie. We also created online tools that people could use to help promote the film in the form of downloadable posters, info cards, send to a friend links, etc. We also created a desktop alert module that was a tool that sat right on top of the computer desktop so that information was pushed directly to the fans and they were notified when new updates were available about the film.

The lesson to take away is that since Christians are the most socially connected demographic in the country (most meet face to face at least twice per week) you must give them to the tools to spread the word about your film, product , or service.

How have you tried to market your book? What has the reaction been from Faith-Based communities?

We have a muti-facetted campaign for our book, but I’ll call attention to three elements.
We created a website at www.faithbasedmarketing.com. Not only does it provide information about the book, but it is also an extension of the book itself. The final section of our book is a directory of Christian organizations, events, media, gatekeepers, concerts, and more. It provides entry points into the Christian subculture. But we were able to compile far more information than we could fit in ten books, so we put it all in an online database at our website. People who buy the book get free access for 90 days, but anyone can subscribe for a small fee.

Rogers and Cowan is handling our publicity and is a great example of a company that’s comfortable in both the mainstream and Christian worlds. Their work for Hollywood stars helps them build relationships with media like The Huffington Post, but they have also opened a faith-based division that allows them to book interviews for us on the Moody Radio Network. Consequently, our book gets the kind of complete promotion that’s available to any business that includes faith-based marketing in its mix.

Finally, we worked with CCN (The Church Communications Network) to create a one-hour Faith-Based Marketing television show designed to help business people better understand how to reach the Christian market. That program will be broadcast to more than 2500 churches across the country via satellite. EMF Broadcasting, the nation’s largest owner of Christian radio stations, is helping to promote the broadcast by inviting business people in each of the 400+ markets where it has stations to attend.

We hope that our book can help bring the Christian and business communities together for their mutual benefit and see this particular promotion as an example of that collaboration.

May 15

1. 11:45 am Central time, WAFG-FM in Ft. Lauderdale, FL

May 18

1. 11 am Central time, ARD German Broadcasting, Taped interview with the “NPR of Germany.”
2. 2 pm Central time, Newsweek magazine.  The article is on the book and should be interesting, especially since Newsweek published a cover story predicting The End of Christian America.
3. Q&A with the Huffington Post.  I’ll post a link when it publishes.

May 22

1. 10 am Central time, American Family Radio.  This is a network of around 200 stations.  Check the station list to find one in your area.
2. 2 pm Central time, CWAHM. This is the Work at Home Mom’s radio network on the web.  This is a pre-recorded interview.  To find out when it will air, visit the Christian Stay at Home Mom’s website.

More interviews are being scheduled every day so we will continue to update this list as new ones are confirmed.

GS

Take a look at these statistics.  The data on giving is from the 2000 Social Capital community Benchmark Survey conducted by Roper Center for Publich Opinion Research.  I can’t imagine a better target for a charity than Christians.

–Christian Americans are the single largest audience segment in the country.

• 231 million Americans say they are Christians and 144 million attend worship services every week.
• There are more Christian Americans than female or male Americans.
• There are more Christian Americans than white Americans.

–Christians give more to charity than secularists.

• In the year 2000 “religious” people (those who attend church weekly) were 25 percentage points more likely to give charitably than “secularists.”*
• They were also 23 percentage points more likely to volunteer*
• When considering average dollar amounts the disparity is even wider.  Religious people gave four times more dollars per year, on average than secularists ($2,210 vs. $642)*
• The churchgoer is 21 percentage points more likely to make a charitable gift of money during the year than the non-churchgoer.

Rather than distancing themselves from Christianity, the organization should embrace its faith connection as a distinctive that allows it to better connect to the Christian church, raise more money, and provide more help to needy children.  GS

Why do Christians expect businesses to understand what they want if they haven’t first taken the time to meet the people at those organizations, introduce themselves, and explain their interests?  Why hold business accountable for adhering to principles many of them know nothing about?

Imagine parenting that way.  You would have no ongoing relationship with your child.  You would never tell them about your self or what you want from them.  In fact, your only contact would occur when they violated one of your rules, at which point you would swoop in and punish them.

Would the child know what to do or how to act?  Would they love and respect the parent?  Would they come home for Christmas or Thanksgiving or carry your photo in their wallet?  Probably not.  Yet this describes the relationship that manywell-intentioned Christian organizations have with businesses.

I think organizations like, Focus on the Family, The American Family Association, The Southern Baptists, and even your home church should immediately adopt a rule that unless they have first built a relationship with a company and told them the kind of behaviors that will win their support and loyalty, they have no right to withhold that support in the form of a boycott.

Christians would become known as relationship builders rather than angry protesters.  Businesses would understand how many Christians there are, what they want, and how to please them.  They would also be less likely to make mistakes that incur their wrath.  That sounds like a better world to me.  GS

Here are key findings from the Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey:

• 88% of Americans believe Jesus Christ actually walked the earth 2000 years ago.  5% disagree and 7% are unsure.  This fact is not in dispute, of course, but it is worth noting the vast majority who believe it.
• 82% believe Jesus was the son of God who came to Earth to die for our sins.
• 79% believe the central claim of the Christian faith, that Jesus rose from the dead.

More surprising to many is that those same beliefs are also held by a majority of people who “rarely or never attend church.”  72% of them believe Jesus walked the Earth, 58% think he was the son of God, and 50% believe he rose from the dead.

This data strongly contradicts the Newsweek cover story last week that predicted the end of Christian America and illustrates a point we make in our book, Faith-Based Marketing.  The mainstream media portray Christians as kooks and business people as crooks.  Therefore, businesses cannot rely on mainstream media to properly represent Christian beliefs in this country because either the media don’t know enough about to topic to get the story right or, as may be the case with the Newsweek article, they have an agenda and are writing from their hopes rather than facts.

Either way, trusting the mainstream media for information about Christian beliefs in this country will cause business to make embarrassing mistakes and miss gigantic opportunities.  Better to talk with local pastors, seek counsel from experts, or read a book like ours.  GS

1. Please recognize the number of Christians in society
2. Acknowledge our spending power and influence and
3. Respect our beliefs with the way you conduct your business and market your products

Faith-based marketing is a positive way to accomplish those same things and much more becoming of Christians.

• Faith-based marketing makes friends with businesses whereas boycotts make enemies
• Faith-based marketing builds relationships but boycotts destroy them
• Faith-based marketing communicates what Christians are for but boycotts highlight only what we are against
• Faith-based marketing is proactive while boycotts are reactive
• Faith-based marketing creates behaviors that please Christians but boycotts can only eliminate behaviors that offend
• Faith-based marketing defines Christians by love, boycotts define Christians by hate
• Faith-based marketing gets Christians inside a company, boycotts keep them outside

Not only is faith-based marketing preferable to boycotts, in many cases, it could have averted the behaviors that prompted boycotts in the first place.

Tremendous business growth awaits companies that reach out to Christians as customers.  Wonderful opportunities to positively influence culture are available to Christians who reach out to businesses.

Please join me in embracing faith-based marketing as a more effective approach and let’s agree to boycott boycotts.  GS

Last week I posted Part 1 of my interview with Greg Stielstra on his new book, Faith-Based Marketing: The Guide to Reaching 140 Million Christian Customers. Greg was marketing director for Rick Warren’s The Purpose-Driven Life, the fastest selling hardcover in American history.

Read Part 1 to see what’s going on, or jump right into some heated action below.

———-

NBoA: But that first marketing tip sounds like a Power Juicer or ShamWow line at midnight. And the second, well, I appreciate real handwritten letters, but never generic, mass-mailed appeals with a font that looks like handwriting. These land in my round file every time. Same with the business person or clerk who sells like this face to face. I say thanks and leave the store.

Greg: I don’t like high-pressure tactics either, but realizing there is a deadline does encourage people to consider the offer rather than putting off that consideration. It’s certainly not unfamiliar to Christians: “If you died tonight, do you know where you would spend eternity?”

NBoA: I need to push harder in this next question, Greg.

In several places, including one called “Commercializing Christianity?”, you address the concern about marketers exploiting Christians. Yet I finished the book with an odd, if not bad, taste in my mouth.

I appreciate the local business/local church connections, but the “corporate” and “national” thread throughout (E.g. Walmart) conjures up the monster, consumerism. The church is too plagued by consumerism as it is. We need to be a cultural model of simplicity and stewardship, not a new frontier for any and all marketing explorers. You’re right to say that Christians fail at Kingdom values like stewardship as often as everyone else, but we’re still called to do it. Help me, because this seemingly unfiltered access-granting by two influential insiders like you and your co-author, Bob Hutchins, makes me want to re-subtitle your book: Building Corporate Marketing Arsenals to Infiltrate the Church.

Greg: I think you’ve woven several questions/issues into one and I’d like to identify and answer them individually.

First, Local Business/Church Connections = Good; National Corporate/Church Connections = Bad. The appropriateness of business/church relationships depends on the nature of those partnerships and not on their scale. Wal-Mart isn’t bad because it’s global. And Fred’s carwash isn’t good because it’s local. Corporations are legal constructs and, like money, morally neutral. They’re also filled with people that the Bible commands us to love as ourselves.

The same stereotypes and impersonal attitudes that make it easy for Christians to demonize “evil corporations” are what often cause business people to demonize Christians. It’s time that stopped.

Second, Does Faith-Based Marketing Encourage Consumerism? It’s not as if Faith-Based Marketing will suddenly cause Christians to be exposed to advertising; that’s happening already – at an average of 3000 ads per person, per day, regardless of religious beliefs. Rather, Faith-Based Marketing will help ensure that the ads we already experience respect Christians.

In the book we expressly warn business against appeals to greed or encouraging people to covet. If anything, our advice should result in more responsible advertising that better aligns with Christian beliefs.

NBoA: I do hope you’re right about this.

Greg: Third, Unfiltered Access by Insiders allows Corporate Marketing to Infiltrate the Church. The idea that we should restrict access to the church, or that the church has “insiders” and, therefore, “outsiders,” is very troubling to me. Restricting access to the church flies in the face of the Great Commission. Should we send missionaries to the remotest parts of Africa but stop business people at the church door? Are churches bunkers that protect believers from society or a haven of hope for all the people God made and loves? Are churches private country clubs for believers or field hospitals for all people wounded by sin?

Fourth, the overall theme of this question seems to be, “When Business and Christianity Meet, Christianity Loses.” Whether you fear collaborations between businesses and churches, or Christians and those who haven’t yet found Christ, depends, I suppose, on which you believe is superior: the corruptive power of greed or the redemptive power of the gospel?

My God created the universe. He is more powerful than Satan, sin, and death. He has preserved his church throughout history and will continue to do so. And he will save whomever he chooses and nothing, NOTHING, can stop him. Wal-Mart is hardly a threat.

NBoA: This still doesn’t clean my palate, but I appreciate your idealism and shared belief in the redemptive power of the gospel.

One thing I do like about Faith-Based Marketing is the focus on local and personal business/church collaboration. We discussed this earlier and I have a really practical question about it. I attend a large church and our big service day is coming up. Last year, over 1,000 folks volunteered to serve on various projects in the community. What are some practical ways local businesses could serve, and sell, on this project?

Greg:

• Equipment rental businesses could donate tools like pressure washers and ladders. Get a list of the various projects and then suggest the array of tools that would make the volunteers more efficient and effective.
• Local restaurants could feed the volunteers. Give people a free meal on the day of their service and coupons for subsequent trips to the restaurant. “You served the community, now let us serve you.”
• The local newspaper could cover the event and provide a free paper to participants. Follow up to see if they’d like a subscription.
• Local lawn care companies could volunteer to work alongside the church volunteers. Offer discounts on lawn care to service day volunteers. Offer to mow one elderly person’s lawn free for every ten church members who become customers.
• A local photography studio could volunteer to capture the day in photos and create a webpage to display them. They could supply those photos to local media outlets and make them available for church members’ Facebook pages. The exposure would increase participation next year.

You get the idea. The point is that by discovering what the church is trying to accomplish, helping by complimenting or multiplying the church’s efforts, and then positioning their business to benefit (but not requiring it), businesses can do good things for their community, forge relationships with local Christians, and, ultimately, prosper themselves.

NBoA: Very helpful, Greg, and I’m sure you could think of dozens more (Readers, there are many in the book.).

I’m thinking now about ad majors and folks who work in an ad agency. Advertisers often get assigned to projects that take advantage of consumers’ weaknesses and that don’t model Jesus’ love. How might adopting your “Serve, Don’t Sell” approach toward Christians affect the agency where they work?

Greg: I’ve worked in marketing for almost 20 years and have never discussed “taking advantage of consumers’ weaknesses.” I’ve never been in a meeting where that topic was discussed either. Agencies recognize that the consumer is in control and that for advertising to be successful it must understand, acknowledge and respect the consumer’s beliefs.

NBoA: I’m glad you haven’t discussed this, and I imagine the conversation is rarely, if ever, so overtly named in any agency, yet thousands of commercials tell me it’s happening on some level in many places. Here’s a humorous example:

Perhaps this is another topic for another time. Let me restate the question. How would you recommend that a Christian advertiser influence her agency in a “Serve, Don’t Sell” direction?

Greg: I’d remind the agency that the consumer is in control. Consumers select and time-shift programming. They block pop-ups and skip ads with their DVR. They expose false advertising claims in consumer product reviews. If you want their attention you must be relevant. If you want their patronage you must serve them. And, since 77% of Americans consider themselves Christian, agencies had better learn how to serve and be relevant from a Christian’s perspective.

NBoA: Five years – and the book’s success – from now, what indicators will make you and Bob say, “It worked, praise God!”?

Greg: One indicator will be business people, agencies, and media talking about reaching and serving Christians as often, and with as much respect, as they talk about market segments like African Americans, Hispanics, Soccer Moms, or Gays and Lesbians.

Another indicator of success will be Christians encouraging their friends to support businesses sympathetic to Christians rather than boycotting those that did something insensitive. I’d like Christians to be known for their love of the things they support instead of their angry protests against the things they don’t.

———-

Greg, thanks for joining us here. You are gracious and I pray that your work with Bob will encourage healthier relationships between marketers and consumers.

Readers, check out Part 1 of this interview here, and the book at www.faithbasedmarketing.com. Learn more about Greg at www.pyromarketing.com and about Bob at www.buzzplant.com. Finally, let me know what you think. Greg and Bob welcome your feedback, too, so don’t be shy.

_________________________

The Purpose-Driven Life, The Passion of the Christ, and The Chronicles of Narnia are three global success stories shaped by effective marketing. Specifically, they were shaped by two effective marketers, Greg Stielstra and Bob Hutchins.

When I learned that Greg and Bob were writing a book called Faith-Based Marketing: The Guide to Reaching 140 Million Christian Customers, I had to know more.

Were they insiders leaking church information to the adman, or friends trying to redeem current marketing practices? Were they using their success to promote buying more stuff, or calling on businesses to love customers better?

In this fifth New Breed of Advertisers interview, you’ll find out why I support and complain about the book, and what Greg has to say about marketing as a Christian. Enjoy!

Greg Stielstra is the author of PyroMarketing and was a marketing executive at the world’s two largest Christian publishers, Thomas Nelson and Zondervan. At Zondervan, Stielstra was marketing director for Rick Warren’s The Purpose-Driven Life, the fastest selling hardcover in American history. Learn more at www.pyromarketing.com.

Bob Hutchins runs Buzzplant, an Internet marketing agency that targets the faith and family market. He was instrumental in online marketing campaigns for the Christian hit movies The Passion of the Christ and The Chronicles of Narnia. Learn more at www.buzzplant.com.

———-
NBoA: Thanks for joining us here, Greg. What started Faith-Based Marketing and how did Bob come on board?

Greg: While working on the marketing for The Purpose-Driven Life and The Passion of the Christ, I noticed how their success had opened business’s eyes to the size and influence of the Christian market segment. I also saw how poorly equipped many business people were to effectively reach it.

What’s more, there were no books on the subject and precious few other resources to help. Mainstream media routinely misrepresents business people as crooks and Christians as kooks so I was convinced of the need for a book on the topic. That’s when I began writing an outline for a project called The Ten Commandments of Faith-Based Marketing.

Around the same time, Bob and a business associate, Beth Cathey, started an organization called The Faith-Based Marketing Association and held a Faith-Based Marketing Summit in Dallas that brought ministry and business leaders together.

I spoke on PyroMarketing at that event and, because Bob and I both live in Franklin, TN, it wasn’t long till we discussed collaborating on this book.

NBoA: And the rest is history, they say. Fascinating how our lives unfold.

In Chapter 6, “Serve, Don’t Sell,” you provide quite a few simple, local, personal, logical, natural examples of how a business can serve a local church. In fact, the chapter made me want to re-subtitle your book, Winning by Serving the Local Church. What’s your favorite connection example?

Greg: I’m a little leery when people talk about creating win-win partnerships because quite often they want both of the wins. Yet, the best collaborations really are those where every participant benefits. That’s why I love the serve-don’t-sell ideas we provided. They honestly help the business and the church. Here’s one of my favorites:

Youth Group Car Wash: Church youth groups often raise money for mission trips by holding parking lot car washes. Kids stand by the road waving cardboard signs while others wash cars with inadequate hoses, water, and suds. It’s inefficient and doesn’t generate as much money as it could. Meanwhile, owners of local automated car washes could enjoy getting extra business from that nearby church with a simple partnership.

We say, let the youth group use your automated car wash on Saturday from 8-noon and give them the profits earned during that period.

The church would encourage its members to support the youth group by going to your car wash Saturday morning and the youth could spend more time promoting the fund raiser throughout the community and wash more cars with less work.

I like this idea from a church perspective because it’s a more efficient version of something they already do–host car wash fund raisers. I like this idea from a business perspective because it gives people an actual experience with the car wash while creating goodwill for its owner among churchgoers.
NBoA: I heard an evangelist say, “We don’t serve people so we can convert them; we serve because we’ve been converted.” I suppose you could say the same about a marketing evangelist. But is it possible for marketers to see people as the bottom line and not as a means to an end?

Greg: Not only is it possible, it’s how things were for centuries and how, very soon, they will be again.

For most of history, markets were places where people gathered face-to-face. Buyers explained their needs. Sellers offered solutions. You still encounter a remnant of this era today when the store clerk asks, “May I help you?” The focus was on people and their needs first, and product solutions second.

Mass marketing rudely interrupted this market conversation from 1920 to 2000, give or take a few years. Mass media gave business a megaphone that allowed it to speak to millions of people at once, but prevented people from talking back. The conversation became a monologue. Instead of asking people what they needed, sellers used media to tell nameless masses what they were selling. This shifted marketing’s focus from people to products. It insulated business from its customers, dehumanized markets and transformed people into consumers. And it encouraged business to view people as a merely as a means to an end.

Fortunately, the digital revolution is transforming markets again. Not only does the Internet restore the conversation between buyers and sellers, it also enables buyers to talk with each other on a global scale. People can tell businesses what they want, what they need, and what they don’t like. The opportunities for dishonesty and exploitation which tempted some advertisers during the mass marketing era are less available. Business cannot lie because the crowd will immediately set the record straight.

The digital revolution wrested the megaphone from marketer’s hands. Business can no longer shout about itself over the crowd. Instead it must, once again, join the conversation by focusing on people, not products, and learn again to ask, “May I help you?”

NBoA: I like your optimism, Greg, and I see this transformation taking place. While I don’t have as much faith as you in consumers’ ability to discern what they really need, or, at least, how best to meet those needs, I do enjoy the growing interactivity with business, and look forward to advertisers being more honest.

A frequent theme in the book is encouraging this healthy relationship between marketers and consumers, something especially important in a volatile economy. We know money strains relationships, so what advice/warning would you give to marketers trying to connect with churches today?

Greg: I don’t agree that money strains relationships. Money is morally neutral. The Bible says that the love of money, not money itself, is the root of all evil, so it’s our attitude toward money that matters.

If we value money more than people, then that attitude will certainly strain relationships. However, if we put relationships first, then the money will take care of itself. C.S. Lewis said, “Aim at heaven and you get Earth thrown in. Aim at Earth and you get neither.” I think that insight applies to doing business with the church: Aim at serving people and you’ll get fair compensation thrown in. Aim at money and you’ll get neither.

NBoA: You also spend time debunking stereotypes, pushing businesses to get to know pastors and churches, explaining basic theology and church practice, and even providing instructions to non-churched readers on how to go to church (Chapter 5, “Meet and Greet”). These have practical, relationship-building value. Are they also your subversive way of getting folks to church?

Greg: I went to college to get an education and wound up meeting my wife.

NBoA: Enough said.

Early on you tell readers, “We won’t provide you with ways to exploit Christians….” I’m not convinced. Despite the good points I mentioned above, I think you cross the line at times with this promise. For example, regarding direct mail tips you say:

• “Create a sense of urgency without sounding desperate (’Act now and receive this bonus gift!’),” and

• “Consider various graphic techniques to grab the reader’s eye: ‘handwritten’ notes in the margin…”

This is infomercial material, and if I were a pastor and knew this was your approach to serving my congregation, I’d never let your message in. Why the manipulative gimmicks?

Greg: There’s a difference between effective marketing and manipulation. Churches put their signs in front of the building rather than behind it because in front it more effectively communicates with passersby. Is that manipulation? Good design or handwritten letters make a person more likely to read and consider an offer, but in the end, each individual still makes his or her own choice. A free gift sweetens the pot for those who take fast action. It gives the buyer more value for their money which is hardly the “devious influence” that defines manipulation.

NBoA: But the…
(Speaking of manipulation, readers, you’ll have to come back next week for Part 2 of my interview with Greg Stielstra. You can either subscribe to this blog via e-mail, or reader, or just stop in when you get a chance. Happy Easter!)