CHURCH BRANDING

Churches are beginning to awaken to the importance of branding to communicate their essence, feel, culture to their communities. In all reality, many churches have been practicing branding for years without knowing what it was called.

We often see branding maldefined. A logo is not a brand. A color pallette and a style sheet are not the main components of a brand. These are important, because your logo and style do communicate attributes of your church/ministry. Are you serious or fun-loving? Modern or classical (or post modern)? Are you relational or institutional? Your logo and style can communicate many things about your culture...

If you are looking for ways to effectively communicate the unique brand of your church or ministry, a good place to start is by asking input from your members and supporters. Compile a list of adjectives describing your church or Christian enterprise and if you are the singular leader, adjectives describing you. Get a list of at least 50 adjectives and then narrow it down to the five adjectives that best describe the uniqueness of your church or Christian enterprise. Use phrases or even make up new words if needed. It's just a start at the daily process of discovering who you are. . . as a ministry and/or as a person. You will find throughout this process, if it is done correctly you will define your purpose and mission in a greater way still.

On Board Media staff have been using these processes for many years in many fields and also have certain questions and process that can help you define specifically your church/ministry mission and vision. This is vital for any organization if it is to give a clear sound and direction.

You need to develop the written, visual and even musical elements of your brand. Above all things, be sure to make this a team process. Who are we? What are we? What makes us unique? What do people remember most about us? What is our calling?

People are much more visually sophisticated than ever before. Not just with television, but with all forms of visual media and communications. If you want to have any hope of being relevant in this world, at least a part of your brand needs to shout forth a visual message that is relevant. Unless you intend to be branded as "old school", it may be time to put to rest that tired logo that has served so well, and those dated visual styles on the altar of progress and develop a look, one that can carry you from where you are now into the future with a message and a plan for growth that is fully consistent with your dreams, aspirations, callings and reality.

"Distinguishing symbols help set companies and organizations apart and convey a clear brand image to the public."


Here is a great story of a little church in Middleton Delaware, a town of about 10 000 people who used a very clever marketing strategy that worked wonders.

Eastpoint Community Church in Middletown, Del. had an incredibly simple, strategic and successful marketing campaign.

A small, young church, they were looking to reach a community saturated by a younger generation with a general disquietude towards the idea of church. They knew that an unobtrusive web site would bring just the proper message--we don't merely want to tally converts, but we want you to discover us. Thus the brainstorming began.

They knew a web site alone would not be enough. How would people find it? So they created a place of interest--a web site, and they created a vehicle for reaching this place--a marketing campaign. Rather than spending countless hours and resources reinventing the wheel and discovering new methods of marketing, they turned to time-honored tactics. Mailers and a billboard (you know how we love to talk about billboards here at CMS).

They created the site, and they put up a billboard. The billboard didn't mention their physical address. It didn't mention their mission statement. It just read "Before you turn church off ... www.eastpoint.org". In addition to the billboard, they sent mailers to their community advertising the web site.

The final piece of this puzzle was creating a web site that would matter. They decided to go with a web 2.0 feel and create a prayer wall and blogs.

It seems that these efforts created a perfect storm in their community. Church attendance shot up 277% (I believe that must now include most of Deleware's population), and they're looking for a new building.