God enlists a PR agent
Giant blue Jesus billboards will be erected across the state from next week, as the Christian Church launches its $1.5 million media blitz.
Bible Society CEO and co-founder of the ‘Jesus. All About Life’ campaign, Daniel Willis, said Christians traditionally did not spend enough resources marketing their religion. “Part of the Christian message is that it’s about both the word of what Jesus was about, and also it’s about the deeds – doing the good things,” Mr Willis said.
“We don’t spend very much on the first aspect, we spend lots of money on doing the other side of things. And so, for a once in a generation, we’ve taken this opportunity to spend some money on the advertising side of things – to promote what Jesus said.”
Around 1700 churches across 15 Christian denominations in New South Wales and Western Australia are behind the project, which aims to market the message that the teachings of Jesus are still relevant.
This week was the first in what will be a six-week marketing campaign created by Sydney advertising agency 303. The campaign was launched on the internet and will extend next week to outdoor banner advertising, print and radio advertisements, before ending with a prime-time advertising blitz across all three TV commercial stations.
President of the Atheist Foundation of Australia, David Nicholls, sees the campaign as a sign of Christianity’s dwindling popularity. “I think it’s a sign of desperation of the mainstream churches that they’re losing numbers, as they are, and their populations are aging and they can see that within generations that there is not going to be any people left to even have a church,” Mr Nicholls said.
“So this is probably a last-ditch effort to see if this sort of system will work, because they’ve tried everything else. But $1.5 million is not to be sneezed at, I personally believe that money could be used to better effect,” he said.
“I think they should try and re-educate their own members, apart from trying to re-educate the rest of us.”
Mr Willis defended the campaign’s price tag, pointing to the ongoing social work done by church organisations. “The money that is spent every year will continue to be spent this year on those sorts of projects, so there’s not going to be a pulling back on the spending on that sort of work,” Mr Willis said.
“The money that’s being spent on this particular aspect has been money that’s been in the main donated by Christian business people who understand what it’s like to run business, who understand what it’s like to advertise, to promote the message.”
by Ehssan Veiszadeh
