MinistryCOM 2007 | Session 3 | Shawn Wood

Brand Schizophrenia

How are you going to help me with my stuff?
stuff=  anything that tells a story through print, digital, web

Communications is a huge bucket that stuff falls into. With stuff comes issues.

Our issues fall into two buckets.
1. How can I get people to let me do “more stuff”?
2. How can I get people to stop asking me to do so much stuff?

Stuff keeps happening and all of our leadership teams keep telling us that things will slow down soon.

Sometimes we think that brand = stuff.

“Policies are a mission that you can’t lead”

We’ve got every ministries “stuff” and we end up with brand schizophrenia.

If it’s just about “stuff” why don’t we just go work in the corporate world? We could make more money and tithe it back to the church.

But it’s not about the stuff, it’s about Jesus.

The problem is brand not stuff, it’s not a logo, it’s not an identity package.

Brand is not what YOU say, it’s what THEY say.
That’s hard to manage.

2 Faces of brand
1. the expectation of an experience
2. the emotional aftertaste left after an experience

Shawn tells a story about going to a restaurant and getting Mr. Pibb instead of Diet Coke. What if the restaurant came over after seeing him spew it everywhere and said “we’re sorry that happened. We’ll talk to Coke and ask them to change the Diet Coke logo.” But we don’t need them to change the logo, we need Diet Coke to come out of the fountain.

Sometimes we set up expectations with our brand and then leave a bad aftertaste because we never get to the root problem.

The root problem is the details.
Someone hooked up the mr. pibb hose to the Diet Coke cannister and ruined the experience.

Matthew 16:13-16
Jesus does the first marketing survey.

Jesus asked 2 important questions:
1. What are they saying?
- we need to know what they are saying
2. What is the core saying I am? What are those that have experienced me saying that I am?
- What do I expect to receive when I come to the church?

Jesus does not try to manage his “brand.” He doesn’t tell the disciples to go talk to the people that say he’s John the Baptist to correct them. He doesn’t try to re-brand.
He knows that when people experience him they’ll know who He is. He creates experiences.

What are people going to experience when they actually come and sit in front of Jesus?

If you ask people who you are and it doesn’t match up with who you say you are then you have a problem.

Managing brand = control
Creating experiences = less control
- letting people that have experienced our church be our brand
- if we try to “manage brand” we’ll go crazy. But if we create experiences that give people what they expect they will become our brand

3 W’s- Weekend, web , word of mouth
Is everything we’re doing in these three areas helping people become fully devoted followers of Christ? If it doesn’t then we’re creating experiences that don’t match who we want to be.

Is the experience distinctive?
Relevance- sometimes we’re answering questions that no one is asking
- what would happen if we were bold enough to not do some of the stuff?
Are the experiences we’re creating memorable in a way that brings them back?
Excellence is over-rated, look and feel is over rated, technology is over-rated…the only measure is “is it effective?”

An Artist’s Mandate
Our primary job is to create for and unto God.
Get good at what you do. Do it as unto God.

Sometimes we are involved in details that only God will see.

Herom took time to look at the details even though no one would ever see them. (Shawn didn’t give the reference for this scripture…I’m interested in finding the story though.)

~ by Dave on September 14, 2007.