There is one thing that has always bugged me and that is when talented people get lazy, or they have too much going on, or they have stopped caring and just fill time. I have seen this happen in print, too, but I have seen it happen much more often in TV ministry.

I understand why this happens. Ok, no I don’t! I mean, I have empathized with editors and producers who were under pressure, or were given ridicules directives, but I still cant identify with anyone working in ministry that does not care, and there are many!

In the fast paced world of media deadlines are rarely flexible. Every week or every day you have to have a 28:30 ready to air, or a :30 a :60 or whatever to be inserted into a show! There is a lot of pressure and the pressure is the same for in-house media! Also, lack of forecasting, bad planning, bad marketing or just plain ignorance can cause either the project to be so rushed you just want it done, or the time to be filled with something that is unsuccessful. After awhile a person can learn helplessness and become apathetic just wanting to get it over with.

Rarely have I seen anyone in ministry do even a little research to see if their “angle”, “pitch” or their really “creative” spot will have the desired outcome and be successful. This issue does not happen in ministry alone, however, in ministry often the boss will give the directive to promote something, and because most church media departments are staffed by good capable people with very little experience, and church rarely test results correctly to see what actually works, the end result is “filling time” because the spot had absolutely no effect except to please the boss that something was “done”!

What happens in secular media is you get a lot of feature film wannabes who could never make it in Hollywood so they do their best to push really creative spots with huge budgets. To amplify this marketers are scrambling because interruption marketing no longer works like it used to, so they sell their clients on really weird concepts.

Every night you see all kinds of commercials, but to they work? Many companies like Nike’, FedEx, Apple, Coke plus hundreds more use creative spots to achieve top-of-mind market presence. Large companies have the budgets to do that because the key ingredient to be successful is frequency. The spot has to play again and again and again and again in the same market.

Just because a spot has a huge budget, looks creative and is funny does not mean it works. Churches often see these spots on TV and try and mimic the campaign, because someone assumes it works.

If you are involved with media or marketing in your church please put in the extra effort to research your concept. Because you and your friends think it is cool does not mean it will be successful. Maybe I am a little different because God has done such an amazing work in my life. I don’t know! All I know is that if you are working for God then you need to pull out all the stops so your projects have excellence and success. If your goal is to get someone to show up, shell out, call or join then make sure you are not just filling time. Make your show or spot effective! Marketers work backwards. Start with the response you desire and then ask the question “how can I use video or print to persuade a person to take that action?”

I’ll close with commenting on a national campaign that I feel is unique and cost-effective. It also drives traffic to the web by creating curiosity.  The campaign is Burger King’s whopper freak out. Not a really high budget production and no high-priced actors to pay.  It also utilizes personal testimonies from real people which is always effective. I thought the campaign was very good and it stood out from all the clutter!

In ministry we don’t have the big budgets so we have to work a little harder to achieve quality and success. Please please please – don’t ever just fill time! PLEASE! There is already more then enough really awful Christian television!

This entry was posted on Monday, December 31st, 2007 at 3:49 pm and is filed under Internet, Just Me, Leadership, Managment, Marketing, Media, Ministry, My Big Mouth, Remarkable, Television. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.