Religious brands

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Key points

The world’s major religions are, in themselves, classic examples of excellent brand management, and their growth is as a result of effective brand marketing strategy.

However, with the fragmentation of religions, of cultures and of societies as a whole, the brand marketing rules are changing, especially for those who work to deliver a religious experience within a specific locality.

At this level, we recommend situation-based segmentation – focusing on a critical life stage, or cluster of life stages (celebration or bereavement) to move the religious experience from being a “full-service agency” approach to a specialist niche marketing activity.

Some of these concepts may offend those with a traditional religious education. For that we apologise, but we do not retract our point of view.

In more detail…………..

All the world’s major religions are excellent examples of brand management theory.

Brand definition

Personality

Say what you will of the god(s)/God of any religion, he/she/it certainly has a strongly-defined personality – whether as a loving, terrifying or wise figure.

Better still, that personality will usually have an equally strong enemy, which many believe essential to the development of an effective brand – whether it be some form of devil, or an opposing religion.

The religion may be further endorsed by the personality of its officials and adherents. Think of the Hollywood advocates of The Church of Scientology or, more traditionally, The Pope.

Stories

All religions come with a stack of stories about how the religion came to pass, and what happened as a result. These stories are usually not only highly illustrative of the beliefs of that religion, but also hold a strong resonance with the human condition.

Spiritual values

At the heart of a brand, and of a religion, are strongly held spiritual “eternal” values – what that religion believes in, and what it stands against.

These values will be strictly taught and enforced to ensure consistent “internal branding”.

Tastes/dress/appearance

Advocates, disciples, or officials of a religion often have a distinctive appearance in terms of dress and symbols.

Think of the dress of mullahs within the Muslim faith, of priests/vicars within the Christian faith, or of all adherents within the Jewish Hasidic sect.

This trade dress is not limited to clothing. It also relates to buildings – you would not usually confuse a church, with a mosque, with a temple.

And many religions have clear rules about how their followers should behave – whether they should dance or not, what they should eat, and how they should speak.

Emotional benefits

At the core of a religion are its emotional benefits – what “is in it” for its followers at a spiritual level.

This might be redemption, the relief of suffering, transcendental joy, exclusivity or the elimination of the fear of death.

All strong brands work at a psychological behaviourist level:

1. avoiding pain and suffering
2. reducing pain and suffering
3. promoting pleasure

So do all religions.

Hard benefits

In the same way that mundane branded goods and services will have a “pencil sell” – if you buy them, they will save you money, they will taste good, they will lose you weight – religions offer to save your immortal soul, reduce your suffering and, for established religions, to keep you out of trouble with the authorities.

Brand features

At the most basic level, each religion will offer you specific features – worship every few hours, days, weeks; pastoral support; the right to wear certain symbols; the right to enter certain locations, and to talk to certain people.

Central organising thought/slogan

Most religions are summed up in a one-sentence central organising thought that acts as an aide-memoire of what the religion stands for.

Christ’s “Love God; and love thy neighbour as thyself” is a better slogan than Madison Avenue has ever produced.

Distribution policy

All brands need some form of distribution policy as part of their communications plan.

The classic religious distribution policy was of territorial exclusivity for its branches – if you signed up to be the official distributor of the religion, you got a branch office (church, mosque or temple) and no-one was allowed to come and sell that religion (or even alternative religions) on your patch.

In return, you must answer to head office for your performance (church attendance, congregational behaviour etc.), and show due obeisance to representatives and officials from head office.

As in the world of branded goods and services, this distribution policy has somewhat broken down with the proliferation of competitive brands, either as spin-offs of the official religion, or as culturally specific alternatives. On the same patch nowadays, you will not only have representatives of all the major religious brands, but also competitors within the brands representing specific sects. This requires sharp segmentation.

Communications strategy

All successful religions have had smart communications strategies.

Many started with highly effective “buzz marketing” – a few committed disciples persuading others, who persuaded others, who generated events that persuaded others etc..

Once they became state-established religions, they used their branch structure to ensure appropriate communications in the field, and worked a symbiotic key account relationship with the government, for whom they operated as spokespeople.

Many of the key messages of the religion are formally recorded and promulgated, which is why many official religions went into panic when the printing press was invented (because it gave the same facility to rival religions). Think how Stalinist communism stamped down on the distribution of The Bible.

Merchandising

Classically, most religions understood the profitability of selling merchandised goods long before the Disney Corporation made an art form of it.

Books, candles, religious symbols such as crosses or statuettes, miniatures of churches and holy places – all the standard branded merchandise is there, right down to mugs and T-shirts.

Next steps

So, you wish to improve your performance as a local church official – what is your strategy?

Strategy

Now that so much fragmentation has taken place in the major world religions, there are a number of strategies you can follow:

1. be the official representative of a major religion – this is still the classic local strategy, to be appointed as priest, rabbi or mullah, and benefit from the full authority of the religion. However, if that religion is in decline, or the society is increasingly secular, it may not help you to obtain sustainable growth
2. be the official representative of a competitive religion – some religions are definitely “on the up”, such as the Church of Scientology. The strength of the brand will benefit those who help distribute it
3. create your own personality cult within a major religion – while a religion may be in decline, some of its advocates may be able to engender superior local performance through the strength of their own personalities. The Roman Catholic Church in the UK in the 1930s benefited from some crusading priests determined to convert key society figures. The Wesleys would be another example within the non-conformist tradition

4. create a new religion – when Martin Luther broke away from the Roman Catholic Church, he effectively created his own religious vehicle to ensure superior local performance. The same can be said of many other cult leaders, from Calvin, to the Reverend Moon
5. be eclectic – at a local level you can blend different religious beliefs into your own brand, while maintaining an official role as a representative of a specific religion. This, in essence, is segmentational adaptation – recognising that there are peculiarities in the local market that offer specific growth opportunities. This strategy is similar to the “3. personality cult” strategy, except that it is based more on situations, needs and beliefs than on personality

Segmentation

Let us take a fairly typical situation. You are an official of a major religion in a specific locality. You are doing nothing special – just what all your rivals are doing. You don’t have a “knock-them flat” personality. Church attendances are declining.

What do you do?

We recommend that you try some situation-based segmentation.

Major religions tend to use either demographics (e.g. geography) or needs-based segmentation (hell-fire preaching, the promise of salvation, the support of a warm/loving local community, life-after-death).

However, we argue that situation-based segmentation is the most powerful.

One version of this would be to take life-stages:

1. birth
2. childhood
3. early love
4. marriage
5. early family
6. mature family
7. divorce
8. bereavement/death

One option would be to take an age cohort and follow it through the cycle as a group – so you would recruit young children, and grow with those specific people until they reached old age, providing a self-support group through each successive situation.

More effective, though, would be to specialise in specific events. You could be the church renowned for doing the best celebrations – births and marriages. Many relatively non-religious people come back to the church to get married. Why not make a real virtue of it? After all, each major wedding is a chance to address another 50 prospects. Then there is the cross-selling: the christening, the first birthday celebration, the reaching the age of majority celebration etc..

Or you could specialise in bereavement counselling – divorces, redundancies, physical/mental handicaps and deaths – much as hospices do in the medical world. Divorce, it is said, is the only major life change that does not have its own sacrament. Churches tend to either try to ban divorces or resent them, but there is a huge need to help people through them.

In other words, what we are suggesting is that religions at the local level can move away from being “full service agencies”, and instead become situation-based specialists – niche marketers. The marketing does not even have to be religiously-based. You can run the best culinary events in the area, or promote a major cultural festival, such as Oberamagau.

What you have to do is to dare to be different, and to develop and deliver a fresh, compelling, proposition that makes you stand out a mile from the competition, targeted at specific people who are especially likely to want to involve themselves in your activities, and who will give you the return on investment (financial, emotional or spiritual) that you need.

Communications strategy

Once you have your differentiated proposition, then your first communications vehicle is PR (public relations) and word-of-mouth.

Word-of-mouth will fan a compelling proposition within the local community, which you then reinforce by consistent delivery of your brand in person.

Public relations will attract people from outside the community. A church doing good works in a specialised area is bound to attract the media. This would then be supported by an effective, community-building website that encourages deeper understanding of your proposition, and interactivity.

Ideally, you would follow this up by using other communications media channels – events and exhibitions, merchandising, books/brochures, telemarketing, direct marketing, e-marketing, and personal v

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