When the World Can Spread the Word Better Than Christians…

Orginally published on Thursday, April 27, 2006 at 9:00 AM
by Todd Rhoades

[New York Times article by Julie Bosman]We anticipated that there might be some cons," said Skip Dampier, a partner and creative director at the agency. "And we knew that not everyone at the agency would want to work on this business."

But despite its reservations, Tocquigny, which is based in Austin, Tex., took on the account in February. Soon the agency had a dozen staff members working full time on Teen Mania, planning major teenage outreach events and redesigning the organization's Web site, battlecry.com.

As he had guessed, not everyone at Tocquigny came on board. "To be honest, there were a few instances that people did express that they did not want to work on the business, and that was fine," Mr. Dampier said.

The agency has also worked on accounts with Dell and Caterpillar, the heavy equipment maker.

As the partners at Tocquigny saw it, the agency is a beneficiary of a new attitude on the part of some religion-based organizations: as these groups grow bigger and more financially robust, they are taking their work to so-called secular agencies instead of firms specializing in Christian outreach.

According to a study by the market research publisher Packaged Facts, a division of MarketResearch.com, domestic sales of religious products are likely to grow to $9.5 billion by 2010. Movies like "The Passion of the Christ" and "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" reached a mainstream Christian audience in the theater, and sales of books, DVD's and other merchandise followed.

The film market has been supplemented with music, computer software and newer products like Christian video games, a niche that opened up in the late 1990's and now includes about 100 active game developers, the study says. Books that appeal to a Christian audience, like the "Left Behind" series, have a commanding space in the market. (It may require a divine act to remove "The Purpose-Driven Life" from the New York Times best-seller list, where it has been for 170 weeks.)

Tocquigny's first major project on the Teen Mania account was to take the organization's message to a national platform with a new Web site aimed at attracting teenagers. Teen Mania gave the creative planners at Tocquigny instructions to use whatever technology was needed, from text messaging to podcasting, to engage the youthful and tech-savvy audience.

THE potential client was Teen Mania Ministries, a Christian youth organization devoted to steering teenagers away from drugs, alcohol and premarital sex. For the partners at Tocquigny, an ad agency not well versed in working with Christian groups, the potential drawbacks of taking on the account loomed large.

"I think one of the key things that we're seeing is really an increase in the sophistication and scope of these groups," Mr. Dampier said. "What we used to think of as a small nonprofit Christian organization has really turned into savvy marketers with an appetite for technology."

The problem for some organizations is that Christian ad agencies may not perform on a "world-class level," said Ron Luce, the president and founder of Teen Mania. His organization, founded in 1986, sponsors youth events across the country that attract tens of thousands of teenagers.

"I think people have gotten more and more open to dealing with secular firms when they see that there's no way to get the job done otherwise, at least in Christian circles," Mr. Luce said. "I know a lot of leaders in the faith-based community, and they don't have a problem going to a secular agency if they're reputable and have good character."

The agencies that specialize in Christian marketing maintain that they still have an edge over secular firms like Tocquigny. BuzzPlant, an agency based in Franklin, Tenn., that specializes in religion-based marketing, started out in 2000 by courting publishers of Christian music.

In recent years, BuzzPlant has taken on bigger business, working for 20th Century Fox, Warner Brothers and Disney. It did promotional work for "The Passion of the Christ" and "The Chronicles of Narnia."

Companies have been willing to spend more money in recent years to reach the Christian market, said Bob Hutchins, the owner of BuzzPlant. And the success of movies like "The Chronicles of Narnia" has shown the public that the market is a sleeping giant, he said.

But some failures, like the canceled NBC television series "The Book of Daniel," the story of an Episcopal priest whose family includes a daughter who sells drugs and a son who is gay, have exposed an inability to reach Christians effectively, Mr. Hutchins said. (The American Family Association called the series anti-Christian.)

"Many people have tried and failed because they don't understand the mind-set and the demographic," Mr. Hutchins said. "People think they can throw something out there and just put the word 'God' on it, but that's not what it's about."

But the reality for some Christian teenage ministries is that they are competing for teenagers' attention with formidable rivals: cable networks and Hollywood studios with sophisticated marketing and enormous budgets.

"If MTV can give them the best, why can't us Christians give them the best?" said Mr. Luce of Teen Mania. "If MTV values them more than we do, then MTV is going to get their hearts."

(HT to Todd Foster for the link.  Thanks, Todd!)  Todd blogged on this topic and asks a great question that I'd like to pose to you:  Is there something to be said for keeping Chirstian business "in the family" so to speak, or is the urgency of our times such that we need to get the Word out as powerfully and effectively as we can with the "best" resources that money can buy?

What do you think?

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