{"id":3075,"date":"2006-04-12T19:03:19","date_gmt":"2006-04-13T00:03:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/?p=3075"},"modified":"2006-04-12T19:05:27","modified_gmt":"2006-04-13T00:05:27","slug":"marketing-the-church","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/2006\/04\/marketing-the-church\/","title":{"rendered":"Marketing the Church"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Over on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theconglomerate.org\/2006\/04\/religion_niche_.html\">Conglomerate<\/a>, Elizabeth Brown links to an article about the &#8220;Scum of the Earth Church&#8221; as an example of niche marketing.<!--more--> The name is integral to the church&#8217;s mission of &#8220;reach[ing] out to our otherwise unreached friends&#8230;. Whether outcast by society (e.g., punks, skaters, ravers, homeless people&#8230;) or by the church itself, many who come can identify with the name &#8216;Scum of the Earth&#8217; since they have been previously treated as such.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints invests heavily in marketing. In the U.S., that marketing consists of media advertising (including <a href=\"http:\/\/lds.org\/\">internet<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/mormon.org\/\">sites<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/mormon.org\/seenontv\/1,19733,6199-1,00.html\">television commercials<\/a>), promotional literature (including, most importantly, free copies of the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mormon.org\/freeBookofMormon\/1,10120,1405-1-959-794,00.html\">Book of Mormon<\/a> or the Holy Bible), and direct sales (<a href=\"http:\/\/lds.org\/conference\/talk\/display\/0,5232,23-1-602-8,00.html\">52,060 full-time missionaries<\/a>). The media marketing emphasizes middle-class individuals and families, but my sense is that direct sales are pretty effective at reaching the constituencies targeted by the &#8220;Scum of the Earth Church,&#8221; even if the poor and downtrodden are not always a point of emphasis in the missionary work.<\/p>\n<p>Niche marketing does not become a church that views itself as the &#8220;One True Church.&#8221; We must be a Church that transcends social and economic classes, racial lines, and cultural barriers. Though our efforts are not equally credible in all communities, I do perceive the effort to appeal broadly, and I appreciate it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Over on Conglomerate, Elizabeth Brown links to an article about the &#8220;Scum of the Earth Church&#8221; as an example of niche marketing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3075","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-corn"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3075","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3075"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3075\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3075"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3075"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3075"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}