Branding

Last week, we took a look at a couple of ways churches I’ve gone to welcome first time visitors. In both of those examples, neither church really put an emphasis on getting visitor’s contact information. While I liked the low stress approach of not requiring anything from a guest, I always wonder if there’s value in getting the person’s name, address and email.

My general answer to that is yes. As long as a church isn’t bombarding or pestering a guest through contacting them too much, I think...

Stock photography giant iStock is getting into the logo business. (Yes it’s okay to boo and throw things at your computer. I use iStock images, but logos shouldn’t be a stock item. It’s a visual representation of your brand. If you think of your brand as your organization’s personality, do you want it to be generic or unique?)

Anyway...the goal of this post isn’t to have a major rant about generic logos. iStock has put together a nice article called "Six Things to Keep in Mind When Designing a...

I’ve been really intrigued by the a couple of posts from Tim Stevens on his blog Leading Smart. He’s been going through various aspects of the church and saying how things have changed in the last decade. For example he wrote this about church buildings:

2000: Church buildings were mostly viewed as status symbols. Respect for a pastor was high if he or she had a new building. An emphasis on style and design was beginning to creep back into the church construction industry. Everyone came to...

I recently wrote about my experience with the cable company Comcast. Basically problems arose for a couple of years all because they had my address wrong. And after multiple phone calls, no one was ever authorized to make a change over something as simple as a street number.

We used that negative experience to ask if our churches have policies or procedures in place that prevent us from providing the best service we can to visitors and members.

Since that post, Comcast has done some...

It seems like Church Juice isn’t alone in having branding on the mind recently. I thought we’d wrap up our week long branding conversation with some thoughts from a couple other smart communications people.

Seth Godin, one of the best known marketing folks in the U.S., had this to say:

"Here’s my definition: A brand is the set of expectations, memories, stories and relationships that, taken together, account for a consumer’s decision to choose one product or service over another. If the...

A couple of days ago, we asked the question, "What are you the best at?" It’s a key question to establishing who you are as a church.

Now let’s talk a little bit about taking that brand and turning it into growth for your organization.

As a staff here at ReFrame Media, we’ve been going through a book by Jim Collins called, "Good to Great and the Social Sectors." As the title implies, the book lays out some things organizations can do to make themselves standout. In one of the chapters,...

This is a key question every church and ministry program within a church should be asking themselves. It really is important in distinguishing who you are as a church and it helps you focus in on your mission as an organization.

I think too many times churches try to be everything to everyone. Jesus wants us as the "big C" Church to reach people everywhere, but I believe he’s gifted individual churches with the skills to reach specific groups of people.

Once you know what you’re the best at, it...

Kem Meyer has a great post this week where she asks, "Are you promising more than you can deliver?"

Many time churches build up a program or event to be something it’s not. We promise some sort of life change or radical experience, but in the end it’s nothing all that special.

Here are some questions Kem says you can ask to see if you’re really being honest with yourself:

• What are you "putting out there" that you should really cut?
• What expectations are you setting that are...

The airways are full of commercials for the new Via instant coffee from Starbucks. The coffee giant is challenging people to see if they can taste the difference between its traditional in-store, fresh roasted coffee and the new instant stuff.

As a self admitted coffee snob, I’ve resisted Via thus far, but I’ve been curiously watching Starbucks. Earlier this year, the company decided to rebrand itself in hopes of reviving slumping sales. It was a back to basics campaign supposedly focusing...