A bunch of designers were challenged to find, and redesign, classified adverts from their local rags. The finished products will be auctioned for charity. Here’s a sample.
Category: Communication
Worst. Campaign Timing. Ever.
Skins, a sportswear company, was a sponsor of the Melbourne Storm until today. They’ve just launched a marketing campaign called “Cheat Legal”…
Here’s the ad.
Guaranteed to be parodied in the next 12 hours I’d say…
The eyes have it
Eye contact is the preacher’s Holy Grail. Especially if you listen to people who are anti full text. I’m not so sure. Eye contact is good, especially for new people, but I think the longer I’m sitting under faithful preaching the less I care if the preacher is meeting my gaze regularly. Eye contact is how we accommodate fussy listeners. It’s pandering. I’d say almost 30% of the feedback I’ve received for preaching is on delivery, and that’s evenly split between pacing (which is very important) and eye contact (which is not).
Non verbal communication theoretically accounts for 80% or more of our spoken communication, this is (if I remember correctly) mostly to do with tone, followed by movement and expression (what you lose from communication from in person dialogue to a phone call is less than what you lose from a phone call to reading text). Eye contact is a small part of the picture – but it is by no means the most important part. It’s fools gold.
In journalism we’re taught that eye contact is intimidating. And anybody who has ever spent a conversation talking to someone who stares intently into their eyes knows that it can be both creepy and off putting. Newsreaders are trained to blink, while journalists will almost always ask the subject they interview to not look down the barrel of the camera.
In public speaking (and particularly rhetoric) making direct eye contact is a sign of confidence in one’s self, and one’s message. I think we’ve taken this model of communication and applied it to the pulpit. If someone looks down we assume they’re not confident, as a preacher my confidence is in the Bible and my preparation, not in my ability to deliver something dynamic and persuasive.
When I’m listening to a sermon the only time I really want to make eye contact with a preacher is if they’re a first timer and I want to give them a reassuring nod, or if they’ve nailed me with an application and I want to look nonchalant. Otherwise I’ll be staring down at my Bible or blankly into space, or writing notes. Good listeners aren’t really looking at the preacher (in my experience).
In the best sermons I’ve heard I’ve hardly looked up at all – I’ve been so busy trying to write down all the bits and pieces I want to take home. The most entertaining sermons I’ve heard have been from people with no notes and lots of eye contact – but I can’t say I remember a whole lot of what they said.
I reckon eye contact is the bastion of people with either mediocre content or limited preparation. Everything is more listenable with eye contact – but not necessarily better. And I think we should be putting more effort into getting people to write the way they talk so they speak naturally and at an understandable pace.
From now on if somebody tells me I didn’t look up enough I’m going to tell them they weren’t looking down enough. I want people I’m preaching to to be following along in the passage and taking notes. Not staring me down pretending that I haven’t just mentioned their favourite sin.
Why do we think eye contact is important? Its place in the preaching armoury seems assumed rather than demonstrated.
How to name your megachurch
If you’ve been putting together your business plan… ministry strategy… vision statement… prayer letter in preparation for planting your megachurch, but you’re still stuck on finding a catchy name… then here’s a list of 129 to choose from. Coupled with this guide to picking a ministry job title, and this list of ten tips for planting a megachurch you should have no troubles getting from 0 to 10,000 in six weeks.
The list of titles comes from Mount Gambier Presbyterian Church’s Gary Ware – who needs a punchier name for his church… I think “Mustard Seed Presbyterian” – because they have the faith to move a mountain.
Search Engine Optimisation for churches
ChurchCrunch is a good resource for church marketing. It’s from a network of blogs that track down resources and applications for using technology better in ministry.
They’ve got a great post about Search Engine Optimisation that you should check out, if you have any involvement in making decisions about your church website.
Here are the “ten myths” – read the original post for more details.
- The better your content, the better your ranking.
- Church Domain names with dashes are good for rankings.
- Clicking on your search engine results is somehow magical.
- You should have huge keyword density on your homepage.
- Your homepage is more important than your subpages.
- You should pay to be listed on site indexes.
- Don’t have a search box.
- Leaving old pages up is good.
- Search Engine Optimisation is a flick you switch and then ignore.
- Social Media helps
Some good advice here – my advice, mostly, is that anyone selling “SEO expertise” is probably a charlatan. And if it sounds dodgy (like hide links in white text in your design that search engines can read but other people can’t) – then Google is probably working pretty hard to stamp the practice out.
Tips for better church signs
I’m not really a fan of signs outside churches. Mostly because nobody is, and they’re never quite as clever as the person writing them thinks they are. But seriously. If you’re going to have one you need to make it original.
“God answers knee-mail” wasn’t funny fifteen years ago when email was relatively new. A pun on Email? Do you seriously think that posting this outside your church in 2010 is going to inspire a chuckle? Has anybody ever “found themselves in church” as a result of a dud sign? The Holy Spirit works wonders – but do we really want to put obstacles in his way by writing puns that aren’t clever or clear?
You get style points for trying something relevant to current events or technologies. You actually lose points, as in your sign has a negative effect, if it’s hackneyed, unoriginal, or stuck in the previous decade.
And don’t try to be too clever. Obtuse puns don’t work on a public sign. Especially if they can be interpreted two ways. And especially if a plain reading of the sign says something wrong or heretical.
“God is nowhere… read that again” still reads “God is nowhere.” People are driving past these signs at speed – and you’re putting “God is nowhere” on a sign. Dumb.
Those two signs were on the same church – one I drive past regularly – in the last two weeks.
But even worse are those churches that pull verses out of context to provide trite moralisms or ridiculous promises – like Jesus wants you to live your best life now… you can’t explain how that can possibly be the case (Biblically) on a sign.
I have never seen a sign promising suffering. They just inflict it on Christians who have any idea about marketing.
Paul the father of “all publicity is good publicity”
From the PR point of view this idiom is pretty stupid. Some publicity is not good publicity, but in terms of establishing a brand you could argue that Paul fathered this idea in his letter to the Philippians, in chapter 1:18…
“15Some indeed preach Christ from envy and rivalry, but others from good will. 16The latter do it out of love, knowing that I am put here for the defense of the gospel. 17The former proclaim Christ out of rivalry, not sincerely but thinking to afflict me in my imprisonment. 18What then? Only that in every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is proclaimed, and in that I rejoice.”
Eight things I’ve learned from arguing with atheists online and why I (mostly) can’t be bothered anymore
I’ve spent a fair portion of my time in the last two years entering arguments with atheists online. These are different to arguments with atheists in real life. Steve Kryger at Communicate Jesus has posted a couple of thoughts on this matter lately – and even been roundly panned by an atheist blog for his trouble. Steve’s posts:
- Why I’ve decided online religious debate is a bad idea
- Why debating atheists online is a fruitless pursuit
- Where are the Christians?
My motivation for doing so has been twofold – on the one hand, I don’t like seeing people bagging out Jesus without anybody mounting a defense, and on the other, I realise that people google for all sorts of things and read blogs and their sycophantic comments to help make up their minds. I want to present Jesus as an alternative worldview to militant atheism.
But I’m on the verge of giving up. Here are eight lessons I’ve learned (at times the hard way) from arguing with atheists that have left me close to pulling the pin on this particular avenue of evangelism.
- If you argue with atheists online, especially on their turf, you will almost always be outnumbered. There’s something about the nature of community that stops Christians using the Internet the same way atheists do. I suspect it’s because atheists are a minority with no real world equivalent to church. They meet virtually. They encourage one another through forums and blogs. The Internet, in my opinion, is their nexus of community.
- Being outnumbered makes actually engaging with arguments hard. If one hundred commenters on a forum each ask the token Christian a question and that Christian only picks three to answer (which is a 3:1 comment ratio ie those hundred post one comment each, the Christian posts three) then the forum often jumps on the one person, suggesting that they are being duplicitous or purposefully evasive. It’s a trial by numbers and “victories” are awarded to the masses.
- If you’re going to talk about science, logic or morality you need to be careful to frame your terminology accurately. If you want to engage and give a good account for yourself you need to be familiar with strawmanning, Godwin’s Law, ad hominem, Pascal’s Wager, and the “no true Scotsman fallacy” – Christians are often guilty of transgressions of the first two, the chances of an atheist resorting to an ad hominem attack in response to a Christian rapidly approaches one the longer the conversation continues. Atheists think they’ve debunked Pascal’s Wager, while the “no true Scotsman fallacy” is a favourite “trump card” they play in order to lump all theological beliefs together so that they can strawman us.
- Atheists have no interest in nuance. They don’t pay any regard to context. They interpret everything literally – be it text from the Bible, sarcasm in discussion (or irony), or anybody’s claim to be a “Christian.” They love quote mining – especially from the Bible. I’ve seen atheists take bits from Jesus’ parables to suggest that God wants his followers to put people to the sword. They aren’t interested in theology, they aren’t interested in why Christians can justify believing things they find abhorrent, they won’t ever really put themselves in “Christian” shoes when understanding things Christians say – they prefer to maintain distance because it’s easier to ridicule the “other”.
- “Christians” are your own worst enemies in these contexts. A week’s worth of reasoned and fruitful discussion can be very easily undone by one comment made without being mindful of presenting the “truth with love.” Stupid “Christian” statements, along the lines of the Answers in Genesis billboard advertisements form last year spend any credit lovingly Christ centred arguments develop.
- Most “atheists” are antitheists, most hold atheism at the core of their identity – but this is not true for all of them. You can’t generalise when describing atheists – some are like Dawkins who are atheists through a philosophy of scientific naturalism and evolutionary biology through “natural selection” – this view leaves no case for a creator, others are ex-Christians who had rejected all other gods already, and have since rejected God, some, like Christopher Hitchens, seem to be atheists philosophically first, and scientifically second. Each atheist is an individual. This is part of their problem when dealing with the “no true Scotsman” fallacy. They think self definition is all that matters for assessing claims – there are, in fact, external issues to take into account when deciding if a Christian is a Christian.
- You’ll almost never change anybody’s mind online. Particularly if you’re outnumbered. They who shout loudest win. Ten idiots in a room yelling loudly will always feel like they’ve beaten one genius speaking quietly.
- Your best bet in these situations is just to bring everything back to a question of the historicity of Jesus and his resurrection, this, after all, is the lynchpin of our belief. If they can disprove the resurrection then our faith is in vain. And it’s this argument that needs to be convincing. Questions of science and methodology are secondary.
Some bonus reflections – if you’re familiar with online bookmarking services like Digg and Reddit you’ll know that they are full of atheists who like to post, share, and comment on articles relating to atheism. There is almost no Christian presence (that I’ve found here). Christians need to come to terms with discourse on the Internet – because it’s, like it or not, a form of community. And a nexus for people looking to discuss new ideas. Sending people in to these forums “solo” doesn’t work. Constructive conversations in this format need more than a lone voice. I don’t know how you arrange a “team” approach – but that might be worthwhile.
If you’re an atheist who arrives here and thinks “these claims are all generalisations with no substantiation” – I can, if requested, point you to different threads (mostly on my blog, on the Friendly Atheist and on Pharyngula) where situations have arisen. Here’s one example, with a follow up, here’s a post I wrote that created quite a lot of atheistic consternation, and the response on Pharyngula. Or check out guest poster Dave’s three fantastic posts on why he’s not an atheist…
- Why I’m not an Atheist #1 – Because my Parents weren’t
- Why I’m not an atheist #2 – Scientific Naturalism is powerful, but not enough.
- Why I’m not an Atheist #3 – Jesus
I’m not giving up arguing online – though I won’t spend as much time and I’ll try to establish my commitment to arguments early in the discussion, but I’d much rather chat over a beer in a pub where there’s not the ability to hide behind a computer screen and thousands of kilometres. Non verbal communication is important. And it’s much harder to be nasty to a person if they’re right in front of you (incidentally this is why you should always do radio interviews in studio rather than over the phone).
UPDATE: Hermant from the Friendly Atheist has kindly responded to my list. I’ve posted a response to his response in the comments on his blog.
I’d also like to make a small amendment to point 4 – atheists (as a general rule – not all atheists) also pay no regards to “medium” a blog entry is to be deconstructed, analysed and critiqued the same way a scientific hypothesis or peer reviewed journal is. They disagree with a sentence without paying any regard to the paragraph it builds. They interpret things they disagree with at extremes – for example – I put quotation marks around the word “Christian” above as a shorthand way of describing those who take the Christian label (making no actual judgment on whether they are Christian or not – I think you can be a Christian and be very wrong about things). And it is interpreted in the following manner:
“Oh, and putting Christian in smarmy little “scare quotes” whenever you’re using it to describe a person whose actions you disapprove of? That’s what we call a “cop out.” The claim that YOUR interpretation of the Bible is flawlessly correct and that ANY judgment you make about whether a person is or is not a Christian places YOU in a position of purported omniscience. Talk about hubris!”
That might be one way to interpret such punctuation – the traditional usage is to indicate direct speech.
Six questions that make you a better writer
George Orwell was a good writer. I’ve shared six of his tips for writing before. Here are six questions he says you should ask of every sentence you produce…
- What am I trying to say?
- What words will express it?
- What image or idiom will make it clearer?
- Is this image fresh enough to have an effect?
- Could I put it more shortly?
- Have I said anything that is avoidably ugly?
This is from this feature – writing tips from six greats.
I also love these 11 tips from Elmore Leonard.
1. Never open a book with weather.
2. Avoid prologues.
Which can be annoying, especially a prologue following an introduction that comes after a foreword. A prologue in a novel is back-story, and you can drop it in anywhere you want.
3. Never use a verb other than ”said” to carry dialogue.
Said is far less intrusive than grumbled, gasped, cautioned, lied.
4. Never use an adverb to modify the verb ”said” . . .
5. Keep your exclamation points under control.
6. Never use the words ”suddenly” or ”all hell broke loose.”
7. Use regional dialect, patois, sparingly.
8. Avoid detailed descriptions of characters.
9. Don’t go into great detail describing places and things.
10. Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.
For example, thick paragraphs of prose.
11. If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.
And I love this quote… it reminds me of Jed Bartlett’s “next ten words” debate speech in the West Wing…
“Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words? He thinks I don’t know the ten-dollar words. I know them all right. But there are older and simpler and better words, and those are the ones I use.” – Earnest Hemingway after he was told that Faulkner said he “had never been known to use a word that might send the reader to the dictionary.”
Dynamic fonts are clever
I have seen the future of typography and its name is Liza Pro.
I’m sure there are other fonts that do this out there, but Liza has a character database of 4,000 letters – it will, in the right design software, change which version of a letter it uses based entirely on context.
“Liza Display Pro rocks the script lettering to the max. The build-in Out-of-ink feature, LetterSwapper and Protoshaper makes this font a realtime-digital-calligrapher. She’ll swash up your text drastically, giving long strokes, loops and swashes to letters if their context allows”
Clever. But expensive.
Five cheap ways to exegete your area
Here’s one of those posts where I try to synchronise a few years working with a marketing and economic development agency with the realm of ministry. Hopefully it’ll be useful both to me, and to you…
I’ve been trying to figure the suburb of Clayfield out. It’s a tough one. I’m sure others I work with have faced the same quandary (Andrew, Simone and Kutz) for years.
Marketing is a confusing blend of guesswork and social science – with new theories cropping up all the time – most marketing budgets are limited, so most marketers spend a lot of time putting their advertising in places that will get the best bang for their buck. Because most churches don’t have big marketing budgets or the time to conduct thorough demographic research here are five ways that you can let them do the hard work for you, which in turn will help you understand the people you’re serving.
- Read local magazines and papers – if you’re lucky enough to live somewhere that has a media outlet particular to your context have a look at what is being sold in the ads. Work out what kind of person buys those products. If your local newspaper features Tag Heuer watch ads you’re probably looking at an upper class suburb with high disposable incomes. Have a look at what stories are featured – editors keep their fingers on the community pulse, they talk to all sorts of people from your neighbourhood on a daily basis – the paper should be a reflection of the community’s values.
- Watch people in public places – What’s in the average shopping trolley? No frills or brand names? Battery eggs or free range? Are people making ethical decisions when they shop or financial ones? Are they eating healthy food or junk, are they buying microwave meals or the ingredients for some sort of substantial and prolonged culinary endeavour? You can learn a fair bit about people based on what they buy. Are people buying instant coffee – perhaps you should hold a coffee event and convict them of that sin, while pointing them to Jesus as the cure for all sin.
I think you can get a good feel for a place by going somewhere busy and just sitting back and watching people. Sit in a cafe, on a park bench, or in a shopping centre and just watch the types of people who walk by, those who stop briefly, and those who also sit. - What’s on the billboards – While billboards on main roads are for those driving through your suburb, they’re also for people from your suburb. Billboard advertising is purchased by location. It’s expensive (and mostly dumb – don’t advertise on a billboard – have you ever purchased something because you’ve seen it on a billboard (other than Coke)?). Advertisers don’t like spending money (unless they’re in government). They spend pointless money with some thought – the kind of product being advertised at a prominent intersection in your place probably has some relevance to the people living there.
- Talk to the owners of small business – Cabbies are a great source of insight in regional areas, or if you want a general state of play in a bigger centre (there’s no guarantee they’ll hail from your part of the city in Brisbane) – but small business owners have an interest in knowing what’s going on in their part of town. Their livelihood depends on it. Good business owners know their clientele, they know their repeat customers. Businesses like newsagents that deal with the same people every day are the best bet. When I was a networking function attendee in Townsville I would always talk to the bankers, the media ad space sellers, and cafe owners to get a feel for how things were going.
- Join a club or community group – head along to meetings featuring people from your area, join the P&C… contribute, but also watch and listen. What is going on where you live? What are the issues for people around you? How can you serve them practically? How can you hit them with the gospel?
Some bonus points for regional areas, unless there’s a suburb based equivalent these aren’t going to be that great for your specific context in a bigger city:
- Subscribe to newsletters from your regional economic development agency.
- Subscribe to newsletters from the Local Council.
- Join the Chamber of Commerce.
- Go to networking functions (who knows who you’ll be able to talk to about Jesus).
- Listen to local radio, especially talk back.
Incidentally, age demographics are dead as far as tourism marketing is concerned. Age is irrelevant (mostly). Place is also mostly irrelevant (except that it has a bearing on income). People want experiences that they can fit into the narrative of their lives. Postcard perfect photos are a thing of the past – you’ll find most tourism ads from here on in (thanks to some new market segmentation work produced by the state tourism body) will feature a mix of people enjoying different experiences.
People want a holiday they can go back and tell their friends about. Holidays aren’t about collecting photos of the seven wonders of the world anymore – they’re about doing something authentic, learning something new, or meeting interesting people from interesting cultures.
This new way of thinking is possibly relevant if you’re putting together an event for your neighbourhood – because I think events are similar to holidays.
But demographics still have an influence over where people live – you won’t find many low income students living in the austere realm of Ascot (think the upper class eastern suburbs) so understanding one’s geographic context is important when it comes to pitching events and sermon applications at people.
YouTube v Quietube
YouTube has a new cleaner look. Which is great. But if you want something even more minimalist, with less distractions, stupid comments, inappropriate related videos, or banner ads – check out Quietube – all you need to do is add a little shortcut to your bookmarks bar and you can hit it to watch YouTube videos distraction free.
Here’s a pictorial example of the difference.
YouTube
Quietube
An ode to @
The @ symbol is so hot right now – almost as hot as block letters filled with a scribble effect. It’s so in that the New York Museum of Modern Art has added it to the Architecture and Design collection. Go @.
Here are some @ facts:
Let’s start by looking at the @. No one knows for sure when it first appeared. One suggestion is that it dates to the sixth or seventh century when it was adopted as an abbreviation of “ad,” the Latin word for “at” or “toward.” (The scribes of the day are said to have saved time by merging two letters and curling the stroke of the “d” around the “a.”) Another theory is that it was introduced in 16th-century Venice as shorthand for the “amphora,” a measuring device used by local tradesmen.
Whatever its origins, the @ appeared on the keyboard of the first typewriter, the American Underwood, in 1885 and was used, mostly in accounting documents, as shorthand for “at the rate of.” It remained an obscure keyboard character until 1971 when an American programmer, Raymond Tomlinson, added it to the address of the first e-mail message to be sent from one computer to another.
Some words to remove from your vocabulary
I haven’t updated my blacklist for a long time. But that’s ok. Because the head of one of America’s ailing media conglomerates has spent his time (that probably should have been used bailing out the company) writing a list of 119 words his employees are no longer allowed to use.
Here are some of them (and here are the rest).
- “Flee” meaning “run away”
- “Good” or “bad” news
- “Laud” meaning “praise”
- “Seek” meaning “look for”
- “Some” meaning “about”
- “Two to one margin” . . . “Two to one” is a ratio, not a margin. A margin is measured in points. It’s not a ratio.
- “Yesterday” in a lead sentence
- “Youth” meaning “child”
- 5 a.m. in the morning
- After the break
- After these commercial messages
- Bare naked
- Behind bars
- Behind closed doors
- Behind the podium (you mean lecturn) [sic]
- Best kept secret
- Campaign trail
- Clash with police
- Close proximity
- Complete surprise
- Completely destroyed, completely abolished, completely finished or any other completely redundant use
- Death toll
- Definitely possible
- Going forward
- Gunman, especially lone gunman
- In a surprise move
- In harm’s way
- In other news
- In the wake of (unless it’s a boating story)
- Incarcerated
- Informed sources say . . .
So in summary, avoid redundancy and cliche. But what about you – what words do you think should be taken out the back and shot? I’d say anybody over the age of 35 saying “funky” – I do not think that word means what they think it means…
Your semi regular Social Media infographic feature
Need further proof that social media is big… and pointless. Here are two nice little infographics providing stats you can bring up at your next dinner party or marketing strategy meeting…
This one has some sites I’ve never heard of…
There are eight more here.