One element of my morning routine is exercising — no, not going out on a pre-dawn run, just a few minutes on the exercise bike in the basement while watching a cooking show on the On Demand app on the iPad. (Too few minutes, really — I was in a better routine last year, but now I got into the practice of making sure my oldest caught the bus first, and now that he’s reliably doing so, I haven’t been getting up as early as last year.)
The last couple days, the commercials have all been of the “15-second spot with a link to click for more information” variety. Yesterday, it was “click here to learn more about the Absolute Vodka distillery.” Today it was this:
A black man in white clothing vaguely like scrubs walking through a field of grain. African children walking down a path. Narration of “imagine if we could feed the world. If there were no more hungry people. That’s church. Learn more at rethinkchurch.org,” with a tagline for the United Methodists.
If you click on the link, it takes you to a web page which features charitable projects of the United Methodists in Africa, and local projects of individual churches, like bringing PB&Js; to the homeless.
I imagine this ad campaign was focus-group tested. Maybe they heard, “they’re not doing anything to help people; all they do is sing a few songs on Sundays.”
But this ad campaign stands in pretty sharp contrast to the Catholic version, which (from memory) was really much more focused on “come to the Catholic Church to help you find more meaning in your life,” because, after all, if it’s all about knowing that your Sunday offering goes, in part, to anti-hunger groups, you could just donate to them directly.
What do you think? Will their ad campaign work?
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