Branding Ads

One thing I like about creating ads for my church is being sure that when I call to book the space, no salesperson says to me, "What's the purpose of the ad? Is it just general branding or do you want the customer to do something?"

Now, duh.

I confess, there have been times that I've run ads just because my boss said, "Take out an ad in the New York/New Jersey Issue of the Widget Journal." I suppose you could call those branding exercises.

But usually, if I have fought for the money and the management approval for an ad, I want results. I want the phones to ring. I want extra bodies in the pews. At the end of the day I want to be able to prove that the time and money I put into the project had measurable results.

Ad salespeople who ask if I just want to brand must imagine me rolling around in stacks of loose greenbacks like autumn leaves, uncertain what else to do with them.

Thanks for letting me share.

Your Call Is (not that) Important to Us

I rarely 'fess up to the years I spent performing and managing customer service. It seems quotidian compared to my current glamorous marketing duties.

And yet, marketing and customer service are mirror twins. Marketing targets and attracts the customers, then it hands them off to customer service. Customer service has the longer-term job of keeping marketing's promises--and of keeping the customer satisfied.

I read with great interest Your Call Is (not that) Important to Us: Customer Service and What It Reveals about Our World and Our Lives by Emily Yellin. Most of us "get" customer service. We understand how voicemail works, and how companies use customer relationship management (CRM) phone trees to try to keep us away from an actual expensive live operator.

What we don't all know is how those CRM systems work, what the best ones are accomplishing and the unintended consequences of the systems that make it deliberately hard to communicate.
I never thought about the relationship between the corporate toll-free number and longer wait times, but of course it's true that if the company is paying for a WATS line it feels free to keep me on hold--if I were paying for that air time I would revolt or hang up.

As much as companies may wish that I would serve myself by locating the right person through their phone tree or by referring to their website, telephone service is still a valuable outreach to customers who either don't have Internet access, don't read the language, or have a difficulty spanning departments that they can't shove into just one box.

I bookmarked page 84 in the chapter To Send Us Your Firstborn, Please Press or Say "One," glad to learn that I have allies among the experts.

a big pet peeve among top speech technology designers like Springer is the phrase, "Please listen carefully, as soon of our menu options have changed"....He thinks it should be banished from all speech systems, calling it "extremely controlling." And he asks, "Why take up eight seconds to say something so condescending?"

19500 words

And so to bed

maybe a novella by tomorrow?

Today I have only accomplished a few over 5000 words, bringing my total up to 12,600. Clearly I am not going to write 60,000 words by the end of the day tomorrow, but I believe I can write a respectable novella. I "just" need another 5000 words to hoist me over the 17,500 mark.

53,000 Words to Go

Thanks for asking. My word count yesterday was 7,000.

I'm aiming for a 60,000-word novel. If you divide that over the three days of the contest, that means I should be writing 20,000 words a day. Yikes.

Back to work.

Wish Me Luck, Please

As I embark once again on the 3-day novel contest. Writing a novel is intimidating; I don't believe I can get it perfect so I'm reluctant to start. If I know I only have three days, how perfect can it be? I lose that fear.

In fact the novel I wrote for the contest in 2007 was rather dull, but how proud I was for completing it. Let's hope for better results this time.

Today's ad for Sunday School Registration

The ad is due today: a quarter-page in the local paper. It's a lot of money for one church, but if I can get four to chip in it's a little over $100 apiece.

So far, three churches have agreed to participate. Wish me luck.

Now all I need is ad copy. How does this sound?

Increase your child's life expectancy by 8 years

• Improve her attitude at school
• Increase his school participation
• Reduce her risk from alcohol, tobacco and drugs
• Reduce his chance of committing a crime

The benefits of Sunday School go way beyond learning Bible stories. Bring your child to a local (denomination name) church for a Sunday morning education with lifelong advantages.

This September, the (denomination name) churches below are beginning a new Sunday School year. Please visit the churches or call the numbers below to learn more about the valuable lessons waiting for your child in Sunday School.

I have to add this, because my denomination goes by a different brand name outside the United States: The Episcopal Church is known in other parts of the world as the Anglican Church. Remember, wherever you are,

The Episcopal Church Welcomes You

I am writing this to collect my thoughts because I will be throwing the actual ad together quickly during my lunch hour.

If the facts above interested you, you may want to visit The Life Benefits of Regular Church Attendance