DON GULLEY

Direct Mailers / Church Advertising

Recently a church in Tennessee did a direct mailer that said "Red Hot Sex." It caused a lot of controversy within the town and it's own members. I personally like to push the envelope and do what it takes to reach this world for Christ. So personally i really don't have any issues with this mailer. But it did raise some questions for me as a designer and as a pastor:

Do non-believers want to see this type of mailer from churches? Can it actually become a hindrance in reaching non-believers? Does it work in smaller rural areas?

Is there such a thing as being to relevant for a church?

What really has the best impact on your community? Investing into the community, advertising, balance of both?

I don't want to answer them, I just want to start a conversation.

The New Cingluar, or not

I'm working on some new marketing ideas today and began thinking about the "new" Cingular...AT&T. I've actually really enjoyed using Cingular and I'm actually not to fond having to become AT&T, stupid contracts. AT&T just feels like my grandparents phone company. It's out dated and just feels boring.

When you think about it...it doesn't seem to be a great idea. Cingular has a great brand identity and getting rid of it seems stupid, in my humble opinion. I know they are just trying to combine all of their services but it still feels old to me.

Youtube and more...

There are only a few churches that i know who have taken advantage of online video sites such as youtube and yahoo. But I would like to encourage you that another great way to advertise with some creativity is with these very sites....do some really creative peice that could generate some great recognition for your church NATIONALLY and the price isn't bad too!

Google Video + YouTube + 51% of the video Market
What does $1.6 billion get you? An additional forty-one percent of the video website market share – just ask Google. Based on the Top 20 Video websites (as determined by U.S. visits) YouTube garnered 41% of the online video market in December.

*When the videos portion of a site was part of a larger site, only visitors to the videos subdomain were counted

Add YouTube’s first place share to Google Video’s third place share of 10% and you get a whopping 51% of all visits to the top 20 video websites.

Highlights:

• 58 million people viewed at least one video online in December ‘06
• 14 out of the Top 20 video sites received over 1 million unique visitors
• The top 4 sites received over 10 million video related visits
• The top five sites account for 80% of the online video market

Google made an announcement last week indicating that it will make some modifications to play to the strengths of the YouTube and Google Video combination. Sounds interesting - I guess 51% market share is not enough.