Thursday, July 5, 2012

76: SLICK MARKETING CAMPAIGN

I tried to log onto lds.org today. Unfortunately, the website is temporartily down. The page that came up was this. http://outofservice.lds.org/ 

So, instead I went to mormon.org. Below is the webpage that came up. I was a little surprised to see the huge departure from the typical "look and feel" of the Especially for Youth pamphets. The title of Limitless Options sounds like a Marketing Slogan. Anyway.. I thought I would share the screenshot from the main page.


LIMITLESS OPTIONS
As a professional skateboarder, Kevin feels God in every crazy color, emotion, and rush of adrenaline.

From his testimonial,
"I was raised into the church but didn't have a testimony of my own. It wasn't until I ventured away from the church in my early teens and found myself gaining an extremely strong testimony through skateboarding and my mom and sisters's example."

..............................
The church invests millions in the infrastructure to test, market, gather focus-group insights, and then opinion poll to improve the marketing of Mormonism. The success of the church is not dependent upon, nor guaranteed by, a multi-billion-dollar downtown complex of religious and commercial buildings. If that is what motivates someone to join, they do not have the right reasons or focus, and will not contribute anything to the faith. We do not need to gather into the net those who  find a slick marketing approach convincing enough to become Mormon.  

We only need to gather those who are pricked in their hearts, humble and who prayed to know if this is God's work or not. Those who get an answer are going to join because they got an answer. Such people will have an inner strength that flows from having spoken with God. They will remain and grow in their knowledge of godliness-- as long as we feed them. They will perish, however, if we feed them nothing but myth and superficial portions of the Gospel. The truth is exciting, and we risk killing their faith when we make it dull, incomplete, and mingled with misrepresentations. They will die, even if they are active in the church. (Snuffer).

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Sorry... looks like this could've been the page from any number of religions... Church of Scientology, AOG, whatever... you feel God in skateboarding, that's freaking awesome.

Whatever you are - that's what we are!! Join us!!

Strange missionary work if you ask me.

Toni said...

"found myself gaining an extremely strong testimony through skateboarding"

W-hat? Didn't this used to be the church of Jesus Christ? You know, the Man who paid the price for our sins if we would turn our hearts to HIM? Yeah, THAT dude.

Anonymous said...

Months ago the missionaries in my ward approached me with concern about one of the ads on this website. I was unfamiliar with the contents of this site until they brought it to my attention. They were concerned it was portraying an inappropriate image of the church. I began to browse this site and felt it seemed to be trying to make the members of our church appear worldly, or for lack of a better term, cool. I felt uncomfortable by what I saw there as well.

I was grateful that the missionaries recognized the Spirit. They were such great missionaries who taught the Gospel of Christ. To me, the attitude of mocking, exhibited by those inside the great and spacious building, is manifested in today's world by the attitude of "cool."

Anonymous said...

Yes, I believe PR has been the downfall of Zion--

I suppose I am a prune eater, though--

I think it's wonderful for everyone to develop talents, but it should be a private thing and have little to do with one's religious label--

I've never understood the need to 'advertise'--

For those of us who condemn advertising in the material world, it's hard to see what the Kingdom of God has to do with advertising--

Anonymous said...

well, that was wrong--

not the downfall of Zion . . .

Zion hasn't been here for a very long time, if at all in the past few hundred years--

the prevention of Zion--

sad--

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