Adam McLane
The subtitle of this post could be “The absolute random life of Adam McLane.”
Tomorrow I leave for a 3-day trip. I’ll be flying to Nashville and then driving back in a giant Penske moving truck with my buddy Dave Palmer as part of a theory that you can catch a company doing something good.
Taking a little detour into online marketing this morning…
This ad popped up on my Facebook profile this morning. It kind of stopped me cold.
I clicked on the ad, seeking to understand what girls underwear and children’s ministers had to do with Christmas.
It’s for a curriculum called, Socks and Underwear, by an unnamed publisher on a site I’ve never heard of. (My knowledge of kids ministry curriculum is really limited.) But I did see that it’s normally $100 but they will sell it to you for $45. I’m going to guess that a weird name like this isn’t helping sales. The curriculum itself looks cute, not something I’d use or recommend, but cute nonetheless. The general premise seems to be that we give/receive gifts at Christmas that we don’t want and Jesus is the gift we do want.
Just a little hint to those who like their jobs in kids ministry…. don’t do a series that advertises to you with little girls underwear. I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but sexual molestation is just about the scariest thing a parent can imagine when it comes to leaving their kids at church. Not to sound alarmist or anything but a lot of people outside of the church are already suspicious of many church workers because of sexual abuse cases.
Just a little hint to the marketer creating ads… Um, no. Don’t feature little girls underwear in your ads, it’ll attract the wrong types of people.
And while jokes about underpants and stuff like that is totally in bounds for kids ministry— ads using little girls underwear on Facebook feels completely out-of-bounds to me.
Am I alone in this?
Follow-up
After emailing them I received this response:
Thanks for the heads up! We are sorry you were offended. Our FB marketer put a picture of adult underwear up since the title of the series’ is Socks and Underwear. We went ahead and took it down to be on the safe side. Thanks again for writing and letting us know.
My thought – I’m not trying to take the moral high ground here… but “We are sorry you were offended” and taking it down, blaming it on the Facebook marketer, is hardly admitting that it was misguided to begin with. But whatever, less underwear on Facebook is a good thing regardless.
Here’s a little lesson on hype for all my wanna-be self-promoter friends.
If you hype something you’ve got a vested interest in it’ll come off as fake.
If someone else hypes it for you, even if you lose some level of control, it’ll go a lot better.
Times have changed. It used to be that having access to an author or a speaker somehow validated their message. But now, since everyone is instantly accessible that is no longer the case. In many case the best way to hype something is to limit access to the creation process. (Apple is the master of this, all the hype is in the speculation)
Think about your actual decision-making process. Take a few minutes to do some self-examination. I think what you’ll see is the power of recommendation. A recommendation is infinitely more powerful in my day-to-day life than hype.
Right now, it’s all about recommendations.
If you want to (or need to) hype something, focus all your energy on recommendations. And stop with the self-hype.
My kids can tell me about all the latest Disney movies. And they can rattle off the specs of just about every toy that they want. Worse yet? They are armed with lines that tell me all about why buying that toy is good for them and the deal they will get if they buy it online by a specific date.
The culprit? Savvy marketers are hitting them where I’m not looking. Sites that I’ve deemed safe for them to play on are now rewarding them for watching well-placed ads. My own kids are earning Webkinz bucks by watching trailers for movies. It’s not just Webkinz, it’s all of them.
On the table? Getting kids to influence their parents spending habits.
$1.12 trillion. That’s the amount that kids influenced last year in overall family spending, says James McNeal, a kid marketing consultant and author of Kids as Consumers: A Handbook of Marketing to Children. “Up to age 16, kids are determining most expenditures in the household,” he says. “This is very attractive to marketers.”
Marketing to Kids Gets More Savvy with Technology, USA Today, August 15th 2011. – Read the rest
What does this have to do with youth ministry? Absolutely everything. I’m not saying you need to market your ministry to your students. But I am saying that you need to know that there are others out there marketing to your students in ways that are more savvy and more influential than your flyer and stage announcement.
Your retreat, your camp, your mission trip… things like that are competing for the same $1.12 trillion. Sad. But true.
Tip for Webkinz parents: Go into your kids account and turn off third-party ads.
Question: Should the government regulate advertising to children?
There are dozens of services online that let people buy followers.
Prices start at about $15-$20 per thousand, with bulk orders costing less – 50,000 followers will typically run less than $500. Those followers, though, are often dummy accounts run by computers, some in a very obvious way, some in a more sophisticated fashion.
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“If you’re not familiar with Twitter and someone says I can have 10,000 people follow you, that sounds great,” says Mack Collier, a social media strategist and trainer (and frequent speaker at events like South by Southwest Interactive). “They’re not going to talk to you about how to use Twitter to meet your goals and objectives. … When we don’t really understand something, we go back to ‘what’s the number?’ The biggest number always wins until we understand how something works – especially with social media.”
Follower for Sale: Buying Your Way to Twitter Fame, USA Today
While no church would attempt to buy Twitter followers, churches who want to grow often think that a really slick marketing campaign is the difference between their growth and their demise.
Unless you are a brand new start-up, plenty of people in your community already know you exist. Marketing isn’t your problem.
You do a marketing campaign for one of three reasons:
In the past two days church leaders from around the country have voted on who they’d like to see speak at an online leadership conference called, The Nines. Scrolling down the list from the top you’ll see a bunch of pastors and theologians until you come to #14… Seth Godin. A marketing blogger and conservative Jewish man.
The last thing church leaders need is to be convinced that they need a better marketing plan for their church.
Spending money on marketing without changing the reason people already aren’t coming to your church is just validating the message people already know about your church– That’s not for me.
We have bought into a lie that the way to grow a church is one of two extremes. (And our inability to grow is a marketing and not a discipleship problem.)
Extreme #1 – To lower the expectations we place on people who attend and follow us. Come as you are, listen if you want, that’s between you and God.
Followers are free but the cost of following is high. In John 6 Jesus fed five thousand people and walked on water and as a result had a whole slew of people who wanted to become his disciples. So Jesus held a quick disciple orientation class to explain what the cost of following him was.
Jesus said to them, “Very truly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day. For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in them. John 6:53-56
Yeah, that wasn’t going to work. They just wanted to follow Jesus for the free lunch and magic show. John 6:66 says, “From this time many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him.”
In reality… that’s what a lot of people come to church for. The free lunch and magic show your church is offering. When you actually challenge them to count the cost and follow Jesus they just move on.
Extreme #2 – To raise expectations to a non-Biblical level by adding things to the Gospel message. To be a part of our team, you have to meet these 26 extra-biblical requirements as laid out in our church constitution…
Followers are free but you keep raising the cost. Acts 15 documents a case of this.
Certain people came down from Judea to Antioch and were teaching the believers: Unless you are circumcised, according to the custom taught by Moses, you cannot be saved.” This brought Paul and Barnabas into sharp dispute and debate with them. So Paul and Barnabas were appointed, along with some other believers, to go up to Jerusalem to see the apostles and elders about this question. Acts 15:1-2
This isn’t unlike what we see today in many churches. They add extra-biblical requirements to being on board with the church. You have to be baptized in a certain way, attend certain classes, volunteer a certain way, on and on. While none of those things are typically “bad” they are extra-biblical requirements which weed people out falsely.
In Acts 15:28-29, the council replied to these extra requirements that people were teaching with this, “It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us not to burden you with anything beyond the following requirements: You are to abstain from food sacrificed to idols, from blood, from the meat of strangled animals and from sexual immorality. You will do well to avoid these things.”
You don’t need a new marketing campaign to grow your church. The best growth plan you could ever have is to start eliminating the extremes. (Too little or too high.)
Most individuals, organizations, and companies underperform to their potential. Others miraculously live up to or exceed their potential.
Each tells a story every day and validates it with their actions. Their audience either likes that story (and repeats it) or they don’t.
Take the example of Wal-Mart. Here’s their mission statement:
“Wal-Mart’s mission is to help people save money so they can live better.“
They are the largest retailer in the world. They are the largest private employer in the United States. Why do they continue to grow? Because people understand their mission and like the narrative that Wal-Mart tells. Even when Frontline did their infamous expose`, “Is Wal-Mart Good For America?” all the film did was validate the company’s narrative. Lowest prices, guaranteed.
People like the narrative, it works for them, and it’s profitable for Wal-Mart. So they keep feeding their narrative with everything they do and their customers keep feeding their cash registers.
When people struggle they tend to swing the pendulum. They drastically change things about themselves or spin their wheels creating a new initiative. Unfortunately, what they are often doing is validating a story that is spinning things further out of control.
They take the pig that nobody wants, put some different clothes on it, and try to sell it as a different pig. But the world knows its the same stinking pig!
Take the example of the Big 3 auto makers:
Through the 1990s and early 2000s they made cars the market didn’t really want but was willing to buy because of brand loyalty. As market share dipped further and they ran out of working capital, a mantra went around that they needed new designs, new models, and they could engineer their way out of the problem. That just validated the story that they made cars people didn’t want.
Their narrative became outsourcing and layoffs. They hid from their Detroit roots. And when people thought Ford, Chrysler, and GM they thought about out-of-control overhead, plant closings, and unions.
In truth, they are making the same cars with the same people they always have. (And the same problems.) But they are telling a new story that people like. (and are repeating)
I think the most powerful thing I do at YS is listen. Sure, I know what it’s like to be a youth pastor. Sure, I know some skills and tricks for building websites. Sure, I know a little about engaging with people in the realm of social media.
Above all else… I am careful to listen 10x’s more than I speak. I read hundreds of blogs. I monitor dozens of Google alerts. I scan through thousands of tweets and Facebook status’ every day.
How else am I supposed to tell the difference between someone complaining about a flight to Miami starting too late and an opportunity to host a cross-Atlantic dance party?
Too many people/companies/brands/organizations/churches/celebrities use Twitter and Facebook like a customer list. They do whatever they can to build massive followings because someone in their marketing department thinks that making money has something to do with the size of your lists.
In fact, the single most powerful thing any organization can do is listen.
ht to The Next Web & Carol Phillips
Don’t read that the wrong way. I’m not a country club kid. I’ve never belonged to a course where I got my own locker or had an account on file with the restaurant.
Instead, I grew up playing city-owned munis and family-owned courses. In middle school, my first membership to the local golf course cost my family $50. That also included an annual pool membership, ice rink membership, and anything else the Mishawaka Parks Department charged money for. I didn’t grow up playing with kids named Chip or Trevor. We were more of an Adam, Mike, and Tim kind of crowd. But golf was my obsession. All summer long, every day, I play 27, 36, or 45 holes of golf.
One fact that I love about golf, especially professional golf, is that anyone can become a professional in 7 days. Unlike any other professional sport on the planet I can start on Monday as a nobody and win a million dollars on Sunday. Just about anyone can enter a qualifier. And if you manage to qualify you are in the same tournament as the card carrying professionals on Thursday. And if you make the cut on Saturday, then manage to win on Sunday– they will hand you a big check and a Tour Card for the rest of the season.
Fat chance trying that in baseball, football, or basketball.
But that almost never happens. While there are several PGA Tour members who rose from poor backgrounds to earn their card on Tour I can’t name a single person who is currently on Tour who started as a Monday qualifier and turned a good 7 days into a career.
It can happen, but it is nearly impossible.
Instead, if you look at those who made it, you’ll see that their success is a combination of 3 qualities.
You can be pretty good, above average, with two out of the three. But you’ll never be excellent. There are millions of guys putting their clubs in their trunks right now who have endless talent and ambition but aren’t in the right environment with the right resources to make it to the next level. And this weekend will be full of guys who pull up their Mercedes at a country club, with access to the best environment and resources and absolutely no talent for the game.
We each have something we were created to be amazing at. There is something in our lives that we have talent, ambition, and resources to be the best at.
Identify that thing… no matter how obscure the niche`… and you’ll find the success you know you deserve.
Is this the best time ever to start a small business? It sure seems like it!
If you are thinking about it, let me encourage you on two quick things.
Here’s a bi-product I love. All of those small businesses need a website. Which supports my cottage industry.