Well, we’ve given you a lot to read this week and so Casual Friday is a welcome reprieve. In fact, it’s really an extra casual, casual Friday since its Thanksgiving weekend for our friends down in the States.
As I debated what to share with you on this Casual Friday when a concise post was in order, I was struck with a new online tool that really is the epitome of being to-the-point.
GoingToRain.com is a site that you simply go to and it will reconcile your computers IP address with where you are located and automatically tell you the answer to one very simple question: is it going to rain here today (wherever “here” is)?
The service wasn’t able to find a result for London, Ontario where we’re located, so I plugged in Toronto and got the following notification.
Other than potentially seeing a big “YES” or “NO”, what you see above is the whole site in one screen shot.
I’m revelling in the simplicity.
Have a simply great weekend and for all our U.S. friends, Happy Thanksgiving!
Thanks to everyone for all of the feedback in Round 1. Although I’m not converting back to Mac anytime soon, there were some great cases made for both Mac and PC. A special thanks to my friend dybenks (who works at Apple) for providing links to some relevant articles. As Andrew noted in his post last Thursday, it’s always helpful to have constructive feedback.
That said, as more ministries and non-profits look to make the right decision when it comes to their computer environment, the question of Mac vs. PC always seems to come up. Through Apple’s recent string of humorous ads and TV commercials, they are making a strong case for Windows users to convert to Apple. But are their advertisements truthful, or do they simply play on the emotion of the consumer?
[Interlude: There is a cell phone company here in Canada that has one of the best marketing campaigns in the country. Their use of playful animals in a consistently branded platform has made their campaign one of the most ingenious campaigns ever. (Click here to view some of their commercials.) But anyone in Canada (specifically Ontario) that uses Telus knows that they have the worst coverage out of all the networks. When I asked a few of my friends why they chose Telus, their typical response was: “Their commercials were really cool and their phones/contracts were well priced.” When I asked them if they wish they’d gone with another provider (that didn’t drop every other call), their typical response was, “Yes, but I’m locked into a contract.”]
Consider a few Apple advertisements from 2008:
The “Really Fast” iPhone Commercial: This commercial features the iPhone browsing through the web at lightning speed. Digging deeper: Although it would be nice if the iPhone could really browse the web that fast, it can’t. As a result, the ASA in the UK banned the commercial from all of its networks.
Apple’s Claim in various advertisements that “MacBooks support "millions of colors." Digging deeper: The only problem with this claim is that the MacBooks LCD screens are 6-bit TN models, only allowing for only 262,144 colors. A true 8-bit display would support "millions of colors", however, Apple chose to scrap the 8-bit display in favor of a cheaper 6 bit one, despite the high cost of Macs. As a result, they were sued.
The Bean Counter Commercial: This commercial implies that Microsoft is spending a ridiculous amount of money in advertising verses the amount of money that it spends on R&D (research and development). Digging deeper: Well, according to both company’s 2007 fiscal reports, the numbers are as follows:
Net Sales: $51.122 Billion
Advertising: $1.33 Billion
R&D: $7.121 Billion
Net Income (Profit): $14.065 Billion
Both companies spend a considerable amount of money on R&D and advertising, but if you do the math, for every $1 of sales, Apple spends 1.9 cents on advertising and 3.3 cents on R&D. By comparison, for every $1 of sales, Microsoft spends 2.6 cents on advertising and 13.9 cents on R&D. Although Microsoft spends 0.7 cents per dollar more on advertising, they actually spend five times more than Apple on R&D. But didn’t the Apple commercial imply that Microsoft wasn’t spending enough on R&D? My point exactly.
There are a number of other Apple advertisements that we could dig deeper on, but for the sake of not writing a book, I will leave it at that. In the defense of Apple, I will also say that we could imply the exact same methodology against Microsoft. My point is – just because a company throws up a comedy of commercials and advertisements; don’t simply jump on the bandwagon. Do the research. Talk to professionals on both sides. Determine if you have people within your organization that can support a new operating system. Don’t just assume that the grass is greener on the other side of the fence.
As a person that has used both Apple and Windows, I am giving you my opinion – and it’s just that; an opinion. Many of the things that I’ve tried to do on an Apple, I find out that I can’t do… for me, that’s frustrating. Similarly for an Apple user, there are tools that they live by that are only available on a Mac. At the end of the day, it’s a major decision – a decision that (like the Telus example), you will have to live with for an extended period of time. For many Apple users, they are happy they made that decision. As a former Apple user, I’m happy I made the decision to go back to Windows.
As promised, today we’re going to deal with the concept of terminology that might offend. Really, this post is about how using language that is a little edgy can actually be a tool you use to attract attention to an otherwise numb audience. While providing some insight into one way in which to communicate with people, this post also serves as part 2 of our response to Pastor David’s comment on last week’s post about PC’s vs Mac which included terms like “suck” and “iPee”.
First off, I need to lay down some context. We at Electricurrent/AdvancedMinistry believe that many churches in North America in particular, are missing the boat when it comes to communicating the Gospel. While I know that the use of the terms marketing, advertising, branding and the like are considered taboo in many Christian circles, to our minds, it is a shame that many churches have dismissed these powerful tools.
The apostle Paul and even Jesus Himself, show us examples of how they tailored their messages to reach out to an audience. The heart of the message itself never changed, but the method of communicating it did. Why? So as to communicate the Gospel message in a way that would resonate with the audience in play. And although we have seen marketers/advertisers across the globe take their tools and apply sinful means in achieving carnal goals, does not then automatically mean that the tools are inherently sinful.
It’s for those reasons that our overarching mandate as a company is to use our gifts to fulfill a similar mandate to the organization that bears the name Church Marketing Sucks (to frustrate, educate and motivate the church to communicate, with uncompromising clarity, the truth of Jesus Christ).
In fact, the people over at Church Marketing Sucks have already taken it upon themselves to write what is, for the most part, a great articulation of our position on this topic. You can check it out here.
Now, unlike the people at Church Marketing Sucks, we aren’t going to offer another, less-offensive version of our blog. However, I want to outline what is it that we have, and will continue to do.
To be clear, we actually agree generally with Pastor David’s concern. By that I mean that there is a line that we draw when it comes to the words that we would consider acceptable on our blog. We also believe that gratuitous use of edgy language isn’t helpful either. We aim to be people “beyond reproach” as the Bible dictates. However, our perspective on the church today, is the perspective that we are clearly shown in the lives of the nation of Israel as documented in the Bible. Amongst other things, the story of the children of Israel, is a story of warning - warning about how we humans so often miss the boat when it comes to living a life that is honouring to God.
The penultimate example of them missing the boat is in the life of Jesus. The spiritual leaders of the nation were so caught up in their rules and rituals (similar to not using edgy language), that they missed the arrival and ministry of the Messiah altogether.
The church of North America is in danger of missing our calling again, but we are complacent about it. And as the example of Tony Campolo in the article referenced above shows us, sometimes we need to say something shocking in order to get the attention of a church that is in danger of missing the boat.
Pastor David brought our attention to Colossians 4:6 which talks about how our speech needs to be seasoned with salt. There are a few ways to interpret that verse. One way is to focus on our connotations of seasoning and to approach salt as a preservative. There’s nothing wrong with that interpretation and in fact, it is undoubtedly a part of what is being communicated in this verse. However, the other side of the coin is that we need to consider that salt is also an irritant. When you pour it on an open wound, it stings and brings attention to the wound.
What all that boils down to is that we do not want to be using edgy language simply because we can. Rather, we only want to do it when it is necessary or is a strategic choice so as to attract the attention of our primary audience (Churches, Ministries and Faith-Based Non-Profit Organizations) to a message that we feel called to communicate to them. It is also our belief that those outside the church who might stumble onto this conversation would actually be encouraged by the transparency.
Admittedly, we have dropped the ball in the past few weeks in ensuring that we only used edgy terms in a strategic manner. For that reason, we have removed an instance of it in the comments area that wasn’t necessary. The rest we have left for a number of reasons, not the least of which is to provide context to this post.
However, we appreciate David’s willingness to convey his concerns via his comment and we accept his rebuke as far as it has challenged us to be more careful about fulfilling our own convictions with how and when to use edgy language. As such, we will re-commit ourselves to the goal of only using edgy language in a strategic and meaningful manner. For the record, I think you’ll find that the use of these types of terms will be few and far between.
A closing thought.
This past Monday, Seth Godin, one of the most popular bloggers on the Internet, had the following thing to say about blogging: “I typically write posts that are three to six paragraphs long. I try to be clear and direct. And yet, just about everything I write is misunderstood by someone. (Not the same someone, alas). They write to me and I try to explain. It's hard to imagine how one could write something that 100% of the recipients will understand as written.”
While I feel like yesterday’s post was as clear a communication as I could provide on that part of our response, as I finish writing this post, I am aware that there are many blanks that you, the reader, will need to fill in, in order to appreciate what I’m saying. Communication is as much about the listening and reading as it is about the talking and writing, so, as ever, I’ll do my best to communicate clearly and lovingly, but I am leaning on you to ensure this message gets through.
So last week, Ray posted the conversation-starting post called, PC vs. Mac - Round 1: Let the Battle Begin! As anticipated, that post generated a number of comments with people passionately weighing in on both sides of the debate. One comment by a contributor named Pastor David, however, spoke not to the PC vs. Mac debate but rather called into question the inclusion of a photo and some terminology from that post, and a previous one, that he felt was inappropriate for a ministry-based website.
David’s comment especially surrounded his concern of how the AdvancedMinistry brand and by association his Church’s brand, would be affected as they (and we) seek to witness to a lost world.
To be sure, we want to be careful to not become embroiled in a debate over the interpretation of Scripture and what it means to be a good witness, as that is so often a fruitless endeavour amongst believers, and in fact, results in the very negative brand implications that hurt our witness which David is concerned with.
However, given that we want to honour David’s comment and had in fact, already intended to post on both the image in question and the use of words that might be offensive to some, we’ve decided to do a two-part response. Part one, is all about managing negative brand hits.
The image in question is a picture of Ray and I pretending to urinate on the Apple logo. Admittedly, it’s a somewhat crude photo that was in fact, never intended to be something that could ever find its way onto the public side of the Internet. But it did.
About a year-and-a-half ago, this image not only got posted on the web, but then proceeded to get picked up by dozens of news sources as a funny hook for their articles about Apple or the PC/Mac debate. Within weeks, a search of my full name on Google returned a result set that included a number of instances of this image on the first page. This is obviously a problem from a personal brand perspective. Employers around the world now make it common practice to perform a Google search on an individual’s name before they consider hiring a person. Given that much of my expertise is in marketing for Churches and Ministries, it follows that this could become a real issue for me in the future if I was ever to look for work elsewhere. And that doesn’t even communicate the damage to our personal brand with friends and family.
Turning the attention off of us, it’s safe to say that at some point in the future, especially for those of us that are really engaging the web and the ideas of social media, something bad will get out there and the challenge with the web is that once it’s out there, you can’t get it back. This image of Ray and I will be on the web for good. The question becomes then, when this happens to you, how do you deal with this kind of negative brand hit?
Our suggestion, and what we’ve tried to do here, is to manage the damage of this image by giving it context.
Anyone who knows Ray or I would likely have a great laugh at this picture because they know us to be men of integrity and strong faith in God. But let’s face it, humans do judge books by their cover. As such, we wanted to incorporate this image onto our blog so as to give it the context of all of the other things that we say, do and believe.
How does posting this image fit with our blog mandate? Well, it actually accomplishes two important things:
It allows us the opportunity to manage a negative brand hit by communicating a bit more about who we are as we tie this one rogue piece of the puzzle in with the rest.
In dealing with that negative brand hit, we are given a great case study of what it means to manage a personal or organizational brand online. By sharing this experience with you, our hope is that if, or more likely when, you come up against your own brand challenge, you’ll have an idea of how to respond.
Learning from our mistakes, or those of another, is something that we humans have a hard time with, but we hope that our experience will help you in time to come.
Part 2 of our response will come tomorrow and will deal with the use of terminology that might offend.
As I said in the first post on this blog, our primary goal when we come into work each day is to help faith-based and not-for-profit organizations succeed in their calling.
So, although we have no affiliation with the organization Soles for Souls, upon learning of their work and the 50,000 Pairs in 50 Days Challenge, we wanted to take the opportunity to highlight them on our blog.
Click here or on the graphic at right to check out their site.
Have you ever been ready to tell a story at a party but then someone tells their story first and it sets the bar so high that you don’t even want to tell yours anymore?
That said, given the firestorm of comments Ray’s post generated, I figured another post on the idea of commenting was in order.
Now if you read the title of this post fast and out loud, I realize that it reads: “Moron Comments”. To be clear, that’s not at all the direction I intend to take but I know that some of you astute readers out there might catch on so I’m nipping that in the bud.
As I said in my post on Monday, comments are the life-blood of a blog. Or as my friend Christen likes to say, “Comments are sweet, sweet love.” I’ll add that this post by Christen is well worth the read. I especially appreciate her point that commenting is not only good for you and your blog, but it’s also simply good etiquette to be actively seeking to validate a blogger’s gift of free information, by providing feedback and letting them know that they are filling a need.
But not all comments are helpful. To my mind, there are really five kinds of comments that you can receive on a blog:
Constructive Praise
Constructive Criticism
Destructive Praise
Destructive Criticism
SPAM (yes, even in the blog world, we deal with this annoyance)
Constructive Praise – Constructive praise are comments that people leave which tell you that you’re hitting them where they live and providing them with meaningful content. A great example of this is a comment that Chris left on our site on November 13: “I for one am enjoying your blogs. You just never know to whom you may be offering a bit of cheerfulness or even admonishment. Keep up the good work!”
Constructive Criticism – These are arguably even better than constructive praise because they convey two things to you. First, the commenter is freely providing you with the direction you need in order to provide them with the content you want. Or maybe they are helping sharpen you generally into a better blogger, product developer or service provider. The other benefit is that it communicates that the commenter cared enough about your blog to want to see it succeed. Essentially, it tells you that you’ve got someone out there that believes in you and wants to see you win. A great example of this is from one of our earliest posts on this blog entitled: Inconsistency Out Front. It was a post about how companies can end up badly miss-communicating their brand either through neglect or ignorance and Robert wrote in to say that he felt that we weren’t adhering to our own advice since the AdvancedMinistry home page hadn’t been updated to reflect the season, for many months. Although we never intended to make it a seasonal banner, Robert had a point in that we hadn’t considered that people would see the banner and naturally come to expect a seasonal change. So, we changed the banner to have a fall background.
Destructive Praise – This is a tough one because the person is trying to be helpful but either says something that isn’t helpful, or after saying some helpful things, leaves one comment that actually hurts the blog, organization or person. I’ve also seen posts where the comment the person leaves is wonderful, but the site they link to is a disaster.
Destructive Criticism – “Your blog stinks”. Thankfully, we haven’t seen that on our blog yet, but I’m sure at some point we will and providing there isn’t any stronger language used, we’ll leave the post up on the blog. But for the record, this doesn’t help anybody. The commenter doesn’t help us to improve our content to meet his/her need and we just get insulted. It’s a lose-lose situation and as such, provides no value to anyone.
SPAM – That’s it, just SPAM. ‘Nuff said. Except maybe that if you’re the one sending the spam, please stop...maybe...just for me...and the REST OF THE WORLD WHO USE THE INTERNET.
...I’m ok now...
Anyways, Christen is right. If you benefit from what you read on a blog, or blogs, then it follows that commenting is just the right thing to do. And don’t always feel like it has to be agreement, the best results usually come from healthy discourse around disagreement and constructive criticism. Conversely, don’t just sit back and wait for something that you disagree with to comment. We believe you’ve got something valuable to add, we’d love for you to add it!
For those of you that know me, this post has been coming for a long time. I am known by my friends and co-workers as the “anti-Mac” guy. When someone buys a Mac, I usually get asked by one of my friends to “tell them what I think of Mac”. I typically laugh and respond with, “don’t get me started” (because they are just trying to stick a bee in my bonnet). And yes, that picture to the right is indeed me and my co-worker, Andrew, as seen on many blogs and news sites around the world – I’ll explain that another time (and no, we weren’t really peeing – it was a joke).
Before you fill up with rage, let me begin by stating that (despite the image) “I don’t hate Mac”. I believe that some of the most innovative ideas in the world have come from Apple and its workforce. In fact, I am honored to mention that I have a couple of friends that recently moved to San Francisco because one of them took up a job offer with Apple – a great feat indeed. Additionally, Apple’s development of iPhone has truly raised the bar when it comes to displaying media on small devices. If someone asks me to help them with their Mac, I’m more than happy to assist.
Apple is truly a great company, but let me pop the balloon here and note that despite the opinions of many Mac-lovers, Apple is not a holy altar in which to be worshiped. Not even close.
On that note, let me elaborate on a few thoughts, recognizing that this is only Part 1 of a series of blog posts that will follow. Let the comments and the debate begin!
I’ll take you back to 1996. I was granted a job working at a web development company in Toronto and was an Apple nut. I had worked on Apple all my life, and even though I had a PC, I loved Apple. We even ran an Apple web server at our office and I am pleased to note that I was the first person ever (according to BlueWorld) to develop an online e-commerce application using Lasso (an Apple application server) and FileMaker Pro. I loved it. Even though our Apple server crashed about 3 times a week, it seemed like my life (from a computer perspective) would always revolve around Apple.
In 1997, we were asked by a world-renowned university to build an e-learning platform for them. My first response – we’ll build it in FileMaker and Lasso on Apple! I was so excited. And then I did some research. Turns out that Windows NT (using ColdFusion and SQL Server) served up database pages at an average rate of (gulp) about 40 times faster than my Apple counterpart. How was this possible, I asked myself? Well, the reality was that Apple could only do one major process at a time, whereas Windows would multi-task and perform infinitely faster.
So I know what you’re thinking, “Ray, that was 1997… Apple has vastly improved since then. Get with the program! ” I would agree – Apple has vastly improved its service offering since 1997. They will continue by adding, “And Apple’s grown so much in the last 10 years!” I agree. But so has PC.
Let me throw out a little statistic. If I were to ask you, “What percentage of people browsing the Internet use Macs?” most people would respond, “25%-30%”. Some people would even go as high as “50%”. Well, let me give you the industry stat. Drum roll please…… As of October 2008, the number is 5.5%. Yes, that’s five and a half percent – not fifty-five percent! The stat makes Apple sales people turn venomous when I bring it up to them. “Where are you getting those stats from? They’re wrong!” Where you ask? W3Schools – the industry leader for operating system and browser statistics on the Internet. Don’t believe me about the number? Just punch “OS stats” or “Browser stats” into Google… it will be your first listing. The good thing for Apple is that they were at 1.8% in 2003, so they are making headway – no questions asked.
Let’s stop there. I have SO much more to say, but we’ll save it for Round 2 (and 3, and 4, etc.).
I will end by saying this – everything you see on Electricurrent and AdvancedMinistry was designed on a PC (including everything in our portfolio). Could a Mac have done the same thing? Absolutely; and it would have cost about one and a half times as much. For me, it’s a matter of principle. My thesis: Anything you want to do on a Mac can be done on a PC in at least the same amount of time, and in many cases, less time. (Granted, there are a few companies that favor Apple in the media circles and build some amazing Apple-only tools. If all you do is video editing or sound production, then I would probably direct you to a Mac.) Most people that compare PC to Mac are comparing their old $800 HP desktop PC with a $2,500 Mac. Would you compare a BMW M5 with a Ford Focus? Then why do the same thing with Mac and PC? (In a future post, I will compare “apples to apples” – cost for cost on a number of computer systems).
Just because something looks pretty on the outside, doesn’t mean I’m going to jump on the bandwagon and buy it. I’ve never been one to judge a book by its cover, and I’m not about to start now… even if it does have a pretty (half-eaten) Apple logo on it.
Let the fruit throwing begin.
P.S. Here are some topics that will be discussed in future rounds:
Myth Busters: Taking on Apple commercials
Cost-Cost (Apple vs. PC)
iPhone vs. Blackberry (and other smartphones)
Designing on Mac vs. PC
What you Can/Can't do on a Mac vs. What you Can/Can't do on a PC
Successful metrics on a blog aren’t about how many sets of eyes have seen a given post. They’re about the quality of the conversation that you create.
It’s our stated purpose for this blog that Xpiritmental be a place on the web where we can hold a conversation with our readers. As we work on a daily basis to convey our thoughts and experiences, we do it with the hope that we are resourcing others and helping them accomplish their goals.
You can’t tell if you’re meeting that goal by seeing how many hits your blog/post got yesterday. Just because a couple hundred or a couple thousand people saw your post, doesn’t mean you impacted them in any meaningful way.
However, you can tell if you post some thoughts on your blog that incentivize people to comment and provide some worthwhile addition to the conversation.
For that reason, we’re thankful for all the people that have taken the time to add their thoughts, challenges and encouragements to this blog. It lets us know that we’re on the right path in serving you.
I saw this video a couple of weeks ago and it has really inspired some good dialog among many of our friends. I believe that it’s time for us to get serious about not wasting the resources that God has entrusted us with. Enjoy the video and have a good weekend.
Click here to visit the Advent Conspiracy website.
We've been pretty committed to the idea of ensuring that there is always at least one post on the blog every day. The thinking behind that is that consistency is important in any communications piece. I know that for myself, I am disappointed if a blog doesn't have fresh content on it on a daily basis (especially during the work week). But others argue that it isn't necessary - that you can have a healthy, committed blog following without posting daily.
So I ask you, what do you want? Would it be a disappointment to you if we skipped a day? What has your experience been with your blog?
Recently, I read a great blog post about marketing shortcuts but with a real bent towards not-for-profits. I could try to repurpose the post in my own words, but sometimes, you just can’t say it any better. The post was authored by Seth Godin. For those of you who are unfamiliar with Seth and his work, a little introduction is fitting in order to give you context to the article.
Seth:
• writes the most popular marketing blog in the world;
• is the author of the bestselling marketing books of the last decade;
• speaks to large groups on marketing, new media and what's next;
• and is the founder of Squidoo.com, a fast-growing recommendation website.
On that last point, a final bit of context before I share the article. Squidoo is a tool that allows anyone to create a page on any topic. Essentially, it allows a person to choose an area of expertise like their job/market, favourite sports team or even themselves and create a page on the web that aggregates important information about that topic. It can be used for business or personal reasons. Probably the coolest part of Squidoo though is what they do with their revenues. First off, all revenues are generated from ads, so it’s free for anyone to use. But the really neat thing is that Seth and his team do the following with the ad revenues:
• give 5% right off the top to a charity of their choosing
• use 45% for covering business costs and stuff like that
• then they allow the Squidoo users to determine what happens to the other 50% of the money they make on their page. They can either give it to charity or collect it themselves.
I know that was a lot of setup, but I think you’ll find that it provides some valuable context to the important points that he makes within. Click here for the post.
Church Marketing Sucks is a blog with an inflammatory name but is run by people who have a real heart for the seeing the gospel clearly and effectively communicated. Their mission statement reads as follows: “Our mission is to frustrate, educate and motivate the church to communicate, with uncompromising clarity, the truth of Jesus Christ.” Greater clarification on what that means is available on their About Us page.
As part of my daily diet of blog reading, I came across a post on the Church Marketing Sucks blog today that puts some numbers on a topic that I touched on in a post from a few weeks ago on the topic of Dealing with Design Subjectivity.
The first of the two posts that I wrote on that topic highlighted the idea that the subjectivity of design as a risk factor in any design-oriented project, can be overcome by establishing an effective decision-making hierarchy. In truth, this strategy is applicable to any marketing or communications project.
Church Marketing Sucks did a poll asking the question: “Who is in charge of managing your church’s communications?”
Click here to see the results and their take on what those numbers mean.
As indicated in my post from this past Friday, today is Remembrance Day here in Canada and Veteran’s Day in the States.
For those of us to aren’t able to get away from work to attend a ceremony, beginning at 10 AM, there will be a live stream of the ceremonies in Ottawa thanks to the CBC and for our American friends, live streams of the events at Arlington National Cemetery Amphitheater can be viewed on any number of news sites, but here’s a link to the CNN homepage where you can access the stream from CNN.
So, we’re thinking that "What People Are Saying" will be an ongoing feature on this blog as we hear from or find people with things to say about us. But in the interests of keeping our post titles as short as possible, we’ve decided to create an exclusive club which all of you can be a part of.
As any good club should have, this one has its very own acronym...WPAS, which of course stands for: What People Are Saying. That’s pretty much it. No monthly meetings or dues, no minutes to record and read - none of that - just a group of people who have at least one thing in common - the acronym WPAS.
So, to get it all started, here’s a WPAS we just found recently.
Last year, while my wife and I were visiting family in Europe, we had a chance to spend some time in Belgium, very near the area known to many Canadians as Flanders Fields.
Flanders is a county in Belgium where many Canadian soldiers fought and died for the sake of freedom and there remain many monuments and grave sites that testify to their sacrifice. This is a photo I took at a cemetery that we were able to visit – it is one of the smallest grave sites in the area and yet, there are hundreds of stones.
Each November 11 here in Canada, we observe Remembrance Day as a time to recall and be thankful for the sacrifice that was made which enables us to live today, in a country of peace and tolerance and great opportunity. This year, we are pleased to share the day with our American friends who are celebrating Veteran’s Day on November 11 also.
In honor of those heroes, we wanted to create a desktop reminder to help us, and all of you, to consider the gift of freedom they secured on our behalf.
Click here or on the thumbnail (on the left) to download the desktop background.
I often wonder how much we actually acknowledge God in our day-to-day work-life. I know that we acknowledge the fact that God is with us and that we are “working for His purposes”, but how often do we actually acknowledge Him throughout the day? I read a sermon from John Piper this morning entitled “I Am Who I Am” (from his 1984 collection). Here is an excerpt:
“Suppose the president of the United States invited you and a few of your friends to the White House for a reception. As you enter the cozy green room, the president is sitting by the fire place and you walk right by him without a glance or a greeting. For the whole evening you neither look at him nor speak to him nor thank him nor inquire why he called you together. But every time the one reporter asks you if you believe in the existence of the president, you say, ‘Of course.’ You even agree that this is his house and that all this food came from his kitchen. But you pay him no regard. Practically speaking you act as if you do not believe he exists. You ignore him. He has no place in the affections of your heart. His gifts, not himself, are the center of your attention.”
Let’s remember each and every day that doing the work of Christ is indeed about Him. Test each motive. “Am I doing this out of selfish desire (in the “name of God”), or am I doing this because Christ has called me to do this, and I am passionately ready to serve Him?”
He is real, He is here, and He is ready to lead if we are ready to follow.
Today I am going to address color and how much of a point of frustration it can be for clients and designers alike.
Allow me to shed some light on the topic, a warm bluish greeny kind of light. Not quite an aqua light, more like a sea-foam color. Do you know what I mean? It’s close to the color of the blue cotton candy they sell at the fair, but not quite. Can you see it? Really, it’s the color of a fresh breeze on that first warm day in spring. Closer? When I really think about it, it’s a dead match to the color of the stones I have in the bottom of my aquarium at home that I bought from a villager in a small market when I was in Cayman Islands. I’ll tell you what: I have a picture of my aquarium as my computer’s desktop. I’ll take a screen grab of that and send it to you. Will that help?
Nope!!!
Obviously I have exaggerated for effect, but there are instances where something like that isn’t too far from reality when it comes to color matching. Let’s set the record straight, color is interpretive. Different colors make all of us feel different ways, therefore we are all going to use and explain color differently. If only there were some kind of common language we could all speak that would keep clients, designers and most importantly printers on the same playing field. It would be great if there was some kind of book we could all refer to, to take the guess work out of this. Now I know your thinking “That sounds like witch craft, burn him!”, but such a book does exist! It’s not so much a book of spells but rather a book of recipes. They are called Pantone Color Books (or swatch books) and they are the end all, be all in the print universe. Essentially they are printed samples of colors along with the formulas that make the final color.
Owning one of these books, or sets of books, is the only way to truly know what a color will look like on paper. Sure your software has these formulas built in, but do not trust those to know what your final printed piece will look like. There are too many variables at play to trust your software. To name a few monitor and printer calibration and lighting in the room are the biggest. Also, for the record, holding an object up to the monitor for matching is not a wise move either. The only way to be sure is to have a printed sample, and that’s what Pantone swatch books provide you with. For example, that mess I explained in the intro would simply be stated at 318C. Wow, that was easy. If you had a Pantone book on your end you could look inside and see that I’m not crazy.
If you do a lot of printing and the color has to be bang on, don’t go out and buy 12 miles of extension cord so you can drive your monitor to the print shop, consider making a much wiser investment and purchase yourself a pantone color book. It will potentially save you a lot of money in reprints, or at the very least a lot of frustration and anxiety. After all, we all know what color of anxiety is, and it ain’t pretty (4505C).
On my weekly 20K bike ride this past weekend, I came across a house that had a number of Obama/Biden signs around it. Keep in mind that we are located in Canada and the nearest border crossing is approximately an hour away.
I suppose it’s to be expected, since there are a number of U.S. citizens living here. Even with that aside, the impact of the U.S. elections will undoubtedly affect the whole world but none so much as the direct neighbours of the States. But at the same time, it makes me wonder what that person’s motivation is in posting those signs.
Are they trying to influence their neighbours and passers-by? Are they simply so excited about their candidate of choice, that they just can’t hide it? Or, do they have a bigger picture view of the impact that their candidate could have on not only America, but the world?
I have to think that this person must have had a real thoughtful reason for putting those signs up, but I’m just not sure what it is...
There’s a lesson here. Sometimes we build communications pieces that so obviously communicate our message - to us. But there are times, when those same messages don’t really resonate with our audience.
That might be ok, if you are the audience. But if not, keep in mind that you don’t always get a chance to explain where you’re coming from.
Don’t leave it to chance that your audience will know your motives.
Marketing, at least good marketing, is all about telling stories. It’s about conveying the compelling reason why the thing that you have to offer matters.
If you think about it in those terms, it’s a discipline that lines up well with what Churches and faith-based Non-Profits are called to do.
But as with anything, there’s a risk that we can take something good and useful and mess it up. I read two quotes last week on another blog that clearly encapsulate how I see marketing as a tool used by churches:
“Are we trying to make our stories bigger with God or just better to ourselves?”
- Jon Acuff, Stuff Christians Like
“Our tendency as communicators can be to focus on the stories that move people instead of on the stories that move God. The stories that move God will certainly move people. But the stories that just move people, often because it’s about building our ego, or brand or church, are really not that big at all.”
– Church Marketing Sucks
It's counter-intuitive to many people to communicate a message that has the potential to offend, but at the end of the day, that's exactly what we are supposed to do. It also calls for an entirely unique kind of metric in determining whether we succeed or fail in our efforts.
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Thanks to everyone for all of the feedback in 
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Church Marketing Sucks
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I often wonder how much we actually acknowledge God in our day-to-day work-life. I know that we acknowledge the fact that God is with us and that we are “working for His purposes”, but how often do we actually acknowledge Him throughout the day? I read a sermon from 
Allow me to shed some light on the topic, a warm bluish greeny kind of light. Not quite an aqua light, more like a sea-foam color. Do you know what I mean? It’s close to the color of the blue cotton candy they sell at the fair, but not quite. Can you see it? Really, it’s the color of a fresh breeze on that first warm day in spring. Closer? When I really think about it, it’s a dead match to the color of the stones I have in the bottom of my aquarium at home that I bought from a villager in a small market when I was in Cayman Islands. I’ll tell you what: I have a picture of my aquarium as my computer’s desktop. I’ll take a screen grab of that and send it to you. Will that help?
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