subject: The Trouble With Marketing Using Religion [print this page] "Telling the truth about a product demands a product that's worth telling the truth about. Sadly, so many products aren't. So many products don't do anything better. Or anything different. So many don't work quite right. Or don't last. Or simply don't matter. " - Doyle D. Bernbach
What do companies do when their product or service isn't worth telling the truth about? When it doesn't do anything different or better - or just doesn't matter? A lot of the time, they rely on hype or outright untruths to try to sell their wares; some go with publicity stunts and other bells and whistles intended to blind consumers to the inadequacy of the product or service being sold - and others try to appeal to potential customers using a religious message.
Now wait a minute, I can hear some of you out there saying. What's wrong with using religion to try to reach out to consumers who share the beliefs of the advertiser? Quite often, the answer is everything. It is possible that marketing messages using religious imagery or outright professions of faith could be used to sell a perfectly good product or service, but even so (and it doesn't happen often, if ever), it makes many people suspicious, even if they happen to agree with the religious message.
Think of it this way. Suppose that you were trying to sell a product or service. Would you rather communicate the benefits of this product or service to potential buyers or would you rather take up precious (and expensive) ad space trying to tell consumers about an entirely different kind of "good news"?
Most companies, of course, choose the former option. Given that people are interested in what a product can do for them rather than whether the people selling these products regularly attend church/synagogue/mosque services. This brings us to one of the chief problems of using a religious message to market consumer goods (it's also applicable to business to business marketing, just in case you were wondering) - irrelevance. It simply has nothing to do with the product itself and will appeal to only a miniscule subset of the market. While niche marketing is all well and good, most companies would prefer to cast a little wider net.
Another reason that religiously based marketing and advertising fails is that it is one of the most effective ways to turn off the vast majority of buyers. Not only will they know that your marketing message has nothing to do with the product or service in question, but they'll wonder what it is that you're trying to hide about what you're selling.
Case in point: the Minnesota auto dealership who tried to sell cars, trucks and SUVs with a billboard informing motorists that they had "good news" for them - and in this case, it wasn't about a sale, 0% financing or any other kind of promotional offer. Did it work for the dealership? Well, it did, at least in the sense that it got people's attention and a little bit of national media coverage - but far more important is what it didn't do: sell cars. It's hard to imagine exactly what the owner of the dealership was thinking, but as any copywriter will tell you, it's unlikely that you'll sell many cars (or anything else, for that matter) this way.
It's really just that simple; if you're trying to sell something, a profession of faith probably isn't the way to go about it. The best case scenario is that you'll make a few sales to a few people who are genuinely excited by the religious angle - and end up with a truly dismal return on your investment. The worst case scenario? You'll turn off both current and prospective customers. They may say that there's no such thing as bad publicity and most of the time that's true; but it really does exist and this is one of the exceptions to the rule.
If you have a product or service worth selling, then sell the product, not your religion. Otherwise, consumers will think you have something to hide - and they may well be right!
