Is Your Church An Old Spice Church?

Hello ladies.

Now look at your church. Now back to me. Now back at your church. Now back to me.

Is your church an Old Spice church? Is mine?

Let me rephrase that.

I was blown away by the original thinking and creativity in this TV ad. I've been thinking about about the creative projects that I've been working on over the last month. I've been asking myself - are my ideas original. Are they standing out, are they serving and amplifying the mission of the church. 

How about you? How is your creative output?

I'm not saying that doing creative like this will make your church smell sweeter than a romantic millionaire jet fighter pilot, but I am insinuating it.
 

Comments

[Anthonycoppedge]

Great points, Steve. More likely, many (many!) churches would rather take the route of creating a not-nearly-as-funny parody of what's truly creative and original. The reason? Either the creatives have yet to connect with and share a vision for what could be if they only were allowed time to experiment (and fail).

Part of what makes ads like this work is the creative time and planning for what could be, not what-could-be-copied.

To outsiders, creative time often looks like wasted time; inviting and educating people on the creative process is a missing priority.

Google gives their engineers “20-percent time” so that they're free to work on what they're really passionate about. Far from wasted time, this allows them to create great things like Google Suggest, AdSense for Content and Orkut.

By killing 20% of things that you're doing that are only "good", but not "great", you can find the hours you'll need.

Creatives: take your pastor to lunch and listen to his heart, passion and vision. Then frame your thinking into that context and go for the ask of more creative time.

My 2 passionate cents,

Anthony

[Anthonycoppedge]

Edit: "Either the creatives have yet to connect with and share a vision for what could be if they only were allowed time to experiment (and fail) OR their leadership values task fulfillment over creative inspiration."

[Chris Hall]

On inspiring, creative tv adverts, the following has arguably be the best tv advert so far in the UK. Created a lot of buzz and reportedly increased sales for John Lewis

http://www.youtube.com/user/JohnLewisRetail?v=zMtyOCoqHTk&feature=pyv&ad=5025761100&kw=john%20lewis

[Chris Hall]

So far this year I meant to say!

[Andy Hoyland]

Brilliant adverts - the John Lewis one is fantastic and the Old Spice one made me laugh out loud.

I don't buy stuff from John Lewis and I won't be switching to Old Spice though.

Not sure what my point is on that front... but I know exactly what you mean. I spend far too long trying to make fliers, web adverts, stuff that is a copy of something else I have seen...

Thanks for the posts.