Brand Messaging

Put those two words together and you've got my attention. I love it. It's what I've done for the last three years.

As I sit here and wait for my next opportunity to write that awesome marketing plan, I began to take in all that I just finished at my last employer. My responsibility was to create the annual marketing communications plan and implement it through every avenue possible. It was working so well. We'd changed our name, re-branded ourselves from a government program into an independent agency that has numerous programs. The public began to notice and began to invest.

Then, beginning in the fall of last year, a change happened. Prior to that point, our focus was to concentrate on private funding and grant opportunities, thus the re-branding process. Suddenly, the agency had two different efforts. The other effort was to "advocate" and try to change our government, mostly in an attempt to get government funding again. I didn't understand it, but that was the chosen route. We tried it for several months and it crashed and burned. A huge decrease in funds across the board, a huge mess in brand messaging and things began rewind to the days of just a government-run program. My assumption for all of this is that private investors want their money to go to something that the government isn't in control of. They're already being taxed for government programs, so if we began to look like one, the money from them vanished. I never spoke up about it (at least not as loudly as I should have), and it led to me getting laid off due to a lack of funds.

As I sit here and ponder how it went wrong so quickly, I think about my walk with God. Before we ever confess a belief in Him, we can do everything we want to, because we aren't aware or don't have the love of God in us. Then we become believers in Him, and for a time our lives change dramatically (I often think about the church camp kids that are on a "high" for a month). We change life around us, we focus on Him. As the years go by, some things begin to change back sometimes, and we have to address the issue again. Often times, people will get so far away from Him again that they never go back to looking to Him for anything. But as outsiders begin looking into our lives, they may not see a difference between our lives before we accepted Christ and after we accepted Him. If there's no difference, it becomes this weird Sunday hobby that we do that they don't want to be a part of.

It's a huge "brand messaging" problem. If some of Christians are living a life dependent upon God for everything while others are only interested in getting to Heaven but living how they want to right now, is that not as problematic as having a Mr. Pibb and a Dr. Pepper and calling it the same? We first need to look at our relationship with Him and know that it is real, authentic. Once we do that, we need to make him King of us so that we do everything for the glory of Him and not for ourselves. Should we begin to do that, more people may begin to see the love of God through us and understand that, with Christ, life has meaning and purpose.