Make Friends at Basilica

Pastor Joel at The Basilica Community does it all. He’s the pastor, the set-up guy, the tech guy, he fixes everyone’s computer, he’s one heck of a guitar player (but he’s done a good job of getting that base covered), and he designed their website, forum, members only area, and just about every other piece they’ve put out. So when he ran out of gas and asked me if I could throw something down, I said yes.

The Basilica Community meets on the campus of San Jacinto College so a natural target is college students. The problem is that most college students are smart enough to know when they are being marketed to and they don’t like it…unless it involves a credit card and a future in debt, or a free t-shirt…or donuts…But other than that, they don’t like it.

So, my challenge was to create something very Basilica, very college, and very not marketing – oh and it had to make french fries on the side.

Here’s the poster I came up with. The approach here…close your eyes, shake your head around really fast, and design something based on the first five things you see in the spots that start to form in front of you. There’s no mention of church until they get to the site. At which point they will make the connection, “This church is not like any other church I’ve slept through!” and they’ll go.

Pastor Joel LOVED this one.

The Basilica Community is Serious About This

The Basilica Community is a brand new church in South East Houston, TX. To help them get off to a good start and raise some funds, I was asked to put together their prospectus, AKA “Business Plan”, AKA “We’re serious about this.”

The goal was to keep the information brief and easy to take in. So, I tried to incorporate a lot of space to make things easy to take in smaller chunks.

They are targeting a series of suburbs that are often looked over or looked down upon in South East Houston. With that said, and at Pastor Joel’s suggestion, I used the various water towers in the suburbs to represent each city and to allude to a source of water or “living water” near by.

This book was also repurposed into a PDF eBook to make it MUCH cheaper to distribute.

Starting a new church is almost like starting a new cult…not that I would know…but the reaction you get from most people is first, a look of disbelief and then they start corralling their kids to the other side of the playground. With that said, simply looking legitimate is half the battle in raising support.

Too often churches neglect a viable and effective marketing effort and, as a result, the potential spread of their ministry and the gospel suffers.

Here are a few spreads:

You Made Your Bed!

And I made this Poster.

Ecclessia Church, in Houston, has made it a point to be part of the community they are located in. The area that surrounds their church values art, coffee, philosophy, music and individuality just to name a few. So, Ecclessia values the same things in their recording studio, coffee shop, art gallery and concert venue.

Nearly every month, the Ecclessia art gallery, Xnihilo Gallery, installs a new show complete with an artist reception. I have been asked, several times, to create the artwork for those shows.

You Made You’re Bed, Now Sleep in it! is a show featuring a series of mixed media paintings with the common theme of a bed. Using the actual artwork featured in the show, I created this poster of the corner of a room with one of the beds placed in the space.

Every show requires a presentation slide and a quarter page flyer which both followed this same concept.

Kaleo Bring-vitation

At Kaleo, I have split our marketing effort into two main categories — “Interruption Marketing” and “Word-of-Mouth.” Those are pretty industry standard terms so, without going into both, I will tell you about our “Word-of-Mouth” effort.

I believe word-of-mouth is one, if not the most, effective forms of marketing. There is nothing that has more credibility than someone who is NOT paid to be a walking advertisement. Knowing this, I created a small pocket size card with the vital details of Kaleo’s Sunday morning gathering on it. No fancy copy and no crazy artwork.

The photo on the front is of two actual families at Kaleo. We took them to a park and shot them…with a camera.

The copy is simple because the idea behind this card is not that it would act alone, but that it would simply be a tangible reminder of a verbal and relational invitation from a co-worker, friend, classmate, or acquaintance. They are called “BRING-vites” because we have called our people to “BRING” people to church, not just invite them. There is a strong relational element to this and we like that. The people at Kaleo liked it too — the cards have moved like free candy.

Showcase This…in your Mail Box

Every year a group of private schools and camps gathers in the Woodlands area for the annual Showcase of Private Schools and Camps.

This past year they asked me to update their identity and create a direct mail piece that would invite people to the event.

The idea for this piece was to create something that conveyed what could happen to kids when they enrolled in private schools or participated in camp. Basically, their heads would be filled with all kinds of good, wholesome stuff. I tried to illustrate the gamut of academic, creative, fun, and engaging possibilities.

Easter Ad

Kaleo Church in Houston is located in the heart of a city of Bellaire, a city, with-in the city, of Houston.

This presents a few unique and focussed marketing opportunities through local magazines. In the April issue of the Bellaire Buzz, Kaleo printed the ad below. This issue reached over 10,000 home via direct mail. A much broader target than Kaleo’s resources are able to reach alone.

I was responsible for the artwork, the copy and output to the magazine.

Kids are Bulletin Readers too

Kids are really important at Kaleo. Kaleo believes that kids should be just as much a part of the worship gathering as their parents are. They do provide Kaleo Kids Care during theGathering but when the parents feel their children are ready to be in theGathering, they’re ready for that too.

That is why I worked with Sue, the Children’s Ministry Director at Kaleo, on the children’s bulletin. The bulletin is designed to give kids space to draw and write and/or take notes on what is happening during theGathering.

Since only a few of the kids at Kaleo are theologians, we kept the content pretty simple and just challenging enough to keep the kids engaged.

One really great feature about this bulletin is that they print two to a letter size page and they are not week, date, sermon, or series specific. This helps save money and time in printing a few hundred at once instead of 10-20 each week.

Here are the spreads:

EXTRA! EXTRA! Read All about Kaleo!

Kaleo Houston has partners, not members. Partners have a vested interest in an organization. Because Partners are almost like “Share Holders,” Kaleo decided to start releasing a monthly partner only update. This update would include financial information as well as a preview as to where the church is heading.

At Kaleo’s current size and after about 4 months of trying this out we decided that it was not the best use of resources and are currently working on a better solution…but I thought you might like to see it anyway.

Due to the private nature of the material with in the gauge I can’t show you the whole thing…just imagine something totally awesome and you’ll get the idea (Just kidding…not that it’s not really cool, I’m just not actually that prideful).

Extraordinary Ad

Kaleo Church in Houston is located in the heart of a city of Bellaire, a city, with-in the city, of Houston.

This presents a few unique and focussed marketing opportunities through local magazines. In the December issue of the Bellaire Buzz, Kaleo printed the ad below. This issue reached over 10,000 home via direct mail. A much broader target than Kaleo’s resources are able to reach alone.

I was responsible for the artwork, the copy and output to the magazine.

Extraordinary Invite Card

Word of Mouth is by far the best marketing you can get. Christmas and Easter are by far the two most likely times all year that some who doesn’t usually go to church, will come to church. That being said, why not empower the best “Word-of-Mouth” street team you have, your congregation, to invite their friends and family to church when they are most likely to say, “Yes”?

And so the Extraordinary Invite Card was born. A simple business card size, easy to carry and give away, conversation starter. Kaleo invite cards, or “Bring-vitations”, are never meant to stand alone. They require the honesty of a conversation and a relational approach to evangelism.

Enjoy.