On Marketing the Episcopal Church in Northeast PA –The Resolution that Could

A resolution on Marketing the Episcopal Churches of Northeast PA was approved by a virtually unanimous vote at last October's Diocesan Convention: "This Convention applauds the efforts made by parishes to evangelize their communities using local media outlets. Furthermore, we encourage those efforts by calling upon the parishes in the northern and central parts of the diocese to participate for one year in a televised evangelism campaign by contributing to the cost of a commercial advertising program to run under the title The Episcopal Churches of Northeastern Pennsylvania on a local television station.”

The resolution, submitted by Daniel C. Gunn, Charles Cesaretti, and John Major, resulted in a TV ad campaign that launches on WNEP-TV on April 1. View three ads here and some context here. The ads have also been uploaded to YouTube and Facebook ... and have probably already been viewed across the world. And this is the website to which the ad campaign will direct viewers.

Here is some background that was supplied last October with the proposed resolution:

WNEP, an ABC affiliate out of Scranton, reaches almost all of the parishes in the northern and central part of the diocese. It also reaches as far south as Allentown and Bethlehem, but for market reasons it does not include that area. (That region belongs to the Philadelphia market.) During WNEP’s daily newscasts the station reaches 82% of adults age 25-54 in the central and northern portion of the Diocese of Bethlehem. A yearlong television advertising campaign would be cost prohibitive for any single parish, but if we each contributed $1,000 to $1,500 we could participate in a campaign to promote the Episcopal Church in Northeastern Pennsylvania. Churches which cannot contribute that amount are asked to pledge an amount more attainable, because we anticipate that every parish will benefit from this cooperative venture. No single congregation will be highlighted during this campaign. It is also worth noting that no other denomination is advertising locally on any station. This is a one-year experiment.