When Messages Miss
Posted June 29th 2011 @ 2:57 pm by JerodBig brown shipping giant UPS has an adverting campaign right now about logistics. It’s basically saying the UPS Store is like your own personal assistant to take care of things like printing and shipping. I shouldn’t have been surprised to open up a Christian magazine this week to see this ad targeting churches, but I was.
On first glance, the ad doesn’t seem all that different from any other ad. But as I read further, the first sentence made me a little uncomfortable. It reads:
“Whatever your printing needs, put your faith in the professional printing experts at the UPS Store.”
Put my faith in printing experts? Is an ad targeted at Christians really making a play on the word faith? Yes. While it’s offensive on some levels, I think the biggest error probably lands in the fact that UPS didn’t have any idea how to talk to a Christian audience. They didn’t put themselves in the place of a Christian reader. Or maybe they didn’t know how to. Either way, what seemed like a clever turn of a phase to a copy writer ended up sending a bad message to me. I actually have less respect for UPS now than I did before seeing the ad. Their brand is tarnished in my eyes.
I can’t help but wonder how many times we do the same thing as a church. Do we really look at the advertising we’re doing through the eyes of the people in our community? Those crazy church signs are probably the best example. How often do we try to say something cute, or punny, but in the end offend the people that are reading it? When we’re sending out a postcard or putting up a banner in front of our churches, are we using language that hurts more than it helps? Are we using such insider language that people have no idea what we’re saying? Does that same Christianese that we intend to be caring actually end up turning someone off?
Everything we do communicates something. Why not be intentional about it and think through what it really says to the audience we’re trying to reach?
Comments (3)
Overreact much? As a lifelong follower of Christ, I can tell you that it never would have occurred to me to find this ad offensive. Christians put their faith in secular institutions and ideas all the time. It doesn’t take anything away from a belief in God.
You hit this a bit too hard in my opinion.
Is it an overreaction? Sure. But I was just trying to bring up the simple point that the words we use as communicators have meaning and power. I just wonder if UPS put thought into using the word faith beyond trying to make a cute sentence that used Christian language. Did they consider what the word faith might mean to a believer? Clearly it stuck out to me and wasn’t an issue for you. Maybe they could have used some other wording that wouldn’t create issues at all.
Hmmm….UPS is the rewarder of them that diligently seek them and the company rewards them that put their trust in their service or product. Sounds fine to me if that is the point they are trying to make?
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