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The Foster Letter —

Religious Market Update

The FOSTER Letter is a bi-weekly e-mail religious market intelligence report targeted to Christian market channel and ministry leaders.  Each issue reports on news, trends, events and research that will directly or indirectly impact your audiences and businesses in a convenient summary format  Better informed leaders make better choices!

Researched, Edited & Published by Gary D. Foster

Excerpts from the

July 10, 2007 edition of

The FOSTER Letter—Religious Market Update

America’s Marketers have gone to great pains to make their ads “inclusive” by including a woman here, man there, black person there, Asian here, Latino there. They seem to say, “We’re being fair. We’ve included everybody. Buy from us.” But a new approach to marketing says the seemingly inclusive ads are nonsense, almost as offensive as the advertising campaigns of old that portrayed all wholesome families as white. Monique Tapie, Global Advertising Strategies, says the old “Multicultural Marketing 101” approach assumes all Asians are alike, all African-Americans are alike, all Spanish-speaking people are alike, we are all alike, which means we’re all mainstream…and mainstream is still considered to be white. Ethnic marketing is not a matter of cynically exploiting racial, ethnic, class or other differences for profit. It’s a recognition that differences exist, that America is composed of many cultures, and that if you plan to sell to those cultures, you’d better try to do a better job of understanding them.(WashingtonPost.com 6/10/07) 

Unilever, in its Boomer Shoppers Today and Tomorrow: Following the Money study discovered 4 types of Boomer shoppers: Savvy Savers (34%) value special offers and are affluent yet disciplined when shopping. They are cosmopolitan and suburban plus interested in culture and sports. Daily Planners (28%) value well-stocked stores, trust local merchants and seek convenience. They buy to satisfy aspirations and fit shopping to their busy lives. Plain & Practicals (22%) value everyday low prices, shop big box and mass merchandisers and are conservative, religious, outdoorsy and self-sufficient. No Frills Independents (16%) value convenience, are indifferent to brands and price sensitive. They are also loners, lower income and older than other boomers. (Unilever.com 5/6/07) 

Uncertain 26% of teens don’t know if heaven is in their future and 25% who agree they will go to heaven because Christ died for their sins are also uncertain. (NAMB.net 7/07) 

Love Thy Neighbor Nearly-two thirds of U.S. adults received at least one selfless act of kindness in the past year, finds to a recent Gimundo survey. 33% couldn’t recall receiving any selfless good deeds. 41% were given a shoulder to cry on or were comforted in a time of need; 21% were helped with car trouble; 21% were bought something they needed but couldn’t afford; 1% had their life saved; and 38% were surprised with some a other type of selfless act. (The Christian Post 6/21/07) 

Are You Innovating Everywhere? When talk of innovation relates solely to products, it misses some of the most important elements of this critical business quality. The most effective strategies foster the discipline of innovation everywhere -- including every component of a healthy brand: positioning, product, service or mission, pricing, marketing mix, sales channel strategy, supply chain, finance and management processes. Seeking innovation across the board will more than spark top-line growth; it will serve as a catalyst to generate growth in many other critical areas, including finance, strategy and distribution. A comprehensive approach reduces risk to an acceptable level while providing the investment funds to support an aggressive overall business strategy. I can help you craft a comprehensive innovation strategy for your organization. Contact 419-238-4082, GFosterCns@rmi.net or www.GaryDFoster.com. (AdAge.com 6/20/07) 

AdWords Advice “Focus all your energies on helping searchers solve their problems and be prepared to pay what it is worth to you to do so.” This is the advice of e-marketer expert Simon Galbraith about using Google AdWords. His advice, of course, is the essence of marketing, and it requires extensive, ongoing effort to know your customers/donors intimately. If your ad matches searchers’ questions; if you use the same language they’re likely to use; if your ad link takes searchers to a page that really answers their questions; if you experiment endlessly to improve in every area of your process; and if you are patient enough to wait for benefits that may not be immediate, you’ll be using AdWords in a way that actually gets you somewhere. (Brandweek 6/25/07) 

Breaking the Curse of Knowledge We all tend to forget that the knowledge we possess is not common to everybody. We automatically assume everyone knows the same things we do. When we fall prey to the Curse of Knowledge, we phrase ideas as they exist in our own mind instead of expressing them in a way that appeals to the minds of others. The ‘Curse’ leads us to abstraction and separates us from our audience. I can help you communicate in a way that will connect with and appeal to your audience. Contact 419-238-4082, GFosterCns@rmi.net or www.GaryDFoster.com. (Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die by Chip & Dan Heath, Random House, ’07) 

Very Young Techs Market research firm NPD Group finds the age children start interacting with electronic media, hand-held digital-media toys and gadgets dropped, from 8.1 years in ’05 to 6.7 years in ’07. The firm’s report, Kids and Consumer Electronics Trends III, says that children start using electronic devices at approximately age 7. Anita Frazier, NPD Group spokesperson, says, “They [kids] appear to have no fear of technology and adopt it easily and without fanfare, making these devices a part of their everyday lives.” Kids average using electronic devices 3 days per week, with heavier use weighted toward TV (5.8 days per week), cell phones (4.3) and digital video recorders (4.1). (Marketing Daily 6/6/07) 

Clergy Most Satisfied An overwhelming 87.2% of clergy described themselves as “very satisfied” with their jobs, according to an 18-year-long study on job satisfaction and general happiness conducted by the National Opinion Research Center at the Univ. of Chicago. In contrast, only 47% of the general population describes themselves this way. In a second set of results that measured happiness in general, clergy reported they were “very happy,” in great numbers--67.2% versus 33.3% among the general population. (Leadership Network Advance 6/26/07)

Part-Time Pastors Experts say about a third of the pastors serving large Protestant denominations are part-time, with some — such as the Southern Baptist Convention — nearing 40%. A ’06 Southern Baptist Convention study found that the annual pay and benefits package for a full-time minister in that denomination was $59,995 a year vs. $17,385 for a part-timer. For smaller churches with worshippers living on fixed incomes, the advantages of part-time pastors are obvious. (AP 6/24/07) 

Snail Mail Preferred Nearly 3 out of 4 consumers prefer receiving new product announcements via mail from companies they’re already in contact with vs. just 18% via e-mail. (Marketing Daily 6/12/07) 

Porn A ’06 poll by the online Christian marketplace ChristiaNet found 50% of Christian men and 20% of Christian women are addicted to porn. (dailynews.com 6/07) 

Heaven Knows 69% of teens believe heaven exists, finds a LifeWay Research study. 53% agree belief in Christ’s death for their sins as the reason they will go to heaven. 27% trust in their own kindness to others and 26% for their religiosity. Of the 69% who strongly or somewhat agree they will go to heaven because Jesus’ death for them, 60% also agree they will go because they are religious and 60% because they are kind to others. That leaves just 28% of American teens who are trusting only in Christ as their means to get to heaven. 69% believe heaven exists, down from 75% in ’05. Only 5% strongly do not believe heaven exists. (Baptist Press 5/23/07) 

College Students rank social responsibility higher than celebrity endorsements as factors in their choice of consumer brands. 33% prefer brands known for involvement with not-for-profit causes, community activism or environmentally friendly practices. (Media Daily News 5/15/07) 

More Self-Employed More than 3 in 4 U.S. businesses don’t have a payroll, meaning it’s a self-employed small business. A daily average of 2,356 people went into business for themselves as the nation’s number of businesses without a payroll reached 20.4 million in ’05. (Census Bureau News 6/25/07) 

Faster Than a Petaflop IBM has a new supercomputer capable of processing more than 3 quadrillion operations a second, or 3 petaflops, a possible record. The Blue Gene/P is designed to continuously operate at more than 1 petaflop in real-world situations. Put another way, the computer operating at a petaflop is performing more operations than a 1.5-mile-high stack of laptops. (USA Today.com 6/26/07) 

Social Networking penetration is at a whopping 96% among those 9-17, according to Alloy Media & Marketing. That figure refers to teens that connect to a social network at least once a week--they even use them to connect with their parents in many cases. (Online Media Daily 6/26/07) 

Giving to religious organizations in ’06 rose 1.2% on an inflation-adjusted basis and accounted for 32.8% of the total $295 billion given by Americans, according to Giving USA Foundation’s annual report. (NY Times 6/25/07) 

The United Church of Christ just celebrated its 50th anniversary. The denomination has lost approximately a million members over the last 40 years and is one of the fastest declining denominations in the U.S. According to Mark Tooley, Institute on Religion and Democracy, “The UCC embodies the dysfunction of declining, old-line Protestantism in America. Its elites, unaware or uninterested in the beliefs of average local church members, devote themselves to radical political causes instead of the traditional Gospel. The inevitable result has been a massive hemorrhage in membership, finances and overall cultural influence.” (CR Online 6/25/07) 

Wal-Mart estimates it will lose $215,000 in lifetime business with the average customer who becomes so frustrated or upset that they discontinue shopping there. (Monday Morning Insight 6/11/07) 

Leader Qualities 31% of CFOs say the most important quality for a business leader to possess is integrity, finds a Robert Half Management Resources Study. 27% say experience is the most important and another 27% claim its communication skills. 11% say it’s technical or functional expertise. (John McIntyre’s syndicated column, Figuratively Speaking, 6/24/07) 

Americans Generous In ’06 philanthropic giving, as a percentage of gross domestic product, the U.S. ranked first at 1.7%; twice the amount as #2 Britain at 0.73%, while France, with a 0.14%, trailed such countries as South Africa, Singapore, Turkey and Germany. (2006 Giving USA Foundation Annual Report) 

China Over the next 20 years more people will migrate to China’s cities for higher-paying jobs. These working consumers, once the country’s poorest, will steadily climb the income ladder, creating a new and massive middle class. The rising economy in China will lift hundreds of millions of households out of poverty. Today 77% of urban Chinese households live on less than 25,000 renminbi ($3,125 US) a year; by 2025 that figure will drop to 10%. By then, urban households in China will make up one of the largest consumer markets in the world, spending about 20 trillion renminbi ($5 trillion US) annually. (Center for Media Research-Research Brief 6/27/07) 

Fatherless More than 19 million U.S. children (about 25%) live in households without a father, according to the Census Bureau. For African-Americans that figure rises to 56%, among Hispanics it’s 31% and in white households its 22%. National Fatherhood Initiative’s Roland Warren says fatherless kids “are 2 or 3 times more likely to use drugs, become teen parents, be connected with the criminal justice system, to fail in school, or to live in poverty.” (PWB 6/22/07) 

Multiplying Churches A recent Leadership Network study finds successful multiplying churches hold these values: ▪ Believe God has called them to reach the unchurched locally and globally. ▪ The importance of establishing long-term strategies and goals involving both staff and church members in the planting process. ▪ A focus on Kingdom growth, not on becoming a larger church. ▪ The importance of maintaining fellowship with daughter churches as they become independent. ▪ Understanding that staff, salaries and other resources need to be freely given for new churches to effectively impact communities. (Churches studied allocate 2% to 30% of overall budgets for church planting.) ▪ Lack of size, staff or poor timing are not valid excuses for delay. http://outreachmagazine.com/docs/25innov_JA07.pdf. (Outreach 7-8/07) 

The Teen Market will grow to more than $208 billion by ’11, according to Packaged Facts. That’s a 10% increase from $189.7 billion in ’06. (Media Daily News 6/27/07) 

Confidence in the Church is one percentage point from being the lowest in Gallup’s history since ’73. Only 46% of Americans have a “great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in church/organized religion. Confidence in the church has dropped from 53% in ’04 to 39% in ’07 among Catholics while it fell from 60% to just 57% among Protestants after jumping to 63% in ’06. Americans are more likely to have confidence in small business (59%) and the police (54%) than the church. Congress only gets a 14% confidence rating. “These low ratings reflect the generally sour mood of the public at this time,” states the report. (Christian Post 6/27/07)

For information on how to become a subscriber to the entire 3-4 page Foster Letter---Religious Market Update, E-mail us at: subscribe@garydfoster.com