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Serving the Christian Market Since 1968
733 Virginia Avenue, Van Wert, Ohio 45891 - 419.238.4082 |
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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 October 25, 2009 edition of The FOSTER Letter—Religious Market Update NOWISM “Consumers’ yearning for instant gratification is being satisfied by a host of novel, important (offline and online) real-time products, services and experiences. Consumers are also feverishly contributing to the real-time content avalanche that’s constantly building. In an age of abundance, with a reduced need for non-stop securing of the basics, and physical goods so plentiful that the status derived from them is sometimes close to nil, only consumption of the experience and thus the “now,” the thrill, remains. This focus on experiences, this living in the now instead of in the future, is addictive. As netizens are insatiably lusting after (and contributing to) up-to-date info on other people, products, events, news and so on, they are thus obsessed with real-time publishing, real-time search, real-time reviews and price-comparison, real-time news, real-time conversations and more. While the appeal and influence of ‘now’ has been building for years, societal attitudes, sky-high consumer expectations and new technologies are currently converging in such a powerful way that brands truly have no choice but to go ‘real-time’—in their business intelligence processes, customer conversations, innovation labs, distribution, sales, marketing and branding departments. (Trendwatching 10/09) Book Price War Walmart.com has dropped the price on their top 10 pre-order titles to $10, including free shipping. Also they are offering their top 200 books at discounts of 50% or more in a program called America’s Reading List. A day later, Amazon matched Wal-Mart’s pricing, and both sites have dropped those 10 promotional titles to just $9. It remains to be seen what this will do to already-beleaguered chain and independent book stores. (Publisher’s Lunch 10/16/09) Childhood Trauma A new Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study finds children who experience 6 or more traumatic events in their childhood have an average lifespan 19 years shorter than their counterparts who do not suffer that degree of childhood trauma. This includes traumatic events such emotional, physical or sexual abuse or household dysfunction. (ABCNews.go.com) Trend Watching is about observing and understanding what’s already happening, the major and the minor, the mainstream and the fringe—in our case, in the consumer and Christian ministry/business arena. While spotting and tracking trends, not everything applies to everyone, and virtually every trend has its anti-trend. Furthermore, the new doesn’t always kill the old. I can help you identify current trends and how likely they are to impact your organization. Contact 419-238-4082, gary@garydfoster.com or www.garydfoster.com. (Trendwatchers 9/5/07) Fundamental Shift As Baby Boomers head for retirement, they are going to be spending less. Right behind them is Generation X—47 million strong—which has lost the buying power that Boomers had. The millennial generation brings a whole new set of values. They will be concerned with the environment, and they are clearly looking to conserve energy and buy less; they’ll be a lot more sensitive to the impact of their buying options. These people are choosy; they are not free-spenders. The challenge for businesses will be to give them freedom to buy their brand. That’s real branding. The biggest revolution, though, is people being able to talk to each other about brands. (CZMarketing Brand Strategy 9/09) Opportunity Cost Aaron Dun, SVP, Ness Technologies, advocates an excellent approach to managing marketing budgets using the theory of opportunity cost. This concept considers not just the money you are spending on marketing activities, but also the value of what you are NOT doing as a result. He recommended marketers make campaign spending decisions by looking for multiple positive results. For example, rather than doing a podcast on your own, partner with a third-party, such as an industry media company, that can broaden your reach and provide additional names for the list. Strike smarter package deals: Rather than signing up for a 5-webinar deal, do 1 webinar with an agreement to create 4 more if the results are good. Make sure everything you create can be re-used: A whitepaper becomes the basis of a podcast, and that podcast recording becomes the collateral for a new email program, etc. (MarketingSherpa 9/30/09) Disclose or Be Fined The FTC has revised its “guides” governing endorsements and testimonials, aimed squarely at online and word-of-mouth recommendations. The 81-page government document is in many instances more confusing than helpful. They want disclosure within tweets as well. The main point of essence for book publishers, book bloggers and online reviewers is the determination that “bloggers may be subject to different disclosure requirements than reviewers in traditional media.” They judge that “a blogger’s statement on his personal blog or elsewhere (e.g., the site of an online retailer of electronic products) qualifies as an ‘endorsement,’—i.e., as a sponsored message—due to the value of the merchandise he has received and has been asked to review by that advertiser,” and that such a connection must be disclosed. Fines can be up to $11,000 per violation. This sounds like more job security for attorneys to me. (Publisher’s Lunch 10/6/09) The Important Question during a downturn isn’t whether or not the economy will recover. It will; it always does. What’s important to ask is whether your organization will be in position to surge as the economy begins to grow. It won’t be marketing as usual. You will need to make strategic decisions about choosing new media, entering new markets and positioning products. Now is the time to establish marketing plans for the recovery: formulate strategies, design campaigns, and make media choices so you are ready to go when you have marketing funds to invest. I can help you get ready. Contact me at 419-238-4082, gary@garydfoster.com or www.garydfoster.com. (Performance Insider 10/15/09) Evangelism 85% of Southern Baptist churches held VBS in the past 12 months, by far the most common outreach event conducted. 58% held a prayer emphasis focused specifically on outreach or unbelievers, followed by servant evangelism projects (46 %), revival services (45%) and door-to-door canvassing (44%). 86% also conducted ongoing follow-up with people who visited a church service. 77% offer food to people who are in need. (Baptist Press 10/7/09) Moms Stay Home Nearly 25% of moms in married-couple families stayed home with their children through ’07. The U.S. Census report defines a stay-at-home mom as a mother with a child under 15 who decided to stay at home to care for her children while her husband was working all 52 weeks of the previous year. (CitizenLink.com) 8% of Internet Users Account for 85% of All Clicks comScore reports that the number of people who click on display ads in a month has fallen from 32% of Internet users in ’07 to only 16% in ’09, with an even smaller core of people (representing 8% of the Internet user base) accounting for 85% of all clicks. In ’07, comScore found that “Heavy” clickers, representing 6% of U.S. Internet users, accounted for the top 50% of clicks; “Moderate” clickers, 10% of Internet users, accounted for 30% of the clicks; and “Light” clickers, 20% of users, accounted for 16% of the clicks. By March ’09, those numbers had dropped substantially: 4% of Internet users are Heavy clickers, 4% are Moderate clickers and 8% are Light clickers. (Center for Media Research Brief 10/13/09) The Baby Boomers were trained to believe in any kind of dream that was offered up. They were told there were no limitations to dreams. It was about limitless opportunities. And they were willing to compromise their integrity for the acquisition of material goods, because those material goods defined who they were. Now they are learning there are limits and that some dreams are unattainable. Hence, leadership has changed. People don’t want to hear that you’re going to take them to the moon; they just want you tell them who you are. (CZMarketing Brand Strategy 9/09) Dayspring division of Hallmark has downsized by 34 people as of early October due to declining sales, particularly in the Christian bookstore channel. The company now employs approximately 250 people. (Foster Network 10/15/09) Mobile Women According to The Nielsen Company, mobile Internet users are up 34% to over 56.9 million in the U.S. The biggest gain is the 9% points of growth for female users putting them at 47%. Two key things that women are utilizing mobile web access and apps for: shopping and social networking. (Engage Moms 10/7/09)
Church Goers in the U.S. give an average of 2.56% of their
income to charity vs. 1.8% by the general population, according to
empty tomb, inc. (Monday Morning
Insight 10/12/09) More Social Media = More E-Mail Contrary to what many have assumed, social media use makes people consume email more. Social media sites like Facebook send messages to your inbox every time someone comments on your posting or something you’ve participated in and, depending on your settings, can send updates on almost every activity. Also, as people make connections though social media, they maintain those connections outside of the specific platform and may extend those connections to email, a phone conversation or even in-person meetings. Nielson research found among those using social media more over the past 6 months, 44% also report using email more. (NielsenWire 9/28/09) Lonely Moms With the frenzied pace of today’s moms, many women find friendships and relationships often fall to the wayside. With just 19% living in the community where they grew up, moms desperately seek new connections and they struggle: 58% report experiencing loneliness in the past month, and 4 out of 5 need more friends in their lives. (Engage Moms 10/21/09) The Global Muslim Population now stands at 1.57 billion, which is almost 25% of the world’s population. Islam is practiced in 232 countries and territories and is the world’s second largest religion behind Christianity, which has between 2.1 and 2.2 billion followers. There are roughly 2.3 million Muslims in the U.S. making up 0.8% of the population. (Pew Research Center 10/09) Foster Letter---Religious Market Update, E-mail us at: subscribe@garydfoster.com
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