I saw the first of these two Apple ads before a movie this weekend and thought immediately that Apple is thinking about the experience of the people whom it is trying to engage and the nature of the relationship it wants to have with those people in ways that might be useful for the church to consider.
I’m not suggesting that faith is a product, or that in joining a church you become a “customer.” I am not arguing the morality of Apple as a corporation or the usefulness of adapting secular marketing techniques for the purposes of evangelism (although there is a strong if qualified case to be made there.) But watch these ads, especially the first one, and tell me that Apple doesn’t have some extremely well developed ideas about who its audience is, what values that audience equates with Apple products, and what sort of emotional experience that audience is looking for in making Apple a part of its life.
Notice that in some ways, these values and emotional experiences overlap with the values we espouse as a church.
What can the church learn from this? What would the Episcopal Church’s version, or your parish’s version of these ads look like?
(If news doesn’t break today, I’m going to let this item run longer than usual so we can focus our conversation on it.)