Megachurches and Their Online Branding

Singapore.
The next session I'm attending at ICA 2010 starts with Jieyoung Kong, whose focus is on US megachurches online - how are these 'faith brands' building online brand communities? Megachurches are a trend of the last decade, well beyond the US; they are defined as protestant religious organisations with more than 2000 members each which conduct weekly services and engage in significant strategic communication activities. The marketing of megachurches involves storytelling that constructs and maintains the brand.

Brand communication articulates group categorisation and belonging, creating a personal brand; faith branding markets epiphanies, not their gods as such - it parallels the conversion process and markets the tenets of the brand faith, and engages in online and offline social capital building. How do megachurches construct new methods of religious delivery of experiences, then?

The study examined the Websites of some 300 religious organisations with between 43,000 and 4,000 members, most of which declared themselves to be non-denominational; these Websites were coded for a variety of features (emblematic and architectural features, as well as other content). Some 25% of these sites were using .com domains, and some 45% were showing the ministry logo in addition to the organisational logo.

Some 72% included video Webcasts (36% also live); 71% also had audio Webcasts. 81% had FAQs on faiths and beliefs, and many also had other information and connection services for newcomers. Community features (member login, feeds, blogs, etc. were found in around a third of all sites. Online donation systems were found in some 78%, and roughly half also offered online stores for branded products (CDs, sermons, books, DVDs, etc.). The size of the church matters here - larger churches were likely to have more of these features.

A further qualitative analysis examined the (often specifically branded) youth ministries, and also found a significant presence on Facebook. Youths are very directly interpellated by these brands, and a change in their lifestyle is advertised; youth are positioned as cultural warriors, and this is reinforced by weekday services that are recast into episodic 'series'. The use of generic social media sites in this adds further points of contact with youths, and prepares its audiences for the next steps of religious brand involvement; it also reinforces existing brand loyalty.

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