"Market to the elite, and eat with the masses. But market to the masses, and eat with the elite!"

You may be wondering if subliminal advertising works. That's an interesting question. (Send us money.) The American public was first introduced to the idea of subliminal advertising in 1957 by James M. Vicary. In a press conference announcing the formation of the Subliminal Projection Company, Vicary claimed that he was able to increase sales of popcorn and Coke through the use of subliminal advertising. (Send us lots of money.) According to Vicary, during a six-week test in a movie theater, he was able to drive up sales of popcorn by 57.5% and sales of Coke by 18.1% simply by flashing the slogans "drink Coke" and "eat popcorn" over the movie for 1/3,000th of a second every five seconds. (You want to send us money.) As plausible as his assertions might have been, there was little evidence to support them. (Send us money.) For one thing, Vicary refused to reveal where he conducted his experiment or document it in any meaningful way. What's more, psychologists who performed similar experiments concluded that a subliminal ad was no more compelling than a billboard glimpsed from the corner of the eye. (Send us your money.) In an effort to vindicate his claim, Vicary agreed to run the subliminal message "telephone now" during a Canadian broadcast. Like other documented cases, the experiment failed. Telephone usage didn't increase noticeably, and not a single viewer guessed Vicary's message. (Send us money.) While neither this experiment nor previous experiments disproved conclusively the effectiveness of subliminal ads, American broadcasters were so convinced of the ineffectiveness of subliminal messages that they simply volunteered not to run them. (You have an urge to send us money.) BTW, If you're still unconvinced and would like to see more research on the subject, you'll be happy to know that we're running our own little subliminal experiment. We can't tell you about it now, but in the coming weeks we'll reveal our findings. By the way, if you ever need to reach us--for any reason--our mailing address is: Frank & Sandy Luke 1328 N. Frisco, Apt. C Springfield, MO 65802

A few years ago the book Real Men Don’t Eat Quiche came out, and immediately sales took off. Everyone was talking about it. As I was thinking about the amazing success of that book, I decided to preach a series entitled, “What Makes a Man a Man? What Makes a Woman a Woman?” Unchurched people heard the titles, and they came; attendance climbed 20 percent in just four weeks. The elders were saying, “This is incredible!” When that series ended, I began one titled “A Portrait of Jesus.” We lost most of those newcomers. Interestingly, the elders said to me after that series, “Bill, those messages on the person and work of Christ related to unchurched people as well as any messages we’ve heard.” In this case, the problem wasn’t the content; the people who needed to hear this series most didn’t come because of the title.

We probably like to think that we're too smart to be seduced by such "branding," but we aren't. If you ask test participants in a study to explain their preferences in music or art, they'll come up with some account based on the qualities of the pieces themselves. Yet several studies have demonstrated that "familiarity breeds liking." If you play snippets of music for people or show them slides of paintings and vary the number of times they hear or see the music and the art, on the whole people will rate the familiar things more positively than the unfamiliar ones. The people doing the ratings don't know that they like one bit of music more than another <i>because</i> it's more familiar. Nonetheless, when products are essentially equivalent, people go with what's familiar, even if it's only familiar because they know its name from advertising.

Reality arrived yesterday in the form of an executive editor for my publisher telling me that I should hold off on developing my next book until I’ve spent 6 months marketing Off-Road Disciplines. I was not prepared for this sort of delay. However, when I checked with others in the business, I discovered that the likelihood of a second book depends on the sales of book #1 during those first, critical 6 months. Let’s hope everyone buys them for Christmas presents! Promoting me has never been comfortable. This might sound surprising after several years of newsletters, blogs, and websites, but it’s true. So my editor’s wisdom (she is absolutely right) pushed some issues to the surface. 1. My attitude resembled an ineffective church: I was prepared to create the content for books in perpetuity but had given precious little thought to getting these volumes in anyone’s hands. This condition resembles the church ready to receive new messages from their pastor each week, without a plan for getting this good news into their community. 2. My strategy must resemble an effective church: I will depend a lot on conference speaking and web-based promotion, but the foundation of everything will be relationship, getting the book to people I know who can recommend it to others. Purpose-Driven Life sold so many copies, in part, because readers purchased it for their friends. Great ministries reach their communities, not through programs, but through relationships. 3. My results will resemble the message: There is no cure for a bad book. Also, no amount of marketing, standard, buzz, guerilla, viral, etc. can compensate for readers not benefiting from what they read enough to talk about it. In the same way, the gospel’s ultimate credibility is that Jesus does things in and for people that make them want to share with others. While planning and relationship are essential, the power of the message is its content—Jesus and Him crucified. So I am over my qualms about marketing. Perhaps we can promote ourselves without being self-promoting. The daylight between the two might be called humility. My major recommendation: don’t confuse humility with low self-esteem.