Words...

The past few days have provided some pretty cool reading...mostly articles and stuff, nothing major, but I figured it might be cool to throw some quotes out this week and see what you think.

Here's one to get us going:

"A lot of people think branding is about crass commercialism, big business, and exploiting workers in Third World countries. A lot of people have really negative connotations of branding, but the essential definition of branding is simply the story that surrounds a product, a person, or an organization. In other words, what do people think of when they think of you? What do people think of when they think of Apple? What do they think of when they think of Nike? All that information is encoded in that brand. A brand is a story that surrounds an organization.

"So my thing is the Church actually began branding because we're the people who began thousands of years ago telling a compelling story that transformed our lives. But it seems in the last 40 or 50 years, we've lost that ability and business now does it better than we do. Nike tells a better story than most pastors."

-Phil Cooke, author of Branding Faith

(Taken from Collide Magazine, Issue 04, March/April 2008)

Totally true? Total nonsense? Somewhere in between?

QUOTES

Here are some quotes I've come across lately that I found really interesting:

1. "Soft rock stations are like blended worship - no one really enjoys the music except 53-year olds." (Gary Molander, co-owner of Floodgate Productions.)

2. "Projection screens, fancy waterfalls, Starbucks, donuts, cool couches, candles or nifty lights - I'm not impressed with them and neither are they. You know why? Because they are not at your place. If they want donuts, they will go to Dunkin Donuts, not church. If they want coffee, there is a Starbucks on every corner. Don't just do things because the big church down the street does them that way. Do things that make sense and things that will last. (Craig Ross, founder of XXXchurch.com.)