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Gruen Transfiguration
Published 30 September 2010
One of the few TV shows I ‘religiously watch' is The Gruen Transfer. Screening on ABC TV, this is a show about advertising - how it is done, how it influences us and interestingly for a medium stereotyped as devoid of values and ethics, consideration of significant moral questions.
It has rated very well, averaging 1.25 million viewers in the last season, rating well across all adult demographics, and in the 2010 season, the edition which focused on religion was the second highest rating show for that week (1.482 million viewers).
The Executive Producer is well-known media identity Andrew Denton. "The Gruen Transfer is named after Victor Gruen, the guy who designed the very first shopping mall. The term describes that split second when the mall's intentionally confusing layout makes our eyes glaze and our jaws slacken... the moment when ... we become impulse buyers." (http://www.abc.net.au/tv/gruentransfer/theshow.htm)
The regular panel on The Gruen Transfer is led by Wil Anderson, host and certainly quick wit, always ready to pounce on a comment and turn it to his advantage. He is joined by guests and regular commentators Todd Sampson, CEO of Leo Burnett and Russel Howcroft, Chairman and Managing Director of George Patterson's Y&R.
I have found it a helpful way of learning about the pervasive influence of the visual media culture in our society. After all, who hasn't seen an advert, or perhaps even bought advertising. Most churches have advertised, whether for staff positions or programmes and events. Our denominational publications rely on advertising for revenue for their overall budgets.
How did Gruen promote consideration of religion on their website: "Atheism's on the rise in Australia. In fact, religion appears to be a brand under threat. Yet few of its branches seem to advertise. Or do they? This week's The Gruen Transfer rounds up religious ads ..., from the deeply spiritual to the deeply disturbing."
The programme centred around Christianity and churches, though there was also a nod to the new campaign by Scientology, which cleverly does not mention the name until the end. There was also a brief consideration of advertising where ‘religion' is used to sell products, with one advert from Israel showing a high-spirited group of "religious Jews" promoting HD TV. Other examples in this category included an advert for ice-cream showing a pregnant nun with the slogan- immaculately conceived.
The key part of the programme looked at the Bible Society-initiated campaign JAAL (Jesus. All About Life), which has been run in WA, SA, ACT and Tasmania, and had a major campaign in NSW. Clearly the main commentators had done their homework. This was introduced as "... the most high profile religious ad of recent times". The usual jokes were made by Wil Anderson, but it was generally a serious conversation. As Todd Sampson explained, the churches had "done their research" (which is available as a report). This research showed that "Church is bad - Jesus is cool. So they focused on their strength which is Jesus, but the advertising certainly won't fix the problem that brand Christianity has. If you think of Christianity as a brand or a product, then its retail shops are the churches and most people would say the retail shops are letting the brand down. ... Todd Sampson went on to say "And probably the best re-branding of the shopping experience is done by Hillsong, I mean they've just dramatically changed the retail shop the church through theatre and music and they modernised it ....".
Russel Howcroft outlined a perceptive point that "They [the churches] are trying to normalise the idea of Jesus .... try and invite people to have a conversation they may otherwise feel uncomfortable to have...", and highlighted this campaign as being successful in terms of people visiting churches. Howcroft also highlighted that is was a great success internally and publicly because it was funded by different denominations. The panel noted this was a smart marketing job as well - reinforcing for "core users".
There was also a critique of a strongly didactic advert for the Mormons (family focus as usual), a startling gun-based advert by Answers in Genesis (from the USA), and comments about ‘cheese' at the end about former Christian Television Association (CTA) adverts. This last part was in the context of their spot on the search for the ‘worst ad. ever').
An interesting comment was that the same number of people go to worship in an average month as go to a Bunnings store, so whatever you think of the debate about marketing the church, or whether the ‘shop fronts' are letting Jesus down, it is undeniable that there is increasing debate about the public presentation and role of religion in society. This debate is fostered by atheistic commentators, but also long-standing Christian communicators like Phil Cooke. His latest book Branding Faith, attempts to paint a broad-brush stroke about the development and influence of media and culture and the challenge to "express our faith in a media-dominated culture. How to tell our story alongside the maddening swirl of media "clutter" - TV, radio, computer, digital music player, Internet, mobile phone, and other technologies competing for our attention."
Peter Bentley
For Peter's longer article on "The Gruen Church" - considering similarities between Gruen and the "emergent church",
see http://www.confessingcongregations.com/resources/item/the-gruen-church/
