Mormons’ Ad Campaign May Play Out on the ’12 Campaign Trail

[groovedaddy]

After Sunday worship in recent months, Mormon bishops around the country gathered their congregations for an unusual PowerPoint presentation to unveil the church’s latest strategy for overcoming what it calls its “perception problem.”

Top Mormon leaders had hired two big-name advertising agencies in 2009, Ogilvy & Mather and Hall & Partners, to find out what Americans think of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Using focus groups and surveys, they found that Americans who had any opinion at all used adjectives that were downright negative: “secretive,” “cultish,” “sexist,” “controlling,” “pushy,” “anti-gay.”

On seeing these results, some of those watching the presentation booed while others laughed, according to people at the meetings. But then they were told that the church was ready with a response: a multimillion-dollar television, billboard and Internet advertising campaign that uses the tagline, “I’m a Mormon.” The campaign, which began last year but was recently extended to 21 media markets, features the personal stories of members who defy stereotyping, including a Hawaiian longboard surfing champion, a fashion designer and single father in New York City and a Haitian-American woman who is mayor of a small Utah city.

“We’re not secretive,” Stephen B. Allen, managing director of the church’s missionary department, who is in charge of the campaign, said in an interview. “And we’re not scared of what people think of us. If you don’t recognize the problem, you can’t solve the problem. If nobody tells you you have spinach in your teeth, how would you know?” (how about looking in the mirror? - gd)

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/18/us/mormon-ad-campaign-seeks-to-improve-perceptions.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha3

[rrneck]

1. Typical corporate response. nt

[Kolesar]

2. The Mormons in Kirtland are snooty

"Missionary work" means taking away the heritage of indigenous people and other people in undeveloped countries. That is wrong--no matter who is doing it.

That religion has been trying to make itself look Christian for over a century. They even invented the name "Latter Day Saints", because "Mormon" had become pejorative. Nonetheless, they get their revelations from some text that Joseph Smith claims to have found near Palmyra, New York. They are not Christians.

/atheist rant off