"The kids all said that a) no one listens to the radio anymore, b)they mostly steal music, but they don't consider it stealing, and c) they get most of their music from iTunes on their iPod. They told us that MySpace is over, it's just not cool anymore; Facebook is still cool, but that might not last much longer; and the biggest thing in their life is word of mouth. That's how they hear about music, bands, everything."Mark DiDia, Head of Operations at Columbia Records (NY Times)
This statement jumped out at me when I originally read it on psfk... it was the reference to Facebook still being cool that caught me... then I noticed the reference to word of mouth.
More and more I honestly believe word of mouth is "everything". Think Steve Jobs doing his thing at one of the Apple media events. He's not pimping his product to the masses... he's talking to you direct. Hey... this is the buzz.
How can this be applied to faith? I think one-to-one is the most effective way... shining your light... being salt seasoning... talking about a friend rather than trying to recite a sales pitch.
Evangelism = Enthusiasm. You don't hard sell something you love... you tell your friends... in words that make sense to them... your language.
Think about it.
5 comments:
Word of Mouth is indeed the way to go! And in the hyper-friendly blogosphere, what is said is often times what goes, or at least gets spread.
Would you mind helping PSFK out and post a link to our Conference in a post on your blog?
http://www.psfk.com/psfk-conference-los-angeles
This is the link, it'd be great to get some people talking about it. We hope to have a day filled with commentary likes yours in person for our panelists that come from industries such as transportation, media, photography and telecom. It should be a day worth posting about. Cheers!
You don't think Steve Jobs was pimping his product!?
He's a past master
I love this thought.
We talked about this a few weeks ago in our community group.
The thing that turns so many people off from Christianity and evangelism is the thought that you must always close the sale.
You don't have to close the sale every time to be an evangelist of something.
You just wear it proudly, talk about how it's changed your life and how it could change the listener's/reader's life.
I think about Scoble when he was at Microsoft. He was a Microsoft evangelist.
He bragged and talked about Microsoft all the time but I don't recall him trying to close a sale at all.
Scripture reminds us that some are called to plant, some are called to water and some are called to harvest. We never know when we walk into a room, which role we'll fill that day but if we simply live the Christian life with passion and a mindset of missional living we'll find out soon enough.
Great post!
If I may be boring for a second, the result of the research I did for my honours degree dissertation into an aspect of marketing communications is that word of mouth, especially from within a trusted circle, is the best method of promotion.
I guess that's why all Christians are called to be witnesses over and above individual giftings!
J
Thanks for the comments... fully agree that Jobs is pimping his product... but its the way he does it. Its almost one to one.
Word of mouth is the best means of introducing someone to something new... and I honestly believe that for us to introduce our faith it needs to be done like this.
One to one
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