STRATEGY CENTRAL

If you’ve been along for the journey here at StrategyCentral, you’ve heard the phrase “life-change” many times.  It’s the thing we exist to deliver…and that’s true whether your organization is a church or a non-profit.  Our organizations are in business to do more than make products or create experiences or operate programs.  We exist to do something that will ultimately change lives!

Yesterday I saw a Tweet from my friend Will Mancini (@willmancini) and it got my attention.  His Tweet read: “Ikea out-articulates the church. Isn’t “Life Changes Available” a better golden tomorrow than the nebulous “life change” we talk?”

I have to say, the addition of the word “available” presented such an intriguing twist on the well-worn phrase “life-change” that I had to check into what IKEA is doing.  Life Changes Available is a great tag line, but it’s more than a tag line.  It is a great story.

At the same time, it is a great illustration of the kind of thinking that can create an appealing and memorable invitation designed to catch the attention of our customers.

Back to Will’s Tweet.  He was making the point that our frequent reference to life-change is colorless.  It’s vague.  Who really knows what it means.  I guess we know what it means.  But when we use that phrase in a marketing piece or in a message, doesn’t it slip right by our intended audience?

Example: “Small groups are important here at ___________ Community Church because we believe that life change happens best around a coffee table.”

What?

The Takeaway:  The addition of the word “available” takes the phrase “life-change” from camouflaged fuzziness to an appealingly clear offer.  It shifts the phrase from the body of the marketing piece to the headline.

For me, it now fits in the same category as another tag line I’ve used for years: “Feel like a face in the crowd?”  That line perfectly fits the sensation that many people have when they’re walking into a large crowd week after week and no one knows them.  No one knows their struggle.  No one knows their loneliness.

Can you see how “Life Changes Available” will catch people’s attention?  It sure caught mine.

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One of the most important ongoing conversations a leader has is the one that keeps the mission on the front burner.  As this critically important conversation becomes less frequent or more muddled the likelihood that the mission is accomplished decreases.  How do you have the conversation?  I say “all the time and in as many ways as possible.”

My default way is to find stories or metaphors that graphically illustrate the mission.  I loved this paragraph from Will Mancini’s Church Unique:

“Dietrich Bonhoeffer said that the church is only the church when it exists for others.  What keeps your church focused externally?  Who do you think the most important person is to the Coca Cola company?  The consumer?  Which one?  The coke drinker?  Nope.  It’s actually the Pepsi drinker (p. 123).”

That is a great way of thinking about mission.  Unless you’re in the business of caring for the already convinced you’ve got to be focusing on the unconvinced.  If success has anything to do with reaching new customers…you better keep that mission in front of your team all the time.

By the way, one of the earliest posts here at StrategyCentral was about carbonation in churches.  Like the line here about the most important person being a Pepsi drinker, the story in this early post is one I’ve told a thousand times.  It’s all about mission.