The Academy of the New Church, and especially Bryn Athyn College of the New Church, in the past few years have started to invest heavily in marketing. I don't want to get into a discussion of that, but it has gotten me to think: what would happen if someone – the General Church, the Swedenborg Foundation, or someone else – put on a massive, year-long marketing campaign for the Writings. Let's assume whoever does this has a virtually limitless budget. What would happen? Would it lead more people to the church? Would the results justify the expense? Would there be negative side effects? Is there a better way to spread the Writings? I've given it a little bit of thought, but I'd love to hear other people's thoughts.
Here's my vision: we make it our goal that over half of Americans know the name of Swedenborg and have some idea of who he was. How could we do this? I'm not sure. I know very little about marketing books. I haven't seen many television commercials or billboards for books. Advertising in magazines and newspapers seems to be a better avenue. Still, if we're operating with limitless funds, I think we could venture into billboards and TV commercials. We could arrange for translators to do book tours. I'm sure the Swedenborg Foundation does some of this already, but with more money it could expand to larger, more public places to advertise – the New York Times, Time magazine, billboards on I-95, a TV commercial at the Super Bowl.
The first question I have is whether any of this marketing could have a negative impact. If people see a Super Bowl commercial for a religious book they have never heard of, maybe they will have a negative reaction and associate it with commercialism, or feel that something is being pushed on them. Similarly with a billboard – I think that kind of advertising for a book might do more harm than good. So I think at least at the start I'd want to focus on print advertising and internet advertising.
What could we expect in response to this kind of nationwide advertising campaign (I'm sticking to North America in this hypothetical situation for now, since I don't know much about the rest of the world)? Since we've never tried it, I don't think there's any way to know. There's a possibility that despite all the advertising, the whole thing would flop. My impression is that book sales are among the most difficult things to predict.
Even a flop, though, might be considered a success in some ways. Let's say that half the population is exposed to the advertising – about 150 million people. The vast majority of them ignore the ads. One out of every 10,000 people who sees the ads is interested and checks out a book of the Writings. That's 15,000 people – about triple the number of members in the General Church. By most measures that kind of response to advertising would be considered a failure – but to have that many new people interested in the Writings would in some ways be a huge success. The New Church is very, very small.
But let's assume the campaign is a success. If a book sells over 100,000 copies in a year, it is considered very successful (here's a list of all the paperbacks that sold over 100,000 copies in 2008). Let's assume that we're extremely successful and sell 1 million copies of books of the Writings. What could we expect in that case?
Certainly at least a few of the readers would love what they read and look into finding a church that was based on the Writings. We've all heard stories of people who found the church this way – and that is with advertising that has up to now been very limited. On the other hand, that kind of exposure would bring attacks from all sorts of places. Preachers in fundamentalist churches would bring attacks against the Writings in their sermons. More than that, though, experts in theology and the Bible – people with Ph.D.'s in Biblical studies and theology – would publish criticisms. Reviewers from major newspapers might acknowledge the good points, but would probably point out negatives (from their perspective) as well. Are we ready for the attacks that would certainly come?
I think one important thing to keep in mind is that if we have that level of exposure, we would probably gain new defenders and champions of the New Church in addition to the attackers. And the harshest attacks that the New Church tends to get – from people who vehemently argue in favor of Biblical literalism, for example – are already opposed by many, perhaps even the majority of serious Biblical scholars and theologians. Still, we would need to learn a lot more. I spent the last several months answering emails to newchurch.org that criticized the New Church, and I had to do a LOT of quick research into the epistles. One of the best things I got out of this experience was the realization that the epistles really do support New Church doctrine. I'd always been a little scared of digging into them too deep because I never quite trusted that they did – there's a lot in them that at first glance does seem to support faith alone and three persons in God. With more research, though, I realized that the Writings are true when they say that Protestant theology is founded on a misinterpretation of Paul (Apocalypse Revealed 825). (By the way, I found the book The Theology of Paul the Apostle by James D.G. Dunn to be immensely helpful. While the author still argues that faith alone saves, his explanation of Paul shows that Paul DID believe that you have to continue to shun evils if you want to really have faith, and that when he said salvation is “apart from works of the law,” (Romans 3:28) he was talking about the ceremonial parts of the law of Moses, especially circumcision.)
If a massive advertising campaign were successful, we would need to be ready for attacks. I think we are ready. Our belief that the Writings are Divine Revelation can protect our own personal faith against any attack, even if we find ourselves unable to back up every point of faith with Bible verses. It is enough, I think, that there be some of us skilled in defending the New Church, who are willing to go to battle, so that those who are teetering between their former faith and the New Church can see that embracing the New Church does not mean turning their back on the Bible. Michael and his angels represent “those who confirm from the Word, that the Lord is the God of heaven and earth, and that God the Father and He are one, as the soul and body are one; also that people ought to live according to the commandments of the Decalogue, and that then people have charity and faith” (Apocalypse Revealed 548). Not everyone has to be a Michael, but there must be some of them willing to defend the New Church against the dragon.
Is any of this possible? I don't know – I have no idea how much it would cost to run that big of an advertising campaign. I asked someone who works in marketing and he estimated that a major print and advertising campaign would run about $300,000/month, or $3.6 million per year. To have the kind of impact I'm talking about – reaching half the U.S. population – I think it would take substantially more. But if some lucky Swedenborgian won the lottery and donated $500 million to this cause, I think it could happen. Would that be the best way to spend that $500 million? Quite possibly not – getting books to sell is notoriously difficult, and the person who works in marketing suggested that a better model is to try to get key people – e.g. pastors – to read the books and share them with people. And there's certainly something to be said for slow, sustainable growth that comes from supporting a church rather than selling books. But I love the idea of getting the world to that starting point, where at least people know that the Writings are out there, that someone is promising a view of heaven and a new way to understand the Word.