Inny Or Outy

From Rich Leonardi's Ten Reason Blog

The marketing experience

Catholics around the diocese will begin to look at the "new" St. Xavier Church downtown under its current pastor

An excerpt.

A new Web site, a new logo, a softball team - they're among the ways that a Northern Kentucky University marketing class recommended St. Xavier Church change the way it communicates with the community.

"It allows our parish to be able to go out and tell people in a concrete way why they go to St. X, and why it's so important to them," said the Rev. Eric Knapp, S.J. pastor of the church.

The congregation was looking for ways to capitalize on recent growth - 600 new households in the last four years, quadrupled the number of baptisms and reduced the average age from 67 to 51.

That's when Knapp connected with church member Mark Komanecky, a P&G marketing manager and an adjunct professor of marketing at Northern Kentucky University.

"It was an opportunity for our students to have a real application of what they're learning in the classroom," Komanecky said. "It applies concepts to a real thing, while connecting them back to the community, and this generation really wants to give back to the community."

For Jasmine Hughes, a senior who will earn her bachelor's degree this month and hopes for a career in marketing, the project helped affirm her career choice.

"To be able to apply what I learned and to be able to help someone else with that knowledge is really incredible," said Hughes, 29, of Fort Thomas. "I got to make an impact in the real world."

In Hughes' group of four, some of the recommendations included a new Web site, bus stop advertising, bumper stickers, and softball team uniforms.

"We learned how to be clever and creative and about how to reach the public," she said.

As a non-diocesan parish, the congregation doesn't have a geographic boundary and draws from a diverse population including 127 zip codes in Ohio and Northern Kentucky.

Church marketing is not new, but marketing a Jesuit Church, is a little newer. Knapp has been asked to speak to the Chicago Province of the Jesuits about the marketing experience and how it might translate to the other 77 Jesuit churches in the U.S.

"We've been here for 190 years; we've finally put words to what it's actually about to be a Jesuit church, downtown and in Cincinnati," Knapp said. "This says how we understand ourselves."

In addition to implementing many of the students' suggestions, the church has utilized its parishioners with marketing backgrounds, like Komanecky, to develop a new look, logo and tagline, "Inward Reflection. Outward Action."

Link (here)

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