Church Group Hopes a Little Humor Draws Crowds : Attendance: An unprecedented ad campaign makes its primary appeal to people who are active in local congregations and urges them to take a specific action--’Invite a Friend.’

A multimedia advertising campaign that will use humor to try to motivate people to invite friends to their churches or synagogues has been started by Religion in American Life and the Advertising Council.

Since 1949, the two organizations have worked together on public service campaigns using voluntary ad agencies to design messages on the role of faith in society. The campaign is unprecedented, however, in making its primary appeal to people who are active in local congregations and urging them to take a specific action--”Invite a Friend.”

At a press conference at the corporate headquarters of the Pfizer Inc. ad agency, representatives of the two groups previewed ads that have already been sent to 9,966 newspapers and 676 consumer magazines, as well as broadcast ads that will be sent in the fall to 1,338 TV outlets and 7,000 radio outlets.

The TV spot uses a cartoon sequence to show how a man was afraid to invite a friend to his church, thinking that he would have to drag the friend forcibly out of his house and into the church building. Instead, the last drawing shows the man trying to drag his friend out of the church when it’s time to go home.

Laurel Cutler of FCB/Leber Katz Partners, the agency that has contributed $500,000 in research and creative services to the campaign, said the humorous approach was used to persuade the Advertising Council to get behind the project. She said the ad represents a change from a “very, very majestic, somber kind of approach to the warmer, more human approach.”

Ruth Wooden, president of the Advertising Council, noted that there is “a great deal of doom and gloom in public-service advertising” and that the new effort is a sharp contrast, designed to appeal to the media.

“Part of the strategy has to do with the psychology of the target audience,” said the Rev. Nicholas B. van Dyck, the Presbyterian minister who is president of Religion in American Life. He said the use of humor is designed “not to make them defensive” in being urged to invite friends to their houses of worship.

In addition to the media ads, strategists have also prepared an “Action Guide” outlining ways in which congregations can enlist and train volunteers to approach friends. The guide offers suggestions for forming groups in congregations to start such a project and describes three role-playing situations in which members can react to different responses they receive after inviting a friend.

Research studies consulted by Religion in American Life in preparing the campaign indicate that 86% of Americans who become involved in the life of a congregation do so because someone personally invited them. “An ad that says, ‘Go to church or synagogue’ is not going to have that much effect on someone who is not already involved,” Cutler said.

She anticipated that the new campaign will have a notable impact, because “84% of all the religiously affiliated people in the nation” belong to groups involved in Religion in American Life.

Participating religious groups include American Baptist Churches; Diocese of the Armenian Church of America; Christian Church (Disciples of Christ); Church of the Brethren; Church of Christ, Scientist; Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints; Episcopal Church; Evangelical Lutheran Church in America; Greek Orthodox Church; Mennonite Church; Moravian Church; Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.); Reformed Church in America; Roman Catholic Church (23 dioceses); General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists; Southern Baptist Convention; Union of American Hebrew Congregations; Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America; United Methodist Church; United Synagogue of America, and Volunteers of America.

Van Dyck said to be a participant, each group had to agree to make a financial contribution, disseminate the ads through their publications and give the name of a person to whom inquirers can be referred after they respond to the “Invite a Friend” toll-free number, (800) 638-3463.

The Advertising Council’s approach to media outlets stresses that local congregations are, in Cutler’s words, “the primary providers of human services in this country.”

In a letter sent to ad directors, Paul Mulcahy of the Campbell Soup Co., volunteer campaign director of the Advertising Council, writes that the local congregation “is the nation’s most cost-effective human service institution. It relieves much of the tax burden. It gives people a sense of purpose and strengthens spiritual well-being.”

After citing specific examples of voluntary work by local congregations in community service, Mulcahy writes: “Your community needs more of them. So does the nation.”