Today’s New York Times has an article about a company called Life is good, Inc. Similar to the smiley face of the 70s, this company produces a line of consumer goods, the most popular item being T-shirts it seems, that present a smiling figure named Jake who plays golf, drinks coffee, lounges around, etc. all presented over the tagline Life is Good. There’s even an organic line called Good Karma. Not surprisingly, in these hard economic times, Jake is doing quite well, thank you.

In addition to selling products with this friendly fellow, the company holds Life is Good events where families get together and share simple pleasures like watermelon pit spitting and relay races. Money from these festivals go to charity.

All of this is great and I’m all for any company that does well by doing good and making people feel happy at the same time.

Yet again, though, we see here a great example of where religion is being outdone by the market. As one of the people quote in the Times notes, “It makes me remember that things are not so bad.” Isn’t that what religious symbols have traditionally done? Aren’t they meant to remind us that there is something bigger and more important than the trivial materialism that we are surrounded by? Have we totally obliterated the powerful symbols of religion? Is Jake the new Jesus?

You decide.

For the last several days, the papers (notably a cover story on the The New Post) have been going on and on about ads that will promote Islam to subway-riding New Yorkers. The ads are from the Islamic Circle of North America. You can find out more about them at their Web site Why Islam?

The to-do, however, is not about the ads themselves (which from what I’ve seen are pretty innocuous — simple black and white type), but by the man who is promoting them. Siraj Wahhaj is a Brooklyn imam who was one of 170 unindicted co-conspirators in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. CNN has gone so far as to report that these ads may be a form of terrorism.

Come on, people! First of all, these ads are going to appear next to ads for Dr. Zizmor’s dermatology services and lawyer services with 800#s. Does anybody really read those? Second, before an ad is ever placed the media company reviews it — thoroughly — with their attorneys. Believe me, if there was anything even remotely off or quirky about these ads, the subway company just wouldn’t have taken them. Finally, anyone who has studied the sociology of religion knows that people join a faith based on personal contact. Ask the Mormons if you don’t believe me.

At most, these ads may get people to talk more about Islam but it is unlikely that it will change the mind of anyone that sees them. Changing someone’s perception about such a complex topic cannot be achieved through by a couple of ads and a contact number. File this under the category of tempest in a teapot.

Strolling through the television dial last week you couldn’t help but be slammed with one psychic show after another. The View devoted last Tuesday’s episode to examining psychic phenomena, A&E has promoting the heck out of their latest paranormal offering, Psychic Kids, and in conjunction with this many of these kids appeared on Larry King to tell of their wondrous abilities.

I suspect some of the increasing interest in the topic is part of the ebb and flow as it relates to psychic abilities. Many of you may remember that after September 11th, there was a swell of interest in all things spiritual including psychics. Many people were distraught and thought this would provide a means to talk to their lost loved ones.

I’m all for trying to understand the mysteries of the world, but my skepticism increases continually as it relates to psychics. Just ask yourself this question: Has a psychic ever told anyone that their relative isn’t with them or that the person who has “passed over” is in massive pain and having a really lousy time on the other side? Of course not. There. I just saved you a lot of money.

Even better than my analysis is an episode of Penn & Teller Bullshit called Talking to the Dead (this unfortunately is not available online) which systematically debunked one psychic after another. A couple of things they note to watch: 1) psychics always talk really fast (it makes it hard for the person being “read” to think and analyze), 2) people want to believe so they remember what was true and forget the rest, and 3) the psychics say the person died of chest pain or cancer. Well, duh. Ninety percent of people die from these ailments so the odds are really good the psychic will be “right.”

If you are interested in hearing more about psychics on TV and you are in the New York area, New York NATAS (the Emmy people) will be holding a seminar this Wednesday evening called “An Update on Psychic Programming.” The speaker will be Paul Shavelson, Executive Producer and Director of John Edward Cross Country. This event is open to the public (cost is $15). In the meantime, you can watch a little bit of John by clicking the link. Feel free to enjoy, or dissect, which is also quite fun.

Continuing on my discussion from last week. Here I look at the difference between cause-related marketing and corporate social responsibility. The blurring of these topics is where, I believe, the long-term consequences lie, particularly for faith communities.

There is a tremendous amount of confusion in the literature, and in the workplace, about what these terms really mean. Some people use them almost interchangeably, some consider cause marketing to be a subset of CSR, and some see them as different strategies altogether. While these definitions continue to be negotiated, I will provide what are considered to be the prevailing differences between the two.

According to marketing research firm Mintel, cause-related marketing (CRM) “is when companies partner with charitable organizations to help non-profits better achieve their goals. Cause-related marketing is attached to a media campaign, with money generated for the cause through the sale of products.” So an example here that many of you may be familiar with is Procter & Gamble’s support of the Special Olympics. Consumers buy P&G products and a percentage of the sale goes to the nonprofit.

CRM actually began quite recently, in 1983, when American Express launched its campaign to raise money to restore the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. The campaign was incredibly successful. “The company promised to contribute one cent for every card transaction and $1 for every new card issued during the last quarter of 1983. American Express not only collected $1.7 million for the restoration effort – there was a 28 percent increase in use of their credit cards, not to mention massive press coverage and free publicity” (Stole, 2007). This appeared to be a win-win for everyone and other businesses jumped on the CRM bandwagon and spent increasing amounts of money to support these campaigns. In 2007, American corporations spent $1.34 billion on CRM campaigns. This is up from $733 million in 2001—an increase of 83 percent.

More recently (Forbes suggests 2006) organizations began to tout Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in addition to CRM. This is in large part due to the “green” movement, where every company wants to promote that they are doing something to help the environment. But CSR is not new and in fact predates cause-related marketing by 30 years appearing in the literature in the 1950s. According to Harvard’s JFK School of Government “Corporate social responsibility encompasses not only what companies do with their profits, but also how they make them. It goes beyond philanthropy and compliance and addresses how companies manage their economic, social, and environmental impacts, as well as their relationships in all key spheres of influence: the workplace, the marketplace, the supply chain, the community, and the public policy realm.” Thus CSR institutionalizes what we used to call being a good corporate citizen—something corporations just did, not something they promoted.

Today, it’s not enough to simply be green; corporations broadcast that they are green and for good reason. In Cause for Concern: Results-Oriented Cause Marketing, Stephen Adler states that 77% of consumers polled changed their purchasing habits due to a company’s green image.” But CSR is not only about the environment. It is also about human rights issues, workplace issues, community impact, and ethical investing as the definition suggests.

To put it simply: if a media company decides to stop advertising unhealthy food to children and instead commits to promoting healthy eating, that’s corporate social responsibility. If, on the other hand, Media Company X partners with a food company to help feed hungry children that’s cause marketing.

These distinctions, however, have become blurred as corporate social responsibility is increasingly done with a marketing objective in mind. While corporations might have been good citizens in the past to comply with government regulations (so it is the rare company that ever did this out of the goodness of their heart), today corporations comply for the good of their pocketbooks.

In Boulder, I began laying out my new work as it relates to marketing and faith. I am trying to understand what happens to the concept of service, giving, caring for others–something that is fundamental to most faith system–when that becomes commoditized.

Thus while in Brands of Faith, I asked the question “What happens when you market religion?” My new work will ask the question “What happens when you market service?”

Broadly in terms of marketing faith, I concluded that religion is a product and in today’s overly cluttered media market it is necessary for religious institutions to market themselves—in particular brand themselves—in order to remain part of the cultural discourse.

I have also discussed that religions needs to ensure that they do not give up their USP, their unique selling proposition. A USP, a term coined by the late advertising legend Ted Bates, is based on a product’s attributes (physical characteristics) or benefits (what the consumer gets from interacting with the product). Based on these attributes and benefits a marketer creates a positioning statement that differentiates the product from the competition. One of the most well-known USPs is M&Ms’ “melts in your mouth, not in your hand.”

If we look at religion through the same lens, we might break down its attributes and benefits in the following way: Religion’s attributes are written texts, a place to go on Saturday or Sunday, a source of information from a leader, and other tangible elements found in most organized religions. Its benefits are fellowship, interaction with likeminded people, a better sense of well-being, and, perhaps, salvation. In addition, religious institutions provide a place where people can demonstrate their commitment to a higher purpose, specifically through service.

So, an important aspect of a religious organization’s USP is ways in which it enables people to serve.

I began thinking about these ideas because of two unrelated events. First, I was asked to speak on a panel at the 2007 Media Reform Conference in Memphis about Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. While, like most people, I had some slightly more than vague ideas about Dr. King and his legacy, doing the research for that presentation forced me to dig a bit deeper and created a stronger appreciation for the work that he had done.

Shortly thereafter, the (Product) Red campaign was launched in the US after having a successful debut in the UK. My initial response as a marketer was, “That’s f**kin’ brilliant.” After a breath and thinking as a human being instead I thought, “That’s f**kin’ horrible.” In putting these two events together I couldn’t help but think “where are the Dr. Kings of today? Who has taken over the mantle of the social gospel? Is it truly Corporate America and celebrities like Bono and Oprah? Has Cause-Related Marketing and its sister, Corporate Social Responsibility replaced true social action and radical political change, a function that used to be the work of religious leaders?” As I looked at these two events in relationship to one another I found my new line of research questions:

1. What happens when you market “service?”
2. Has Corporate America hijacked one of faith’s key benefits, i.e., service?
3. Where are the preachers, the pastors, and the rabbis? Are they doing the work of the social gospel, and if they doing the work, are we just not seeing it (which may be significant)? Why not?
4. Can religious institutions regain their service USP?

So, that’s what I’m thinking about these days. Next I get into what Corporate Social Responsibility is and how it is the “new hot thing” in Corporate America.

In April, I did an event at the Center for the Humanities at the CUNY Grad Center. On the panel with me were Douglas Rushkoff (Media Virus, Nothing Sacred: The Truth About Judaism), Jeff Sharlet (check out his new book called The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power, which is getting great reviews), and Heather Hendershot (Shaking the World for Jesus).

To listen to the Brands of Faith event at CUNY, click here.

Last week I got back from one of the most interesting conferences I had attended in years. The Media, Spirituality and Social Change conference was held at the University of Colorado at Boulder, home to the Center for Media, Religion and Culture. The focus, as the name suggests, was to bring together academics and activists around the idea of how faith interacts with social change within the changing media environment. I saw a number of inspirational (pun intended) papers, one of which I want to highlight here.

Lee Gilmore lectures on religion, arts and the humanities and has been studying Burning Man for more than a decade. (I assuming most people reading this know about Burning Man, but for those of you that do not you can check out the Burning Man Web site.) Dr. Gilmore presented a paper in Boulder called Convergence Culture, Web 2.0, and DIY Spiritualities.

What I found fascinating about this work was the connections she draws between do-it-yourself (DIY) spirituality that sociologists have been discussing for decades (combining Judaism and Buddhism, for example) and today’s participatory Internet (Web 2.0). We get to make media the way we want in much the same way many Americans have been “making” spirituality the way that suits them. It makes sense that the new Web 2.0 world in which we live would perpetuate this phenomenon. Much as the media is converging so too “these processes are in turn at work in movements across the American religious landscape…” Media is not working in a vacuum, but rather these tools “are being utilized by individuals and communities who seek to participate in and shape public discourses around diverse religions and spiritualities.”

This is one of my central arguments in Brands of Faith. It was not enough that sociological changes led to Americans being more flexible in their faith; they also had to know about alternatives. Why stop being a Catholic, for example, if you don’t have anything to fill that void? The way one finds out about alternatives is via the ubiquitous media, particularly the Internet. Dr. Gilmore takes this idea a bit further when she suggests that increasingly more and more of our social constructions–particularly media constructions–are one’s we make ourselves and that creativity is moving into other aspects of our lives, notably our spiritual selves. We find new faiths and we mix and match for our own purposes–DIY spirituality.

So what does this have to do with Burning Man? A lot. “Burning Man festival…provides a venue for ritualizing that favors creative expressions of spirituality and often blends symbols and ideas from any number of diverse religious traditions, rather than relying on a single and clearly defined set of conventional practices. In so doing, Burning Man, as with the concept of “Convergence Culture,” challenges normative assumptions about where lived religious and ritual practice is located and how it is authorized.” This New Age-y event–I always think of it as a Woodstock-like happening–brings together people from very diverse backgrounds to have a shared, unexplainable experience over the course of a few days. It seems to me to be spirituality at it essence, and it is created by and through the experiences of the thousands of participants.

While I cannot do justice to Burning Man here, I do suggest that you check out an edited book called After Burn which deals with these issues in more depth.

I was told recently that the founders of Google are very “into” Burning Man and that pictures of this event grace many of their office walls. Could be they’re on to something, no? Will we see “Google Spirituality” next?

There’s a new blog about religion and politics, specifically the 2008 election. (You got to like a site that puts up Republican Jesus–see below.) There’s several well respected academics writing for the site so it’s worth a perusal. Check it out at www.spiritual-politics.org

I was cleaning off my desk and found an article about GodTube I had clipped to write about from the Tampa Tribune.

Couple of things were in there I hadn’t seen elsewhere even with all the publicity. GodTube is planning to produce its own entertainment programming–not religious programming, entertainment programming. It doesn’t say but we’ve got to assume it will be of the faithful variety. But what exactly? I’m very curious. Also, is that this still in the works given the recent expansion plans? We’ll just have to see.

The other statistic that I loved was that on Sunday mornings GodTube reaches more people that Joel Osteen’s Lakewood Church. Now if we figure that Joel’s reaching about 50,000 congregants by now, that’s not huge by Internet standards, but it’s nothing to sneeze at either. Remember we’re talking about Sunday morning (and they have 4 million unique viewers a month).

Ok, unless something REALLY fascinating happens, I’m off this topic for a while.

For my Italian friends and friends with Italian friends, Brands of Faith is being translated into Italian with a publication date of 2009. In Italian, the book is called Il business della fede and you can find out more information at the publishers Web site, Odoya.

I just love this cover art. Well done!