WTF Church

A church in Albuquerque, NM launched their college ministry (church on a college campus for college students) and soon became a viral hit. It was the talk of the school campus... everyone was chatting about the big WTF sign.

At first everyone thought it was a mistake and that the church leaders simply did not understand current day abbreviations.

After a blog called church marketing sucks contacted the church, they discovered the WTF was no accident at all. Haha!

Here is what the College pastor had to say: "It is something that our target audience is very familiar with. We are a progressive college group located in Albuquerque, N.M., and we know that any college-aged person is a phone-weilding, text-sending machine. So why not use what they are familiar with?"

I think this is a beautiful example of marketing... Absolutely brilliant.

1. It's an attention grabbing headline. We all know the importance of a strong headline. Instead of using something like "Come fellowship with us" they remembered who their target audience is and decided to target them based on who THE TARGET is rather than who THEY are. This is how marketing is done well.
2. It's controversial. Because it's a bit controversial for a church to use something like this, all the college students know about it and talk about it with their friends.
3. It worked. Not only is the college ministry 300+ college students strong, people are constantly asking them if they are the WTF church. People remember them and when a student decides that he or she needs a church to attend... they'll have one in their mind.

Overall, I LOVE this idea and I think it can be copied and applied to a lot of things... both businesses and ministries. I'm already thinking of ideas on how this can be used.

Like I was saying, marketing is all about knowing where your target audience is at. Another internet marketer that understands this well and wrote a cool case study about it is Lorenzo Green. He wrote a case study where he targeted shorter men and wrote an ad about how they were rejected by women because of their height. Check out that case study now.