16 December 2010, 13:01

Every year, ChurchAds.net produces an advertising campaign for churches to opt into at Christmas. Their most famous campaign was Meek. Mild. As if, which featured an image of Jesus in the style of the photo of Che Guevara by Alberto Korda, which ran in Easter 1999.

This year’s campaign is now hitting the streets in the UK, with a new image of Jesus (above) that hasn’t been seen before in 2,000 years of image-making. We talked to Chas Bayfield, one of the creatives behind the ad, who’s previously created ads for Tango, Birdseye and Pot Noodle – see his knockout Blackcurrant Tango ad, which won a D&AD silver award.

Christmas.org.uk: How did you come up with the idea?

Chas Bayfield: We needed a new way of telling the Christmas story, something that was more 21st century than 19th. Baby scans are a contemporary way of telling others about the good news of an impending birth. So why not use a baby scan of the Christ child to announce the impending celebration of his birth?

No one’s tried to depict Jesus in the womb before… why did you go for this image, and what do you think it says about Jesus and Christmas?

We’ve seen Christ the infant, Christ the man, Christ crucified – but this is a new image, a pre-Christ. It says that the divine became human. It reminds people that we are celebrating the birth of a new world order where peace, justice, equality and love arrived on the world agenda.

How have people responded to the ads so far?

Generally the poster has been welcomed. We’ve had a huge uptake from the churches and there has been lots of positive press coverage. However, some of the press are concerned that we are tampering with the sacred and that if we modernise the message too much we make the original unrecognisable. Vanessa Feltz described it as ‘Benetton-esque’ in that it was all a bit too intimate and bodily. It seems that some people are happy to watch the gorefest of Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ, yet they find the physical birth of Jesus too confronting to contemplate.

Thinking about this image and the Meek. Mild. As if image, what’s your purpose in showing Jesus in such non-traditional ways?

The human Jesus was an historical figure and there’s a danger that we use traditional iconography to imprison him in the past. The risen Christ however is contemporary. That’s why the rennaissance painters portrayed Christ and his followers in the fashions of the day and why the 19th century Christ looked more Victorian. The images we have used will date over time, but the plan is to constantly remind people that Christ and his message are relevant whatever time you are living in.

Ideally, what do you hope the ad achieves?

It is already achieving it – we are getting people talking about Jesus at Christmas. Job done. Box ticked. The bigger picture is that the unchurched see Jesus and the Christian message as something that might be relevant to them and that the churches realise there is an alternative way to winning souls than bashing them over the head with Bibles.

Note: To support the campaign and increase the number of posters which appear, go here on the ChurchAds.net website.

13 December 2010, 11:59

Commuters across the country will be reminded of the real Christmas message when a high impact national advertising campaign rolls out in the next two weeks.

Posters provided by Churchads.net featuring an image of a ‘Baby Scan’ Jesus with a halo, and the words, ‘He’s on His Way – Christmas starts with Christ’, will appear on bus stops and billboards in towns and cities from 13th to 27th December.

Organisers behind the campaign are confident it will be effective, since recent research from a pilot campaign in Jamaica (pictured above) proved its success in raising awareness. People who had seen the poster later summed up its message as ‘Christ/God is coming soon.’

Francis Goodwin, the chair of Churchads.net, said: ‘The adverts have a powerful image with eight words that manage to communicate the unique combination of humanity and divinity that Jesus represents. This is a celebration of his birth and our objectives are simply to help people focus on the Christian message and story of the nativity. This follows on from our 19 year track record of producing Christian advertising.’

Church groups and individuals have been buying poster sites through the internet and donating to the national campaign which aims to see 2,000 billboards displaying the advert.

Francis explained: ‘At the moment we have funds for about half of the campaign, but donations and booking are still coming in and we are still hoping to hit our ambitious target. In addition to the paid-for media, we have also distributed 40,000 A3 window posters via The Universe newspaper and have radio adverts running on commercial stations nationally. This will be a very visible and audible campaign.’

This year two new 30 second radio adverts follow in the theme of four previous adverts from past years and tell the Christmas story in a modern setting. One takes the form of an airport announcement and the other an answerphone message left by Joseph…

Airport announcement
Joseph’s answerphone message

The adverts can be downloaded free from churchads.net online and will be broadcast on national networks and some 20 plus local commercial radio stations in the run up to Christmas, with the backing of local church groups.

Although the main focus of the campaign is in the UK, there has been global interest and requests for posters and advice from the USA , Canada, Argentina, Jamaica, New Zealand, Poland, South Africa, Australia, Germany and Russia.

14 November 2010, 23:32

This Christmas, ChurchAds.net is offering churches free, high quality advertising resources, including posters for bus stops and billboards as well as 30 second radio commercials. This gives churches of any denomination the chance to be part of a national advertising campaign in the run up to Christmas.

The poster (seen above) focuses on how parents-to-be proudly announce the coming birth by showing friends and family their scan of the baby. Mary and Joseph may have lived 2,000 years before baby scanners, but the poster captures something of the excitement and anticipation they must have felt in the weeks leading up to Jesus’ birth… and it reminds us that Jesus was a real, flesh and blood human being. He was ‘God with us’, living with ordinary people just like us.

Alongside the poster, ChurchAds.net is also offering churches the chance to run their own local radio campaign by providing free radio commercials. These humorous 30-second spots also put Jesus’ birth into a modern setting, with a typical airport announcement, and a message from new dad Joseph on a friend’s answerphone. Hear the radio adverts by clicking below…

Airport announcement
Joseph’s answerphone message

Church leaders across the denominations have welcomed the campaign and are urging churches all over the country to get involved.

The campaign has been produced by ChurchAds.net with the help of Jerusalem Productions.