Comments on: UCC and blog ads

By: Joseph Santos-Lyons

Joseph Santos-Lyons — Sun, 13 Mar 2005 20:43:30 +0000

Are you making a formal request to the UUA to do something with the bloggers? Not a bad idea. What are your thoughts on FUUSE.com and its potential to redefine Unitarian Universalism for the younger generation?

By: Jaume

Jaume — Sat, 12 Mar 2005 22:53:14 +0000

Actually, the news about the banning of the UCC ad reached Spain and most of Europe. Of course, here nobody knows what the UCC is and what it stands for, so the usual “informed” comment was: “There they go again, those Americans, as conservative as usual and limiting every one of their remaining liberties under Bush’s authoritarian rule.”

By: Philocrites

Philocrites — Sat, 12 Mar 2005 21:58:13 +0000

Oh, I’ll also look forward to your comment on my “What’s Next for UU Blogs?” post. I’m not speaking magesterially, you understand, just trying to nudge others to join in.

By: Philocrites

Philocrites — Sat, 12 Mar 2005 21:52:50 +0000

I don’t know why the trackback didn’t work automatically. It’s there, but I decided that spambots were collecting published trackback URLs and so I stopped publishing the URL and simply linked it as “Trackback URL for this entry.” Of course, I may simply misunderstand how the technology is supposed to work.

I wasn’t judging the aesthetics or message of the UCC’s campaign. But I do think they’ve managed to get quite the bang for their buck. Could another denomination pull off what the UCC has done? I doubt it. Much of the success has had to do with the unexpected reception of the campaign on the superblogs of the left especially — DailyKos, MyDD, AmericaBlog, etc. — for whom “Christian” and “liberal” didn’t register a year ago. The UCC has gone first in making a splash with the big boys of the left, and that has generated publicity that brought funding for the UCC’s TV ads from non-UCC people. It also seems to have helped generate some actual interest in the church, although I haven’t seen anything like a report on the rise in the number of visitors in congregations or in membership.

As for SpongeBob: Did it invite ridicule? Did the ridicule overwhelm the net gain in interest the stunt generated in the church? Did it make a serious point? What I’d really love to know about that particular stunt, though, is how the denomination managed the indignation of “serious” churchpeople within the denomination, of which I can only imagine there would have been quite a bit.