What’s Up with “Brand”?
If I were looking at this book in the bookstore, I’d be slightly annoyed by the use of “brand” in relation to Jesus. Isn’t American Christianity already overly influenced by our consumer culture? As if the telling of good news is nothing more than a marketing challenge or churches competing with each other over the same population of customers?
So it’s a fair question: why even use a word like “brand” to describe the spirituality that Jesus forged? Here’s my long and winding answer to that excellent question.
I first started using the term “Jesus brand spirituality” as a kind of “toss off” phrase in personal conversation and in a few sermons. I didn’t think much of it, until a member of our church at the time, Tami Heim, who was running Borders Books (a company founded here in Ann Arbor) told me that she was asked by some co-workers at Borders to describe the kind of Christianity she was into and she replied, “Jesus brand spirituality.” And it opened up an easy and useful conversation about faith in a setting that was decidedly secular.
Borders of course, being a modern corporation, understands the importance of brand identity. Borders has to set itself apart from all the other bookstores in the bookstore business as the “go to” brand. So by describing her spirituality as “Jesus brand spirituality” Tami was speaking a language understood by her co-workers. With very little explanation, they could understand that Jesus brand spirituality was a particular kind of spirituality over which Jesus held proprietary rights. They could understand that it is different than a “generic” spirituality. And it opened up the issue that is most on the minds of those on the outside of faith looking in: If Jesus is so wonderful, why does the institution that bears his name have so many negative associations attached?
Because, as a person like Tami might explain, there has been a trademark infringement on the Jesus brand. Things have been associated with the religion that bears his name that don’t have any relationship to Jesus, and there are people who care about Jesus and his reputation in this world who are eager to restore the brand. To switch metaphors: to help people on the outside of faith looking in to understand that there is a treasure buried in the field of religion, in spite of all the off-putting association with Jesus faith.
I’m from Detroit, city of. I grew up in the heyday of Detroit as the Motor City, when Ford Motor and General Motors were the brands to beat. It was with great distress, economic and otherwise, that my hometown realized what devastating thing it is, when the brand name of these two companies came to be associated with low quality, rather than high quality. When a company’s brand suffers like that, it takes billions of dollars to reverse the perception. Ford and GM are making great strides in the quality of their vehicles, now on a par with companies like Toyota and Honda, but it will be years yet, and billions more dollars, and I fear more loss of market share, before the public perception is reversed.
But there’s another reason I decided to stick with the brand metaphor, in spite of the fact that “brand talk” is associated with what might be viewed as crass commercialism. At times, Jesus spoke of his kingdom in the hard-nosed business language of his day. He spoke of the need to invest “talents” (an economic term) for a good return on the investment. He admired “the children of this world” whose hard-headed thinking he wished might rub off on some of his own followers.
Our society is a consumer society. Consumerism is a language that we all speak. And Jesus doesn’t mind mucking about in our languages. In fact, that’s his mode of operation.
Business isn’t bad. It’s good. Marketing is a fact of human existence. “Brands” are part of this way of thinking. But we have to think more deeply about the Jesus brand than simply applying modern marketing techniques to selling the religion that bears his name. We have to “face the brutal facts” as James Collins, in Good to Great says businesses have to if they want to become the kind of companies that are “built to last.” The brutal facts are these: the Jesus brand has been sullied in the public perception of American culture, at least. Those of us who care about Jesus have to face that and do something about it. Because Jesus wants his religion back.