JAAL and the death of journalism

Jeremy Halcrow
September 19th, 2009

I’ve been surprised at the excellent coverage of the Jesus All About Life (JAAL) campaign in mainstream broadsheet papers.
Fellow blogger Steve Kryger has slammed the start of JAAL at Communicate Jesus – but from a ‘PR’ point of view the campaign has nailed it.
The whole point of this part of the campaign is to put ‘Jesus’ on people’s lips. So it seems churlish to complain when people start asking the hard questions.
In our fragmented culture no one slogan is going to resonate with everyone. There will always be a vocal minority that will mock church advertising – whatever the message. (Indeed research from McCrindle show that 14% of Sydneysiders do not think Jesus is a historical person but a fictional character. Yet, significantly the most common response by 42% of respondents is that Jesus is real, has miraculous powers and is the son of God.)

The aim of JAAL is to speak to the 1/3 of Australians who don’t go to church but who are sympathetic to the church and believe Jesus is God.

Especially pertinent to note when critiquing the quirky poster campaign, research by McCrindle shows that over 1 in 3 Australians feel moved to pray when they are thankful for something good that has happened (34%) A similar number say they pray daily.

The report in The Australian was excellent, putting the quirky ‘teaser’ posters in the context of the whole campaign.

ABC broadcaster James Valentine is his whimsical way was probably the most insightful
It even made the English tabloids.

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