First Church Communications Team

Meeting Minutes

Tuesday, Aug 15, 2006

 

Members Present: Bill Bartscher, Bennett Griffin (Chair), Jerry Jalenak, Harold Jones, Margaret Jones, Jerry Niebaum, Michelle Parmley, Candice Ranney, Patti Winn.

PR: We are anticipating an article by Terry Rombeck in the LJ World on Sat Aug 19 that will feature Tom Brady in his role as pastor for First Church, highlighting the 6 generations of ministers in his family, and some mention of the opening of the Celebration Center.

Advertising: Bennett and Candice met with 2 members of the World Company, parent company of the LJ World and Sunflower Broadband, to discuss a marketing plan. The focus will be on print and online advertising (TV ads do not fit into the budget at this time). It was decided by the team that $2,000 of our $2,500-3,000 budget be allocated for the LJ World online ad ($800 to run for 30 days on front page of www.ljworld.com) and the print newspaper ads in the LJ World [$1,200 to run several (5?) ads]. The remaining budget would be earmarked for advertising during Advent.

Bennett is still hopeful that he’ll get to talk with his neighbor that works at KLWN about a possible radio campaign. Jerry Jalenak suggested contacting Calvary 88.5, a Christian radio station in KC, as well.

Other suggestions for advertising and PR: flyers, brochures, and a sign at the church’s Farmer’s Market booth. Bennett said there is a need for production work on the communications team since many groups need brochures, banners, and other materials to promote their events. More discussion will take place on this subject.

Marketing of the Events During Grand Opening Week: Last week, Bennett sent email to all team leaders of Grand Opening week events outlining the requirements for getting their events on the master calendar and publicized by our team. The deadline for getting the information to us has passed, and Bennett is now working on the finalized calendar. He has also assembled the Grand Opening Marketing Plan Notebook, with each event on a single sheet of paper outlining the event name, date and time, target audience, contact person, and a brief description. We ran through the list of events taking place thinking about which events we as individual team members would like to work on. We then signed up for 1 or 2 specific events. During the coming week, brainstorm on ways to promote your chosen event(s). As a team, we’ll discuss our ideas for promoting each event next week.

Next Meeting: Tuesday, Aug 22nd, 7:30pm.