"Strategy is to choose a path, a path to achieve a goal."
Carlos Luna

On the afternoon of February 16, over one hundred participants followed the webinar "Religious Marketing and Communication": a conversation with Carlos Luna, OP, author of the book "Fundamentals of Religious Marketing" - the only complete manual of good practices for all communicators of religious life.

The event was one of preparatory meetings for the First International Meeting of Communication for Religious Life, which will be held online from 27 to 30 November 2023.

Carlos immediately challenged us by saying that if we want to live the Evangelii Gaudium of Pope Francis, we need a Religious Marketing strategy to get to the 'aislados': those who are far from our world but who can desire similar sense of transcendence in their lives.

The book, available only in Spanish for now, gave Carlos the opportunity to talk about evangelization, communication and marketing as a strategy: "In the common imagination, marketing is associated with sales strategies and for this reason it is often associated with the idea of deception. We assume that the sale does not interest us. However, we must put ourselves in the shoes of others in order to draw up a strategy - that is simply a relationship. This is how marketing must be understood by the institution of the Church", explains the author.

In the Church, we are used to evangelize only through witness and communication: but in today’s reality it is fundamental to equip ourselves with tools, channels and technical services to connect to people and the community using all the variables at our disposal to get in touch with it. We need, therefore, new products, new content and new tools, that follow the changes of society and the world in which we live, we need to talk about "religious marketing".

We need to evolve the rigid model based on the organization and transform it, basing on listening to the public - in the fluid society in which we live today, it is important is to look directly at the needs that drive and move people. There are listening techniques such as focus groups, interviews, surveys that can probe the motivations behind the needs. 
The evangelizing mission cannot but foresee a fundamental phase of listening.
Unfortunately, today there isn’t much literature dealing with the topic of communication and marketing in religious life.

The goal of this path that UISG has traced starting with the launch of the First International Meeting on 24 January 2023, is to unite and share knowledge, training, information to respond to changes in the communication of religious life and to increase our skills and strengthen our awareness.

"We are hungry to deepen this theme, together."

UISG Communication Office

Link to buy the book "Fundamentals of Religious Marketing" (in Spanish only): click here

Watch the recording of the webinar: