campaigning

So the Catholic Church in Canton Zurich has a new publicity campaign. The posters look like this:

The theme is miteinander / füreinander - together / for each other - and the posters depict people doing churchy things.  

There's a video to go with it; the message is church-is-there-when-the-going-gets-tough - which is, as a friend said, "kind of dark," but I think a lot of people are feeling dark these days, so it does hit a certain nerve. From the campaign video, my rough translation:

...no one knows how things will go, but we can always grieve together, share a meal together, celebrate together; be there for each other, care for each other, live for each other.

Amen.

The campaign website talks about a survey in which 65% of respondents had a negative image of the Church (because abuse scandals, they say), but also 

The engagement of the Church in the social sector was perceived as important and positive: not only observed, but expected - and also delivered. Equally important for many people was spiritual accompaniment in emergency situations: in the hospital or after an accident or death.  

I personally would wish for a Church more able to show that it is willing to engage with its own challenges and those of society at large (even really simply: why is the video in only one language, and without subtitles??) - but if we want people to keep paying their church taxes, it's undoubtedly good to focus on our perceived strengths.

Meanwhile...

The insurance company CSS is also running an ad campaign right now, and it looks like this:

Their slogan is Glaub and dich - du bist unglaublich - believe in yourself, you're unbelievable - and each poster features a fun fact about the human body paired with an emotional affirmation.

Your muscles contract millions of times a day -

and sometimes it takes the most energy to let go.

Your skin renews itself every 28 days -

but a touch lasts for ever.

Every 50 milliseconds your body corrects its balance -

because you are made to catch yourself again.

In your sleep you repair billions of cells -

because your body believes that you will bounce back.

You generate up to 6200 thoughts a day -

and sometimes a single one won't leave you alone.

Your eyes take in up to 10 million impressions every second -

      but sometimes you see most clearly when they are closed.

Their website has a quiz about resilience, a calculator which uses your age to calculate what your body has already accomplished (my heart has pumped enough to power a Swiss house for 48 days?!), reasons to choose CSS as your insurer, and of course an insurance premium calculator.

So I've been comparing and contrasting.

• One of these organizations is a for-profit entity trying to sell you a product that costs on the order of a $1,000/month; the other trying to convince you to keep paying optional taxes on the order of $100/month. Their ad budgets probably also differ by at least that order of magnitude. So the insurance company's campaign is slicker than the Church's. Not unexpected.
• They're both using images of mostly-white people. Disappointing in both cases, really, but the Church did make a bit of an effort, so I guess that's something.
• One campaign focuses on community support; the other on individual resilience. Both are important, right?
• The campaign that touches on themes of belief and spirituality, the one that has some Good News for us...isn't the one you might expect. Must I read it as a cynical attempt to pull at heartstrings to advance capitalism? Can I wish for a Church that can express its gospel in such universal language?