A message for friends and supporters, past and present, of the Churches Advertising Network Christmas Radio campaign.
This year’s 2007 CAN Christmas campaign has now been launched and the poster, adverts and our new island in the virtual world of Second Life are all available for you to access. We are hoping the new virtual world dimension, which will evolve and develop over the coming months, will help maintain and build interest in the campaign. As always we have an excellent set of four adverts ready for broadcast on your local commercial stations.
The radio adverts form part of the integrated campaign, under the theme of second chances.
The tag line on each advert, which links with the posters, poses the question, Want a second chance at life?Try your local Christian church or visit secondlifechance.co.uk (This is the dedicated website with links to rejesus and ‘Second Life’).
You can listen to the adverts on our website: http://www.churchads.org.uk where you can listen or download all four. Please note: these samples are not for broadcast but for use with local groups only.
We hope you like them, the aim of the adverts is to get people thinking and also discussing the issue of second chances. We hope you will actively get behind the campaign by booking space on your local FM station and letting us know … that’s more or less all there is to it!
Churches and Christian organisations can choose to use all the ads, or any combination of them.
We are really pleased with this year’s adverts and believe they will be very effective. The variety of voices and experiences will draw the listener in and help people to consider the message. The 30 second adverts – which are each people leaving messages on a phone – will stand in contrast to general advertising and station programming – offering a thought provoking pause for listeners.
We hope many local groups will take the opportunity provided by CAN to place high quality Christian advertising on their local radio stations in December.
Facts about the 2007 Christmas radio advertising campaign
1. We provide the radio ads free
You can use, for free, four high quality, challenging Christmas radio ads for use on commercial radio stations. Designed to be interactive, this year’s campaign invites listeners to come along to church, or visit, secondlifechance.co.uk a site which will also link to the respected rejesus website and ‘Second Life’. Devised primarily for a youth audience, the ads aim to stir discussion and raise issues.
The production of the ads has been generously sponsored by Jerusalem Productions, and the adverts will be sent direct and free of charge to all participating independent local radio stations at the beginning of December. All we need is for Christian groups to ensure that their local station is one of those participating.
2. We help you buy the airtime
As little as £500 could buy a good quality campaign of around 50 slots on your local station, which isn’t much if a group of churches, youth and other groups club together. Local commercial stations will generally bend over backwards to get you a good deal. As a charity, you won’t pay VAT! And as a result of dealing with the station you will find opportunities open up to develop better media relations – click here to read the experience of churches in our previous campaigns.
3. Get a group together and play them the ads
This is probably the most difficult bit. Sometimes the local church might be interested but getting a group of churches in a town to back the campaign may be more difficult. To help evoke interest not only can you download and play the new ads, but commercial radio presenter, Ali Burnett, has produced an excellent highly professional CD, ‘Fighting Back’ which explains how effective using radio advertising can be for the church. The CD contains a five minute programme and a longer 11 minute version, designed to play to small groups who might be interested.  To get hold of a free copy contact Revd Tony Miles on tony@tonymiles.com with your name, address and local group or church.
The Ads themselves can be downloaded as MP3 files – click here for the page linking to all the ads. You can email them to friends, play them on an iPod or burn them onto your own CD-R.
4. Contact us as soon as possible
If you’re interested in running your own local radio campaign for Christmas, click here to let us know. If you’d like to talk to someone about the options, call Rachel Farmer tel 01636 817218 or mobile 077 121 96381
