Aesthetics, Branding and Power

“Aesthetics are the post-modern currency of power”

There’s that classic statement about the modern world that “knowledge is power” – characterised in the way that any product which has some kind of “scientifically proven” stamp or someone in a lab coat supporting it is instantly trustable. We defer to those who have more knowledge than us. Knowledge, if you like, is the main currency of power – organisations trade useful information for power.

However, in a post-modern or hyper-modern world (or whatever other term you’d like to use) we find ourselves in an environment where information is more and more freely available to anyone. Now it is no longer the information itself gives individuals or organisations power, but how an organisation markets or brands that information that gives it power.

We can see this brilliantly in the way that now politicians are much less concerned with right policies – but instead are putting more money into public relations and spend time judging how their actions will affect their own “brand” or appearance.

Corporations like Disney, Coca-Cola, McDonalds spend millions of pounds on guarding and improving the image of their brand. It matters far less what their products are actually worth than the value that their brand seems to portray.

Actual value is almost irrelevent when compared to the perceived value of a product.

What impact is this having on the Church? Well – it seems that churches are going in two directions:

Embracing aesthetics and focusing on marketing their message.
Rejecting aesthetics and focusing on being authentic.

Many mega-churches and now new multi-campus churches seem to focus on the power of marketing and branding to build up their membership and attract people towards them. There are now websites devoted to critiquing church marketing and branding.

Other more missional /emerging type churches can often be seen to reject what can be viewed as a “shallow” obsession with aesthetics. A great example would be The Simple Way and Shane Claibourne – who are committed to spending no time at all worrying about branding or what they look like, instead focusing on living it out.

However, churches like this have to be careful that they don’t fall backwards into the marketing trap. Does this rejection of aesthetic and marketing in itself create a specific type of brand in itself? A kind of non-brand. We can see how a kind of non-marketing has become a kind of marketing in itself by looking at the recent trend towards viral video and stealth marketing.

In a world where “indie”-style design and marketing is increasingly popular – will we see marketing books appearing soon on the power of non-branding?

Is there a “third way” that the Church can take in avoiding the pitfalls of build both brands and non-brands? Is the danger line when a church’s image – whether well marketed or not – ends up appearing better than how that church actually is?

It seems that as the Church we have serious theological questions that we need to be asking when is comes to branding and authenticity.