What is tryvertising?

According to TrendWatching.com, tryvertising is “a new breed of product placement in the real world, integrating your goods and services into daily life in a relevant way, so that consumers can make up their minds based on their experience, not your messages.�

Could it work for the church?

Free trials and samples are a great way to spark continual use of something, but how does a church offer a sample experience of their service without people in the community actually having to visit the church campus? Perhaps we can learn something from Nike.

What Nike did.

Nike created trial vans. Throughout select areas of Europe, Nike is sending vans stocked with over 1,000 pairs of shoes to meet people where they run and offer them the opportunity to test a new pair of Nikes. By strategically showing up at popular running spots and athletic events, Nike can bring their experience directly to the people who need it the most.

What if churches had trial vans?

What if churches fed their live Sunday worship feed via satellite to trial vans with big screen TVs that could strategically show up at the places where non-church goers go on Sundays? What if these trial vans gave people in the community an opportunity to “experience� what church can be? Most people tune out traditional church marketing efforts, and even when advertisements are noticed there is little guarantee that these people will “try� your church. These trials vans eliminate the two steps of creating awareness and getting people to church.
Of course, there are a lot of ways that these vans could be done wrong. A few essentials would be:

•The Look
It needs to look appealing, non-threatening, and able to communicate that something special is going on. Presentation is everything. The van will probably need custom graphics (think of radio promo vans); anything too normal will just look like a van with a big TV in it.

•The People
Representatives from your church could act as the greeters and information center for the experience. The right team could make or break the success of your trial van. They need to be well educated on every ministry in your church.

•The Literature
Keep the van stocked with any literature a first time guest would be interested in.

•The Service
Your church service will actually have to be good for this concept to work. The sad truth is that only a small minority of churches can pull this off. Average will not do.

•Permission
Be sure to well research your community’s laws and requirements for this type of activity. Get permission for everything. Consult your church’s lawyer to evaluate any problems.
If your church tries this or something similar, be sure to let me know how it works. For now, it is simply out of the box food for thought. We must never stop considering new and innovative ways to reach people with the gospel.

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