Heated Debate About PyroMarketing

Some heated (pun intended) debate about word-of-mouth marketing. And about the controversy surrounding the tabling of the book, PyroMarketing : The Four-Step Strategy to Ignite Customer Evangelists and Keep Them for Life by Greg Stielstra. It also says volume about what ordinary citizens think about when they think of marketing and all it connotes. And there's musing about the role of grace in marketing campaigns.

Part of the controversy stems from the fact that Stielstra used the runaway bestseller A Purpose Driven Life as one of his main examples and purportedly Warren's organization has used its influence with the publisher (same parent, HarperCollins) to table Stielstra's PyroMarketing book. In a well-researched and detailed post, Tim Challies writes:

Having studied almost all of the available information about The Purpose Driven Life and the principles of PyroMarketing, it is clear that the book does owe much of its success to this type of marketing. The Purpose Driven Life was not merely a grassroots, word-of-mouth, ministry success. It was a well-planned and carefully-orchestrated marketing triumph...

[No surprise here: Word-of-mouth so-called grassroots marketing has a plan behind it. Although one needs to be quite adaptable to where the market takes it. Reco: Brand Hijack]

Based on the comments made by his representatives, it would seem that the explanation lies in Warren's fear that his critics will misinterpret the book and twist Stielstra's words to prove that Warren is not a pastor, but a marketer. He feels that people will come to view The Purpose Driven Life as a marketing success rather than a ministry success.

In a followup post, Challies adds:

When I first published the story, it was conservative Christians who were most interested. Many of the conservative (and perhaps fundamentalist) blogs and information sites commented on the story. In the past few days the story has seen a resurgence of interest, but this time the epicenter seems to be the Emerging Church blogs. And this makes sense, doesn't it? The Emerging Church is as opposed to "corporate Christianity" as are conservative Christians.

The  more I  dug into this story, I can see  why Warren didn't warm up to Stielstra's  propensity to claim credit for himself. Contrast Warren's statement:

I usually sign books with Proverbs 19:21 (NCV): "People can make all kinds of plans, but only the Lord's plan will happen." Or as Proverbs 16:1 (TEV) says "We may make our plans, but God has the last word."

To Stielstra's view: "Stielstra is a confident marketer who was once quoted as saying that "if he promoted a book about quilting 'to one-tenth of one percent of left-handed quilters,' he could land the title on the non-fiction bestseller list and prime it for even bigger success."

I would have a hard time being affiliated or quoted in regards to this book for this reason: one of the marketing case studies in PyroMarketing was to be "the life and ministry of Jesus (who I call savior)." That's when marketers go way too far. Jesus' life was his message.

Rick Warren himself goes on to write:

In all of this I've had two overriding concerns; first, that everyone involved would humbly admit that we could never have planned or organized a phenomena of this size. We are all just small cogs in the giant wheel of God's purposes. "For promotion comes neither from the east, nor from the west, nor from the south. God is the sovereign judge: he puts down one, and sets up another," Psalm 75:6-7 (KJV). When you write a book that begins with the sentence "It's not about you," you want to be careful to not attribute the work of God to human methods, marketing, or plans.

So few people have an inkling of what Grace looks like that even to evangelical Christians, Warren's statements sound rather hokey. Warren isn't saying that no marketing need be done, but it's simply a vehicle and of itself is insufficient.

When I relied on my brain solely for my ideas there were times when the nearly the same tactics to promote a workshop took off without much effort in one instance while in the next workshop it bombed with stellar carnage. In fact, the workshop that bombed had marquee names and more time to pull together. Now with 20/20 hindsight I can say that I had some misgivings around the bomb ahead of time. Logically and logistically, everything was set. But it did not feel like the right timing. I was bruteforcing my plan when obviously the universe had her own. I didn't not do things just because they didn't feel right in those days. Ultimately that was a costly $20K-plus lesson.

I now try to take direction from a wiser unbounded source.

When I write that my best ideas don't come from me, but from something larger than myself  - a presence that moves through me, resides in me but is ultimately not of me - no one seems to really buy that. Mostly they don't understand. I am not attempting to be humble; I'm being honest.

A few days ago, I was telling a friend that something remarkable had happened. I tried my best to describe the presence of peace, joy, unconditional love that has settled in. "I'm so happy for you," he said. I was taken aback for an instant. "Happy for me?" This presence is not about me, it's in the midst of you. And it's not about you either. It's everywhere, everything without boundaries. In fact, it makes it difficult to discern where I end and you begin. Only I hadn't been aware before.

The best laid marketing plans must allow for the presence of something greater than ourselves, and ride with that. In one of my favorite business books, The Purpose Driven Church (ironically I am not a fan of evangelical ministers, but Warren is an exception), Warren asks us to surf the available waves that are provided everyday rather than struggling to make our own waves.

So very Taoistic.

Bonus: This should be old hat for WOMMA members. Here's how Stielstra says he applied his pyromarketing techniques to Warren's book:

The four steps of this marketing approach mimic the steps of building a fire:

1. Gather the driest tinder - Purpose Driven gathered the driest tinder by seeking out the people who were most likely to respond positively to their campaign. They found 1200 pastors whose congregations totaled some 400,000 people. Using existing credibility gained through Warren's prior book The Purpose Driven Church and through Purpose Driven seminars, they convinced 1200 pastors to begin a 40 Days of Purpose campaign in their churches. These people were gathered with the promise (or at least suggestion) of success - that by following this campaign they would have bigger, stronger, more successful churches. [This is an important fact: Rick Warren built up Saddleback Church from a small home Bible study group to one of the largest churches in the country over about a 20 year period. He started teaching other pastors how to grow their churches subsequently and built up a solid reputation with evangelical pastors nationally. It's facile to assume that Purpose Driven Life was simply an overnight success.]
2. Touch it with a match - Having found 1200 pastors who would lead their churches in this campaign, Zondervan [PDL's publisher, an imprint under HarperCollins] produced commercial spots and had them played on Christian radio stations in target areas. This generated some excitement about the program and even provided a small amount of brand recognition. They did not actively promote the book, but the campaigns that were beginning in local churches. For six weeks, following a video introduction by Rick Warren, those churches taught messages prepared by him and studied his book in small groups. Zondervan discounted the book to just $7 (from the usual $20) to promote it to the 400,000 people attending these 1200 churches. The flame was now burning, if only in a small way.
3. Fan the flames - Zondervan [the imprint of Harper Collins that published  PDL] fanned the flames by promoting the book and the associated programs as evangelism. They told how this book had changed lives and grown churches within those 1200 congregations that formed the initial campaign. A company called Outreach marketing produced posters and door hangers and other items to assist churches as they spread the word. Zondervan provided retailers with marketing tools like postcards and emails along with a list of participating churches so they could sell them any additional copies they needed. The pastors and laypeople who had already completed the program, largely unknowingly, became consumer evangelists. The flames spread.
4. Save the coals - Zondervan gathered information on every church that had done the program, and wherever possible, on the individuals who had participated. They gathered email addresses through their web sites. As more Purpose Driven products become available, Zondervan can market them to a group that has already expressed interest in this type of product. According to Stielstra, saving the coals "is how your marketing budgets build equity and the only way to expand your business with marketing budgets that stubbornly refuse to grow. There is a great deal of scientific evidence for PyroMarketing from psychology, physiology, and sociology." The coals are now gathered, prepared to heat up a fire that is dying down, or to begin a whole new one.

Perhaps the most important concept to grasp is the cyclical nature of this approach. Saving the coals allows a marketer to repeat the process, as the coals can be used to ignite further dry tinder.

p.s.: "Growing tired of old marketing metaphors based on water or viruses, [Stielstra] observed examples of marketing that had provided stunning results and created a way of understanding marketing based on a metaphor of fire."

Growing tired of old marketing metaphors, I personally don't use a message-sending conduit metaphor for communication, but rely on the metaphor of tuning forks, and resonance.

Flickr photo by Joseph Robertson (it's a fire hydrant) | tags Womma, WOM, WordofMouth marketing

Comments

[Greg Stielstra]

I realize this comment is only about three years late, still I felt that, since your post mentions me and my book (PyroMarketing) I should clarify a few things.

1. I don't take credit for the success of The Purpose Driven life, never have and never will. Anyone who has read PyroMarketing (and unfortunately I don't believe Rick Warren has) read my website or blog, or heard me speak knows this is true. I merely chronicle and analyzes the process that led to PDL's success. As the marketing director for the book, I had a front row seat and use that position to chronicle the story.

2. The "Left handed quilter" story is not an example of my confidence as a marketer. Without some context it sounds arrogant and that's not it at all.

I use the example to illustrate that, in a world of six billion people, even seemingly narrow niches are larger than we imagine. The example goes like this:

"If someone wrote a book on quilting, they might hope to 'broaden the market' by promoting it to quilters, needle pointers, or even anyone that sews. Their natural tendency is to cast their net wider and wider.

However, that approach simultaneously over-estimates the interested of tertiary audiences and under-estimates the size of the primary audience.

There are 15 million Americans who pursue quilting as a hobby. Ten percent of the population is left handed. Therefore, there are 1.5 million left handed quilters. If one tenth of one percent purchased the book in a single month through reporting retail stores then 1500 copies would be reported to the bestsellers list. At the time I told this story to the reporter, a book needed to sell only 1200 copies in a single month to earn position #20 on the CBA bestseller's list. Having sold 1500, our fictional quilting book would have made the list with 300 to spare."

3. I agree that Jesus' life was his message...and that's part of my point. Successful products are those that perfectly integrate the message of the marketing with the reality of the product. It is this honest integration of "the talk and the walk" that makes products and people genuine and attractive. Jesus is the example that Christians should strive to follow in every way and I think that includes what we can learn from him about communication.

Thanks for letting me share my comments. GS