Rocky Comes Knocking on the Pastor’s Study

Yesterday my pastor showed me an incredible church marketing tool he received in the mail from the upcoming Hollywood movie Rocky (yes, another one!).

It’s called the “Rocky Balboa Outreach Box” and “designed for faith, educational, and community leaders to help tell the story of Rocky Balboa – one of courage, faith, and perseverance.”

The movie even has its own Rocky Resources website loaded with excellent promotional material … focused on helping churches use the movie.

I don’t know much about the movie … other than Rocky’s coming back to fight a younger boxer (and my favorite Heroes star “Peter Petrilli” is his son in the movie) … but what I do know is that Hollywood is turning up the volume in its marketing to churches.

Want my honest opinion about it? It’s a great marketing idea from a marketing perspective alone. It’s a very smart move — marketing to the church crowd and trying to influence pastors.

I understand why they sent that fancy box to him … he, along with every other pastor, has a pre-existing cluster of people who can be easily communicated to. Marketers droll over that kind of opportunity to reach groups of people like that. And pastors are influencers and gatekeepers for those audiences.

One mention by my pastor and they reach about 1,300 people this Sunday.

I’d say that’s a pretty good marketing idea from their perspective.

They’re betting that the investment in that super cool red boxing glove included in the box (yeah, I want one!) and incredibly well-done collaborating print materials that illustrate how the movie can be used in small groups and in sermons will translate into a comment from the pulpit or use in our church (and yours!).

To illustrate the influence of a pastor … as we talked about this whole “marketing to churches” phenomenon, my pastor told me one time he mentioned from the pulpit in his last church that he was reading a book (not a bestseller by any means) … and in the next week or so, the local bookstore owner called him to say 15 people from his church had come into his store requesting the book.

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By the way … in the same day, my pastor also received a letter from Fox Faith Churches (yes, that’s an actual domain name) about an upcoming movie based on a Ted Dekker novel — Thr3e.

I’ve talked about church marketing and the movies before here and here after I saw the Nativity Story.

Interesting stuff … brace yourself pastor. More of this is coming your way!

How will you handle it? How can or will you leverage it? How will you decide what makes it to the pulpit and what gets thrown in the trash can?