How do we appeal to younger Christians without alienating our current supporters?

This year I’ve been reflecting on a quote my colleague & mentor Steve Brock shared with me that pertains to faith, and I find myself coming back to it a lot: 

“We define it by the center, not the periphery.”

This seems to be the crux of pretty much every conversation I’ve been having in so many different circles and spheres of influence this year — feeling an utter crush and clash from the periphery. 

And it’s all swirling around the same core question: How can Christ-led brands and even Churches innovate through what seems to be massive worldview disparities between the current life-blood generations funding God’s Kingdom work and the incumbent generation who needs to carry on that legacy?

My colleagues and I argue all the time about whether things are generational disparities or simply life-stage disparities. While a lot of life-stage disparities do become clouded in generational lenses that distort actual patterns, the life-stage argument doesn’t ever really account for the unique traumas each life stage is dealt with at the most formative life stage, that is, being young. 

So when I say younger, I’m not talking about ‘younger’ donors who are entering the generosity life stage of their 50s. I’m talking about next-gen adulting Christianity: people in their 20s and 30s. 

And right now, in our Western context, the sheer impact of a COVID-19-sized trauma alone has drastically catalyzed the wounds and divides that were already forming within Christendom — not to mention BLM, MAGA, the Rise & Fall of Mars Hill, the Southern Baptist Sexual Assault scandals, Christian Nationalism, He Gets Us, Roe v. Wade, on and on and on. 

What’s happening is that Christ-led brands are trapped in the space between two worldviews that have their own trigger words.  

For older generations, it’s terms like “social justice,” “racial reconciliation,” “ally,” “woke,” and “deconstruction.” For younger generations, it’s terms like “evangelical,” “pro-life,” “Israel,” “traditional,” and even “Christian.”

While I am speaking in massive generalities here, these are the examples that are being brought up in nearly every conversation I have with non-profits and are creating serious relevance and resonance problems within the church and the parachurch.

We are at a pivotal moment in Christendom, and many brands are struggling to adapt their identities as these massive societal, technological, and generational changes continue to shape the marketing landscape. 

Legacy brands want to reach a socially minded (multi-ethnic, multi-cultural) generation of Christians but can’t seem to do it without the risk of losing their older nuclear-minded (white, mono-cultural) donors. I know, I’ve talked to so many of them. Newer generations are super-triggered by any non-profit that comes across as exclusionary or ‘the great white hope’ and they want to invest more in bringing the parachurch to the for-profit space to redeem the world. 

Lest you think this is a ‘Christian Non-Profit’ problem, let me give you a real-world example of this at play today in the for-profit space.

BUD LIGHT™

Don’t know what I’m talking about? Let me recap for you.

Earlier this year, right-wingers in the U.S. (AKA Bud Light’s core customer base) worked themselves into a veritable frenzy over an Anheuser-Busch marketing campaign featuring a transgender TikTok star named Dylan Mulvaney, who promoted a Bud Light campaign on social media and had special Bud Light beers sent to her with her face on them. To reiterate, a company put a trans woman in a marketing campaign, and things escalated to the point of Kid Rock destroying cases of Bud Light with an AR-15.

Source: Yahoo News.

Bud Light’s stated intention was not to “be part of a discussion that divides people,” but to “bring people together over beer.”

It didn’t go as planned.

Bud Light then reversed course which only made things worse for them in the long run. 

The ending of this story? Two top Anheizer Busch executives were put on leave/fired, a canceled influencer, beer sales plummeted more than 28%, deeper divides, increased polarization online, lost trust with both the core audience AND prospect market, and ultimately, Bud Light dethroned as the nation's best-selling beer by Modelo.

Take yourself out of the camp you may lean toward with the Bud Light fiasco for a hot second and see it for what it is — a company trying desperately to reach a new market by doing probably the most foolish thing you could do: forgetting everything you know about your current supporter-base and alienating them with your brand expansion efforts, then backtracking so hard you completely lose any momentum you have with the new audience you were trying to reach. 

Sound like a familiar problem? Sound like a familiar polarization?

Okay, so what do we do?

That’s the real question everyone is asking. 

Sermon Time.

Open your Bibles and turn your pages to Matthew 9:17 and we’ll begin:

“And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. For the old skins would burst from the pressure, spilling the wine and ruining the skins. New wine is stored in new wineskins so that both are preserved.” 

Yes, I’m cherry-picking this bible verse to make a point, but just go with me for a moment.

Let’s be frank, there might just be too much baggage with legacy brands to shift or rebrand in a way that can work to appeal to young Christians without devastatingly alienating their current lifeblood.

We need to try to preserve both the old wineskins AND the new wine. So here’s a sneaky little word that could be your silver bullet to navigate your polarization problem: 

SubBranding.

 

Remember Tab™?

Source: Random internet search that lead to an X (Twitter) post with the image I wanted on it.

For you youngins readin’ this post, Tab was Coca-Cola™’s first-ever diet soda brand launched back in 1963, and was their solution to test how people would respond to a diet soda that was marketed as an ‘alternative’ to Coca-Cola. 

You see, Coke was worried about how their avid fans would perceive the main Coca-Cola brand as coming out with an ‘alternative’ for fear that a: diehards would think something was wrong with their main product or b: new audiences would be skeptical about a ‘diet’ offering from such a sugary juggernaut. 

So they made a new brand to test with. 

Furthermore, Tab became a testing ground for new ideas or copy-cats of things Pepsi™ was trying to do to stay competitive and pursue innovation without hurting their flagship offering.

In the end, Tab’s success led Coca-Cola to create Diet Coke with a whole lot of confidence that it would be embraced — and it was. Tab's popularity declined after the Coca-Cola company introduced Diet Coke in 1982, though it remained the best-selling diet soda of that year.

In the end, they found the center after testing in the periphery. 

So what exactly can subbranding do for you? In a nutshell, subbranding allows organizations to create a separate brand — that is insulated from the primary brand — to explore and test expressions and even business models that are targeted to a specific audience and demographic without alienating their core customer base. 

Listen, as marketers, we all know that ~70% of Americans make purchase/donation decisions based on brand, and companies with strong brands can ask for up to 20% more for the same product, opportunity, or experience. 

So if your main brand has been unable to successfully establish itself as a strong brand within the demographic you are aiming to reach, chances are it never will without having to fire your existing constituent base. (But don’t do that.) 

Instead, a subbrand has the chance to become a strong brand on its own merit for its own audience — empowering your organization to have its cake and eat it too.

This is what Anheizer Busch should have done if they wanted to go after a new market. Don’t wreck Bud Light in the eyes of your avid supporters — just make a new beer brand. If Bud Light’s sales dwindle, then they dwindle. If the beer fades into irrelevance, so be it. But don’t hurt it and your chances to keep it going as long as you can when you have other ways to innovate. Coca-Cola is still around even though Tab isn’t.

Do it for the youngins.

For many Christ-led brands, subbranding is uncharted territory. But while so much is unknown, I do know this:

If you start with specific causes or existing brands, you get boxed into corners. If you start with deep values and focused intent, you can find room for alignment that you can build greatness upon.

Subbranding your way through transformation and polarization is a very messy space to be in — and there's nowhere else I want to be. Ultimately, that’s because I believe there's no other place that can make a bigger impact in helping to rebuild the wounded Western Church than through brands like yours that point to the way of Jesus.

PS: If you are interested in knowing exactly how to build a subbrand and know you’re building the right one, hit me up — there’s a unique method (Inverted R&D) to this madness.