Marketers can be pretty good at hitting their targets. But they are not mind readers.
The small ads along the right side of Facebook profiles are customized according to the perceived interests of the individual. I’ve never responded to one.
As is often the case in life, their assumptions about who I am and what interests me usually miss the mark.
Facebook thinks I might like to go on a retreat with Jonathan Falwell. He’s probably a nice guy, but I remember his daddy too well. No thanks.
Or that I might pay a visit to the Sav-A-Lot store in Warner-Robins. No, but the Atlanta Bread Company is a good stop when I’m down that way.
Neither am I interested in Bible Study Magazine’s interview with John Piper.
And a Middle Georgia Men’s Conference featuring three “fighters” (a martial arts expert, a boxer and a fire fighter) might pack the house with testosterone. But macho-christianity has never appealed to me.
So I am intrigued yet again by the assumptions that all who identify as “Christian” (and especially as “Baptist”) fit within a certain shared mindset. There is little to no recognition that many of us seek to live faithfully outside the narrow evangelical subculture by which American Christianity is often defined.
So, sorry marketing folks, but the ads on my Facebook page are not very effective. ….Wait. The guy who created VeggieTales has something new coming out. They may be on to me now.
Director of the Jesus Worldview Initiative at Belmont University in Nashville, Tennessee and former executive editor and publisher at Good Faith Media.
