Childrens Ministry Online » Brand

Kids Church name and brand

Kenny — Tue, 07 Dec 2010 17:15:30 +0000

I don’t know if you’re like me, but I always enjoy seeing what other people name their various age groupÂ environments. Even more so, I love to see the way they’ve branded the environments. Some have great names with a lousy look. Some have a pretty great look with a silly name.Â Unfortunately, a large number of ministries don’t do so well at either. However, I must say that I really liked this one. It’s actually the name/brand of the Middle School program at Catalyst Church in Middletown, CT.

I must admit, one of these days I might just have to borrow “amplify” for aÂ ministryÂ environment name. ItÂ definitelyÂ has the cool factor going for it. What do you think?… Read the rest

Olympic design over the years

Kenny — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 17:00:49 +0000

The other day I wrote about brand confusion, specifically pertaining to the 2010 Winter Olympics. My friend Jonathan Cliff sent me the following video about how event pictograms have changed over the years, both for the better and for the worse. For anyone interested in design, it’s a fascinating video. Thanks Jonathan for the video. Enjoy!

… Read the rest

Brand confusion

Kenny — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 19:07:08 +0000

I was looking for an image for a blog post about the Olympics and I came across the logo to the left. I was kind of surprised. I have watched more of this winter Olympics than just about any other. Even while in Nashville last week, I watched what I could. However, I’ve never seen this logo yet it appears to be the official Olympic logo. I remember the controversy a few years ago about the design of the London Olympic logo, how no one liked it even though millions had been spent on it. I imagine that Canada spent a fortune on this logo, yet I can’t say I’ve ever seen it.

I did go back and look at the logos of past Olympics and most were recognizable (Okay, I didn’t recognize Torino, but I honestly don’t remember Torino at all. Where was I and why didn’t I watch any of it?). I even vividly remember Barcelona’s logo and that was almost 20 years ago.

There’s a lesson here. I’ve been at churches that have experienced brand confusion. The church had a new logo, yet various people in the church hadn’t gotten the memo and were still sending out notes on the old letterhead. Even right now at the ministry I’m at, there is some definite brand confusion for the Children’s Ministry. There’s never been a official logo (although a clip art graphic found it’s way on a few documents) and since I’ve been here, I haven’t been committed to anything until we officially re-brand.

How clear is your brand? Do your volunteers recognize it? Do your parents? How about your kids? I think we’ve all found ourselves in the middle of brand confusion. If that’s the case, what is your exit plan?

Naming your ministry

Kenny — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 16:35:18 +0000

I’ve been thinking a lot about ministry names lately.

Currently the name of Gateway’s Children’s Ministry is Kid’s Quest. Kid’s Quest was well branded here, but I feel a new name and new look is just around the corner for us, maybe launching a new look near the end of 2010.

Here’s what I’ve been thinking about. It seems like 5-10 years ago, it was a lot more common to find ministries with unique names. Now it seems it’s a lot more common for the Children’s Ministry to have some iteration of the church’s name. This makes total sense to me as you’re furthering the brand of the church through your ministry.

I’ve been a part of a few churches where we’ve renamed the ministry to sync up with the church’s name such as CT Kids (Cross Timbers), Anchor Kids (Anchor Church) and GBC Kids (Graceland Baptist Church). Even when I look around, I see other leading churches that do this as well: LifeKids (Life Church), KidSpring (NewSpring), Kids on the Move (Church on the Move) and so many others (Although there are still plenty of big and influential churches that don’t follow this thought).

So, what are you thoughts on this?

New volunteer t-shirt

Kenny — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 15:30:49 +0000

Since arriving at Gateway, I’ve wanted to give the Children’s Ministry an image. Don’t get me wrong, we have a great building with excellent environments. However, the ministry lacks a real image. The closest thing to a logo is a low resolution image of a boat, something we probably won’t be sticking with. We’re still a little way off from developing a brand, but we needed something now.

So for Christmas we decided to give all of our volunteers a new Kid’s Quest T-Shirt. It was our thank you gift for all of our volunteers as well as an opportunity to get Kid’s Quest out there. We’re still planning to build our brand later in 2009, but this is a fresh new look we can use in the meantime that is fun, fresh and not embarrassing for our volunteers to wear (you know what I mean?).