US nuns put their faith in advertising to find recruits
By Oliver Poole in Los Angeles
(Filed: 18/08/2002)
US nuns put their faith in advertising to find recruits
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2002/08/18/wnun18.xml&sSheet=/news/2002/08/18/ixworld.html
Dwindling numbers of recruits have forced nuns in America to launch unprecedented advertising campaigns in an attempt to ward off the threatened extinction of some orders.
They have employed the latest in modern marketing techniques, including focus groups, computer graphics and catchy slogans, in campaigns on television, the internet and advertising hoardings in the hope of persuading young women to embrace the convent life.
One poster sent to college campuses shows a close-up of Michelangelo's Creation of Adam with a mobile telephone placed in God's hand. "Do you have a call waiting?" it asks. Another features two young women - one black, one white - dressed for hiking. "Life is short. Eternity isn't" is written below. Bus shelters in Manhattan carry a poster with the slogan: "Looking for the good life or the good in life?"
The Church hopes that the campaigns, initiated by individual orders with the backing of the Roman Catholic hierarchy and costing as much as £150,000, will reverse decades of decline in what remains a devout country. While the number of nuns fell from 180,000 in 1965 to only 78,000 today, their average age increased to 69 from 63 over the past 15 years.
"It's a personnel crisis," said Prof Scott Appleby, the director of the Cushwa Centre for the Study of American Catholicism at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana, who is conducting a study of the advertising campaigns.
"Some of the smaller orders, such as one in Indianapolis which is down to 30 members, are in real danger of disappearing altogether," he said.
"Sisters have been the backbone of the Church this century, and it's absolutely critical to address the question of the next generation and who will succeed them."
The Adrian Dominican nuns in Michigan are in the middle of their "Life is Short" campaign. After a television advertisement appeared during the Oprah Winfrey Show, the nuns' website received more than 4,000 visits the following week compared with the usual 150.
"God is responsible for the call. I'm responsible to be visible," Sister Corinne Sanders said of the four-month, £150,000 campaign - the most expensive advertising campaign ever undertaken by a Catholic order. She hopes that it will help to stop a decline that has seen the order's numbers fall from 2,500 to 1,000 during the past 30 years.
In Indiana, the Sisters of Benedict released an advertisement with the catchline "You don't have to be perfect to be a nun. God knows we're not."
The Sisters of Mercy chapters in New York, New Jersey and Brooklyn teamed up to create the "call waiting" ads aimed at women aged between 21 and 35.
"We needed to connect to the world and also to humour," said Sister Patricia Wolf, the president of the New York order. "If you appear old and inflexible, that becomes an obstacle to anyone wanting to enter religious life."
The dwindling population of nuns - a decline far more precipitous than the drop in the number of Catholic priests - is blamed on the increase in career options for women, the possibility of getting married later in life than was common in the 1950s and 1960s and the replacement of nuns with lay people in Catholic schools and social service agencies.
Sister Mary Bendyna, of the Centre for Applied Research in the Apostolate, said that the marketing campaigns would at least ensure that those considering becoming a nun received an accurate perception of what it involved.
Research by the Church had found that many young women considering taking vows were put off by presumptions that all orders still involved their nuns wearing full black habits and spending a life behind the walls of a convent.
Many orders, including the Adrian Dominicans, now allow their members to wear ordinary clothes and work in the outside world in professions such as teaching, scientific research and in academia. The sisters say it is too early to tell if the campaigns have paid off in attracting new members rather than just casual callers. The path to final vows can take up to nine years.
Tom Denari, a Catholic working at Young & Laramore, an Indianapolis advertising agency, who donated his services free, said: "Whether it's a steak burger or a nun, you just have to ask: What do you want people to think of when you see them? It's all about strategic positioning."
By Oliver Poole in Los Angeles
(Filed: 18/08/2002)
US nuns put their faith in advertising to find recruits
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2002/08/18/wnun18.xml&sSheet=/news/2002/08/18/ixworld.html
Dwindling numbers of recruits have forced nuns in America to launch unprecedented advertising campaigns in an attempt to ward off the threatened extinction of some orders.
They have employed the latest in modern marketing techniques, including focus groups, computer graphics and catchy slogans, in campaigns on television, the internet and advertising hoardings in the hope of persuading young women to embrace the convent life.
One poster sent to college campuses shows a close-up of Michelangelo's Creation of Adam with a mobile telephone placed in God's hand. "Do you have a call waiting?" it asks. Another features two young women - one black, one white - dressed for hiking. "Life is short. Eternity isn't" is written below. Bus shelters in Manhattan carry a poster with the slogan: "Looking for the good life or the good in life?"
The Church hopes that the campaigns, initiated by individual orders with the backing of the Roman Catholic hierarchy and costing as much as £150,000, will reverse decades of decline in what remains a devout country. While the number of nuns fell from 180,000 in 1965 to only 78,000 today, their average age increased to 69 from 63 over the past 15 years.
"It's a personnel crisis," said Prof Scott Appleby, the director of the Cushwa Centre for the Study of American Catholicism at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana, who is conducting a study of the advertising campaigns.
"Some of the smaller orders, such as one in Indianapolis which is down to 30 members, are in real danger of disappearing altogether," he said.
"Sisters have been the backbone of the Church this century, and it's absolutely critical to address the question of the next generation and who will succeed them."
The Adrian Dominican nuns in Michigan are in the middle of their "Life is Short" campaign. After a television advertisement appeared during the Oprah Winfrey Show, the nuns' website received more than 4,000 visits the following week compared with the usual 150.
"God is responsible for the call. I'm responsible to be visible," Sister Corinne Sanders said of the four-month, £150,000 campaign - the most expensive advertising campaign ever undertaken by a Catholic order. She hopes that it will help to stop a decline that has seen the order's numbers fall from 2,500 to 1,000 during the past 30 years.
In Indiana, the Sisters of Benedict released an advertisement with the catchline "You don't have to be perfect to be a nun. God knows we're not."
The Sisters of Mercy chapters in New York, New Jersey and Brooklyn teamed up to create the "call waiting" ads aimed at women aged between 21 and 35.
"We needed to connect to the world and also to humour," said Sister Patricia Wolf, the president of the New York order. "If you appear old and inflexible, that becomes an obstacle to anyone wanting to enter religious life."
The dwindling population of nuns - a decline far more precipitous than the drop in the number of Catholic priests - is blamed on the increase in career options for women, the possibility of getting married later in life than was common in the 1950s and 1960s and the replacement of nuns with lay people in Catholic schools and social service agencies.
Sister Mary Bendyna, of the Centre for Applied Research in the Apostolate, said that the marketing campaigns would at least ensure that those considering becoming a nun received an accurate perception of what it involved.
Research by the Church had found that many young women considering taking vows were put off by presumptions that all orders still involved their nuns wearing full black habits and spending a life behind the walls of a convent.
Many orders, including the Adrian Dominicans, now allow their members to wear ordinary clothes and work in the outside world in professions such as teaching, scientific research and in academia. The sisters say it is too early to tell if the campaigns have paid off in attracting new members rather than just casual callers. The path to final vows can take up to nine years.
Tom Denari, a Catholic working at Young & Laramore, an Indianapolis advertising agency, who donated his services free, said: "Whether it's a steak burger or a nun, you just have to ask: What do you want people to think of when you see them? It's all about strategic positioning."