Harrogate churches join forces to advertise on local radio

Four congregations in Harrogate have joined forces to place adverts on their local radio station inviting listeners to  celebrate Christmas at their local church. Christ Church, St Mark's, the Wesley Chapel and St Peter's are putting nearly £400 into placing Christian adverts on Stray FM, the commercial station for the Harrogate area.

Two, professionally created, humorous and fast-paced thirty second commercials will be played on the station between December 15th and 25th. One tells the nativity story in the style of a racing commentary and the other in the style of a football commentary. Each advert ends with the tagline: "Why not be part of the action, at church, this Christmas." They can be heard online at www.churchads.org.uk/live/radio.html

The impetus for the campaign came from a recent poll which found that only 12 per cent of adults in Britain know the facts of the biblical Christmas story. Chas Bayfield, the award-winning creative director who has coordinated the team behind the idea, says: "The new radio ads take on the style of a sports commentary and hope to engage in a humorous way with the youth audiences and encourage them to go to church to hear the Christmas story in full." 

The radio adverts coincide with the unveiling of a poster advert by the Churches Advertising Network, a specially commissioned painting of the Nativity, set in a freezing bus shelter, which will be displayed at over 1,000 bus shelters across the UK throughout December.

The painting is by Royal Academy Gold medal winner, Andrew Gadd and depicts the Holy Family, with halos, in a dark bus shelter. The shepherds and wise men are replaced with fellow passengers waiting for a bus. Some are watching the nativity intently; others appear oblivious and are checking the bus timetable and flagging down a bus.

Francis Goodwin, Chair of the Churches Advertising Network, says: "The increasing external pressures to secularise Christmas and even the attempts to rebrand it as 'Winterval' show that we cannot be complacent about actively promoting the Christmas story to a new generation, some of whom may never have had the invitation to get to know Jesus."