Tag archives: church

Hollywood marketing through Churches

This is really weird: Hollywood has started advertising at churches. For example, The Walt Disney Co. is currently marketing “The Greatest Game Ever Played” to faith-based groups, saying the film is about values (family, courage, dreams) which reflect secular virtues, potentially Christian virtues… ABCnews points out the approach reflects the next step in Hollywood’s attempt to capitalize on the business lessons of “The Passion of the Christ,” a surprising blockbuster last year thanks to unprecedented marketing and mobilization in churches. Anyway the whole thing is more complex than you might think because, for their part, churches recognize that just denouncing violent or sexually explicit films doesn’t influence their content so their members are using buying power to support films that reflect their values. Personally, I find it inappropriate, but I live in Italy, not in the US, and the approach to church and religion in the two countries is very different.