Jesus gets rebranded for skeptics in new ad campaign

"A girl got pregnant,” the video starts. “She was scared. Her parents thought her boyfriend was the father but it wasn’t his."

This might sound like an episode of a reality TV series, but it's part of a new ad campaign to make Jesus Christ more relatable to the masses by trying to bridge the gap with skeptics.

Cross-cultural agency Lerma/ led the creative for the "He Gets Us" campaign, which is funded by an anonymous group of billionaire donors from the faith-based nonprofit the Servant Foundation. The effort, budgeted at more than $10 million across 10 test markets in preparation for being taken nationwide, introduces the website HeGetsUs.com.

The ads have “one singular focus,” Jon Lee, principal at Lerma/ said. That is “to invite people, particularly people who may be skeptical about Christianity, to rethink Jesus as an inspiring and human figure that we can learn a lot from regardless of what your beliefs are.”

The campaign features 15- and 30-second videos centered around key themes such as teen pregnancy, anxiety, and struggle that are meant to draw parallels between Jesus’ experience as told by the Christian faith and people's contemporary experience. Each video includes a black-and-white picture montage set to background piano music while a woman narrates. 

The teen mom video shows her journey from finding out she’s pregnant all the way to the birth of her child. The narration includes simple and short sentences that coincide with each picture that is shown on screen and tells the story of Jesus’ birth.

Each video ends with the tagline, “He gets us. All of us,” with the word “us” in yellow letters before the two words collapse onto each other and spell out “Jesus” with the letters “U” and “S” still tinted yellow.

“We wanted to find a way to tell the story differently with no gatekeepers, and where skeptics could come and have a conversation about Jesus, if they'd like, without any expectation of conversion or church attendance or anything that might go along with those kinds of conversations in other instances,” Lee said.

The campaign's test markets include Charlotte, North Carolina; Oklahoma City, Oklahoma; Colorado Springs, Colorado; Orlando, Florida; Columbus, Ohio; Phoenix, Arizona; Dallas/Fort Worth, Texas; Portland Oregon; Kansas City, Missouri; Miami and Ft. Lauderdale, Florida.

North Carolina-based agency Haven Creative oversaw the overall project, while Lerma/ led the creative, Chicago-based agency KSM handled media, and Magnify Digital led web design. Other than the website, the campaign will run across local TV spots, digital videos and out-of-home. The effort also includes a virtual Bible streamed on YouTube. 

The goal of the campaign is to establish “He Gets Us” as a brand and tell the story of Jesus in a non-political way that doesn’t focus on converting people to Christianity according to Lee, who said success in these markets will be identified by level of engagement. 

“We wanted people to know that no matter what your thoughts are about Jesus, the story of Jesus is the story of a man who dealt with all of the struggles that we deal with every day. We try to uncover moments and stories in scripture that maybe are not often talked about in the story of Jesus. Stories about how he dealt with anxiety, stories about how he treated women equally and fought for their rights, how he befriended troublemakers, corrupt government bureaucrats and violent nationalists, and then he made them befriend each other because of their love for him. These are the kinds of stories that today may inspire a different expectation or a different understanding of Jesus than what people currently have.”

Prior to approaching Lerma/ in September, the client conducted research over a four-month period, an agency spokeswoman said.

Phase one of the research included a quantitative study via online interviews of 5,000 U.S. adults. Phase two was a qualitative study done through Qualboard, an online discussions platform, with 35 self-identified “skeptics” and 20 “cultural Christians” (people who grew up in a Christian environment, but don’t practice the faith). Phase three included another quantitative study of online interviews of 3,000 U.S. adults who identify as skeptics and cultural Christians. 

Ultimately the client found that 54% of American adults are unsure about their faith or have a nominal faith in Jesus. More than half of skeptics are open to exploring more about Jesus, and nearly all skeptics and cultural Christians believe the world would be a better place if everyone lived Christ's teachings on peace, love and forgiveness. 

Lee says he isn't worried that the campaign could offend some strict traditionalists in the Christian community. "These aren’t stories that I think devout Christians don't want to tell. I think that we're just simply telling them in a way that's designed to be more winsome to people who don't already know these stories."

Lee said he formed a team of eight people from various faiths and ideologies such as Christians, skeptics, and pan spiritualists for the effort. This is common practice for Lee, who works with faith-based clients such as the Salvation Army and the American Bible Society as well as some churches and non-profits. Lee has also done work for companies that aren’t faith-based but have Christian values, such as Interstate Batteries and Nature Nate’s Honey Co.

The full-scale campaign is expected to roll out sometime next year.