Bringing Faith to the Virtual Arena

A case study on the use of professional video based social media campaigns to strengthen faith communities and increase event attendance.

Background:

The Office of Faith Formation in the Diocese of Providence office is a powerful source of support, encouragement, and faith preparation for parishes and ministries in the Diocese of Providence located in the State of Rhode Island.

Challenges & Objectives:

The Office of Faith Formation in pursuit of their mission regularly puts on and coordinates Diocesan wide events where Catholics from over 256 parishes across RI are invited to participate to feed their faith, grow in fellowship, and bolster their knowledge of ministry practices in a fun and life-giving environment. The Director of Faith Formation partnered up with Mastic out of a desire to want to further empower his Diocese and succeed in promoting the upcoming 2020 Faith Formation Convocation but to also use media to strengthen Catholic communities across the State of Rhode Island.

After discussing the possibilities and completing the quote process, a new project was born to do exactly that; strengthen the faith, attendance, and spirits of Catholics across the ocean state with a contract to create a new kind of story driven commercial along with social media graphics and campaigns promoting the 2020 Faith Formation Convocation.

The Proposed Solution:

Video and Social Media campaigns were selected as the best format for reaching people in this use case because video has a 40% higher engagement rate then any other content type and social media has the lowest cost to reward ratios providing high viewership and low costs to conversion compared to many other traditional forms of advertising. After a study of their community, multiple consulting calls and planning sessions, and pre-production activities we can the process of planning the day-of-production activities involved with shooting their commercial.

Casting calls were made and as part of the desired plan of action many members of the local community and members of the Office of Faith Formation itself were selected as most desirable to keep the feel organic and local to that community.

Results:

Ultimately, the final product of the commercial and subsequent campaigns generated and completed provided 25,561 views and 317 conversions who went on to the ticketing page to buy tickets for the event.

Unfortunately, COVID-19 arrived in the United States around this time and the event was cancelled so no further measurements were possible after the campaign ended but further conference calls and meetings with our client the Office of Faith Formation revealed valuable feedback and data. The ultimate determination resulting from the main goals of this campaign were achieved in delivering a powerful message of hope and evangelization given the substantial numbers right before the pandemic of COVID-19.

Future Plans:

The Office of Faith Formation has been in close communication with Mastic and is interested in future prospective services providing training to DRE’s and Parishes in virtualizing the faith so that digital communities make faith possible in a time where shutdowns are prevalent. We’ll update this case as we know more.