Those crafty Christians

A thought for Easter Monday morn...

Marketers can learn a lot from those crafty Christians. To baptise 10,000 English pagans, including their king, on a single afternoon was a feat. To convert the entire population of Iceland by means of a public debate was spectacular.

How did they do it?
They converted the masses by making it easy to make the change. Softly softly catchee monkey.

They didn't destroy their temples and altars, they simply redecorated them. They didn't ban their pagan festivals, they 'repurposed' them. So Christmas - which could not have seen shepherds watching their flocks by night in Palestine in mid winter - was chosen because it was the pagan festival of the birth of the Sun - the winter solstice. Easter was chosen because it was the pagan festival of rebirth and fertility.

Those Christians were flexible. They designed the product to suit the customer - customised it for each region until they had market dominance.

Then they did a Microsoft and made it 'whatever Bill decides'.

You'll find a similar strategy for " Crossing the Chasm" in Geoffrey Moore's book of the same name. Niche until you dominate.