“This was not ours. And we don’t take credit.”
College marketers love photos: students in class, students out on the grass—maybe throwing a frisbee, reading a book, or laughing with friends. For a Christian school, any image of someone singing or praying is good. They are always looking for compelling pictures that say to prospective students, This could be you.
And the Asbury revival—the “outpouring” in February 2023, where students in Wilmore, Kentucky, felt moved by the Holy Spirit to stay in chapel and sing, pray, confess, testify, and sing some more for about two weeks—produced lots and lots of compelling photos.
But Jennifer McChord didn’t think she could use them.
When the revival started, the vice president of marketing and enrollment at Asbury University was a year and a half into an intensive digital ad campaign to raise the Wesleyan-movement school’s brand profile. She was trying every way she could to grab the attention of 15-, 16-, and 17-year-olds who loved Jesus and wanted to be challenged in their faith while studying Bible theology, biological psychology, English, health communication, equine science, or any of the other subjects offered at Asbury. Her team wanted to make sure that Christian high school students in the region knew about and seriously considered applying to the school.
But using the photos and videos from the revival for an ad campaign felt like it would be a violation of something special. The administration decided they weren’t going to do that.
“If it seems like we’re trying to benefit from the outpouring, that’s the check,” McChord told CT. “This was not ours. And we don’t take credit.”
From the outside, news that Asbury has record-breaking enrollment …