UCG went into hyper-drive recently touting a new lecture series featuring Gary Petty. The topic they picked has been a favorite one that has occupied Armstrongites for decades. Why Were You Born? Only Armstrongites seem invested in this and that is tied directly into HWA's obsession with it in the 1940-50's. Coming out of the War people were asking this question in light of the atrocities and millions of lives lost. Today, hardly anyone even worries about this, yet UCG claims it is the most asked question in all of humanity.
UCG released the facts about this wondrous campaign the other day including numbers of attendees.
Attendance at the event was over 200, including some local United Church of God members and Ambassador Bible College students. (Due to space limitations, the majority of local church members were not able to attend.) In addition, almost 400 webcast connections watched the event live online—representing more than a 1,000 people.
Particularly encouraging, was that the seminar drew 74 new guests, most having reserved tickets ahead of time, with a few showing up at the door for the event. Everybody who attended received a free seminar-themed notebook with pen and a copy of the United Church of God booklet Why Were You Born? (which was previously titled What Is Your Destiny?).
Notice what was said above: attendance was around 200, 126 attendees were UCG members, employees and ABC students. 74 people were non-COG. With an urban population of 2.2 million, 74 people is a horrendous payoff for the amount of money dumped into this failed campaign.
Billboards in the Cincinnati area through Lamar cost around $2,500 each for a four week period. Their impact is the number of vehicles that drive by in a given period of time times the number of occupants in the vehicle. UCG bought eight of these billboards. Other costs were to rent the hotel room at the Holiday Inn for the meeting and for the free pens and notebooks given to the attendees.
Pandora radio ads were paid for, 746 ads were paid to run on Time Warner Cable in the Cincinnati area. UCG had to pay for over 1,000 Google click-through ads. 5,400 letters were mailed by the USPS to household in the Cincinnati area. This does not include the employee cost that it used to run Facebook and Twitter accounts or to plan the event.
Only in Armstrongism can it be declared a success they 74 people out of 2.2 million show up. It just goes to show that all the millions they are dumping into booklets, magazines and television shows is having a negligible impact worldwide. No one knows who UCG is or what kind of silly message they are promoting. It still plays mainly to a COG base that is constantly shape shifting from one group to the next.
Read the glowing report by UCG here: “Why Were You Born?” Event Draws 74 New People in Cincinnati
