FamilyLife Launches Love Like You Mean It Campaign

Seeks to Broaden Audience Base in 2009 and Beyond
LITTLE ROCK, Ark., March 25 /PRNewswire/ -- FamilyLife, the global, donor-supported nonprofit leader in marriage conferences, has reached more than two million people worldwide over the last three-plus decades with its message on strengthening marriages and families. For 2009, FamilyLife announces the launch of its Love Like You Mean It campaign, which offers a new approach complete with messaging and imagery designed to broaden the appeal to reach a younger and more diverse audience.

FamilyLife was founded in 1976 by Dennis and Barbara Rainey with a focus on building healthier marriages and families through the practical application of successful and time-tested techniques and teachings based on biblical principles. The organization, recognizing significant changes in society, family dynamics and family values over the past 30 years, made a commitment to improve the relevancy of its message and extend the reach to a broader, more diverse audience.

FamilyLife developed Love Like You Mean It as a fresh new approach to address its two challenges. "We are utilizing every element in this campaign: public relations, advertising, web banners, widgets on social networks as well as experiential branding at FamilyLife's Weekend to Remember conferences. There are too many people that could benefit from this experience who simply don't know about it...yet. Our job is to find fresh ways to reach them," said Paula Dumas, VP and Chief Marketing Officer, FamilyLife.

The campaign kicked off January 2009 with a 40-Day Love Dare challenge based on the Love Dare book from the box office hit movie Fireproof. It offered couples who wanted to opt in a practical way to practice unconditional love and transform their marriage by applying simple, biblical principles to their everyday lives. The challenge culminated Valentine's Day and was celebrated at various Weekend to Remember conferences held around the country that weekend. Because of its success, another 40-Day Love Dare Challenged was re-launched February 14.

Weekend to Remember: Love Like You Mean It conferences, the organization's gateway to the general public, received a new look and a new, more playful and romantic approach to make the program more relevant and appealing to a mainstream audience. In addition, the company will launch its new Real Life Vows creator -- an interactive online tool designed to help couples rewrite their vows in a simple, playful manner. The application is launched online early February 2009.

Since FamilyLife is most known for its weekend marriage conferences, redesigning Weekend to Remember both externally and internally was essential to the success of Love Like You Mean It.

"Not only did we create a new look and tag line, but we focused our attention to creating a weekend retreat for a husband and wife to get away and focus on romance, on each other," said Dumas. "We've made Weekend to Remember more fun for everyone - both men and women - by interjecting romance, and even humor, into discussions and projects. Some of the discussions offered include communication, conflict resolution, sex and intimacy, parenting, tips for husbands and tips for wives."

Three, an Atlanta-based integrated marketing communications firm, developed the initial concept of Love Like You Mean It and FamilyLife's in-house marketing team produced promotional collateral, new conference manuals, radio posts, the website, and conducted an email campaign in conjunction with its agency partners. To help launch and maintain the various aspects of its new fully integrated marketing campaign, FamilyLife established strategic partnerships with the following Atlanta-based creative firms:

-- Three - Radio, print and direct mail campaign, local and syndicated

radio media planning and buying, Real Life vow generator

-- CO&P Integrated Marketing - National/Local/Blogger PR and promotion

campaign

-- Ignition Inc. - Experiential branding at event, staging, logistics,

casting/training

-- Soteria Productions - Video production.

According to Dumas, this is the organization's first fully integrated campaign utilizing all media elements. "We have the heart of a ministry and the mind of a business," explains Dumas.

About FamilyLife

For more than three decades FamilyLife, a global, donor-supported, non-profit organization co-founded by Dr. Dennis and Barbara Rainey, has focused on the mission of using practical, biblical principles to build healthier marriages and families through conferences and media channels. FamilyLife, a 501c3, works in 100 countries around the world to help to transform lives and restore hope through its Weekend to Remember marriage conferences, Homebuilders Bible studies, FamilyLife Today radio broadcasts, Hope for Orphans orphan care ministry, FamilyLife publications, and the internet. For more information visit FamilyLife.com.

FamilyLife

CONTACT: Marci Davis, CO&P Integrated Marketing, +1-678-428-7254

Web site: http://www.FamilyLife.com/