Archives: Case Studies

The Diocese of Brooklyn’s Annual Catholic Appeal faces a donor base whose demographics are changing by age and ethnicity.

While traditional donors are still easily reached through direct mail and print newspaper ads, our challenge at DeSales is to help reach a younger donor base and expand our reach to Hispanic adults.

First, we rebranded the look and feel. We wanted to get away from busy collage posters and 8-minute videos that attempted to show the breadth of the great work but without focus. And, we wanted to remain true to the fundamentally Christian value the Annual Catholic Appeal represents: charity.

After redesigning all materials, and making it easy to update year-after-year (ensuring continuity and increased recognition for parishioners), we began to execute the annual campaign. We leveraged a series of print ads, creating digital versions and video content to be delivered to targeted Catholic English and Spanish speaking audiences through various digital advertising platforms.

During our initial campaign, we saw a significant increase in donations, including higher average donations among Hispanics. We continue to evolve the campaign to reach an even broader audience.

The theme in 2022 was United In Communion United in Charity. Donating to the ACA helped nurture and guide Youth ministry in a safe environment and understand their relationship with God.

It also aided in Faith Formation, Eucharistic Ministry, Senior Priests and Catholic School tuition assistance.

Visit the website at annualcatholicappeal.org.

Tags Campaigns, Development, Diocese, Fundraising, Promotion, Scholarships

Two stories in The New York Times involved our Press Secretary as spokesperson, translator and facilitator for primary sources and story development. One was on Chinese catechumens and the other on Hispanic catechumens in New York City.

Our Press Secretary has a great relationship with key media contacts in New York City and beyond. By keeping in touch, she was able to become a trusted subject matter expert for Catholicism. This rapport and these conversations led to our Press Secretary becoming a translator for the reporter. So much was able to be revealed about the nature of catechumens joining the Catholic Church during this time in the life of the Church, that two stories actually came out of these conversations and topics:

New York Times – Spiritually Speaking, I am Free

New York Times – Becoming Catholic in the Age of Scandal

Tags Catechumens

In 2018, we relaunched a show called Mysteries of the Church. The show is a high-end production, created to air on our television station here in the Diocese of Brooklyn, NET TV.

Episode by episode, the show sheds light on the lesser understood aspects of Catholic doctrine and teaching. Topics include the transubstantiation of the body and blood to become the Eucharist at Mass, stigmata, exorcisms, and more.

Tags Shows

When the Year of Vocations was announced, it was clear to the Rector of our minor seminary that it was time for a new website. Fr. Sears called up DeSales and explained that they hadn’t had a website in five years. We quickly purchased the desired domain and got to work, understanding what was important for the prospective and enrolled seminarians of the Cathedral Seminary House of Formation.

Cue what is now a gorgeous, modern site that serves the needs of seminarians, giving them online library access and keeping their families up to date with events and photos. And, these features signal to prospective priests the kinds of resources they will find attending this key piece of the St. Charles Borromeo partnership, connecting the minor seminary to the other seminaries in the New York City area–all part of the St. Joseph seminary system.

The site also draws attention to the Masters in Theology program that is available to laity. Through this work, the work of the diocese, and the ongoing promotions that Cathedral Seminary does, they have increased the number of seminarians in attendance, and demand for their other theology programs.

Tags Discernment, Seminary, Vocations

Catholic Migration Services offers free legal screenings and services to documented and undocumented immigrants residing in Brooklyn and Queens. Services include Deferred Action on Childhood Arrivals (DACA), family reunification, asylum and humanitarian relief, naturalization, and deportation defense. It is an important ministry here in the Diocese of Brooklyn, also known as the Diocese of Immigrants.

These services cost money, of course. Before the involvement of DeSales Media’s Government Relations, Catholic Migration Services had received $0 in funding from the New York City Council. That number is now in excess of $1.2 million, each year.

At the Diocese of Brookyn’s Migration Mass in 2017, Father Patrick J. Keating, CEO of Catholic Migration Services, preached the homily.

Bishop DiMarzio with the faithful — Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio and parishioners from one of the many ethnic apostolates in attendance

Our Government Affairs people work with City, State, and Federal elected officials and agencies. In this capacity, the Director and Deputy Director are registered lobbyists at the City, State, and Federal levels, and represent the interests of DeSales Media Group, the Diocese of Brooklyn, and Catholic Migration Services, including the issues of immigration, poverty, school funding, school safety, and disaster relief.

Learn more about the good work Catholic Migration Services does at catholicmigration.org, a website that DeSales Media built, manages and maintains.

Tags Development, Diocese, Fundraising, Grants, Migration

We at DeSales Media believe it’s important to develop employees professionally, personally, and spiritually. We seek the theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity to be present in our workplace. Daily, we have volunteers read morning prayers and a noon-time Angelus across the building over the loudspeaker. Monthly, we organize weekend volunteer trips so that employees have plenty of opportunities to give back to the community. These include visiting nursing homes, preparing parishes for Christmas, feeding the homeless, and more.

In addition to regular departmental get-togethers, the entire company celebrates together twice a year. It’s important to cultivate our leisure time to be a beacon in the culture, and personally, to fully discover and know who we each are. How else are we to follow St. Francis DeSales’ advice, “Be who you are and be that well” ?

But our organized outings aren’t all fun and games, or even local outreach. Have a look here and here to see the major mission trips we have taken to hurricane-ravaged areas.

Tags Charities, Giving Back

The Brooklyn Cyclones wanted to reach the elementary schools, seeking to increase class trips to the ballpark, ultimately getting more families to think of spending their free time going to see a minor league baseball game. DeSales Media partnered with the Cyclones and the Diocese of Brooklyn, and created Catholic School Night to do just that. A special discounted ticket price was given to the Catholic schools who participated. DeSales honored all valedictorians and salutatorians from the 80 Catholic schools in the diocese in a pre-game medal ceremony. To further increase interest, priests and principals of the diocese squared off in a “Collars vs Scholars” pre-game exhibition game, which increased attendance as well as social media engagement pre-, during, and post-game.

DeSales created the lock-up treatments, ran social media coverage, put the sponsorship packages together, and produced the entire event experience. We at DeSales work with secular and religious groups to do promotions, advertising, websites and videos–all from scratch, to meet the needs of our partners.

Tags Promotion

We at DeSales had a meeting with Catholic Cemeteries, in which they expressed the desire to update their reel, or possibly create a new video, showing their recently constructed mausoleum crypts. The DeSales Production team went out to St. Charles Cemetery and filmed video and drone footage, bringing out the beauty of the grounds. DeSales also performed all editing and post-production, to create this final video showcase for the organization:

Print and digital ads were also designed for the campaign to increase pre-planning signups.

Catholic Cemeteries continues to trust DeSales as a key advertising partner for their business, and we love working with them too!

images from campaign for Catholic Cemeteries

St. Joseph Seminary in Dunwoodie, New York, is the major seminary located in the Archdiocese of New York. They came to us at DeSales Media, hoping to promote all that the seminary’s network of campuses has to offer.

After our visit to the beautiful campus in Yonkers, we worked with them to create specific objectives with measurable goals. In this way, we could be sure to reach all of the target audience segments, and measure when we accomplished this and to what degree it worked.

The main creative execution was this explainer/welcome video for the seminary to use in all of their promotions:

By creating and distributing such high quailty materials, we were able to communicate to other Bishops that there is, in fact, a world-class Catholic education happening for adults in the greatest city in the world.

And we were able to communicate to prospective Master’s degree candidates that they’re able to receive an accredited Masters in Theology from an actual seminary — at four convenient locations in and around NYC.

Tags Seminary