We Get You

Let me tell you about a tough assignment, a challenge of a lifetime involving one of the more consequential lives in the history of humanity: Jesus Christ.

In early 2021, the Michigan-based agency now known as BrandHaven approached my firm, McQueen Analytics, with a desire to better understand the role of Jesus in modern society for an advertising campaign that needed to resonate with a wide range of religious backgrounds. Our client for what would become the successful “He Gets Us” campaign was the nonprofit Servant Foundation.

A different questionnaire for a different audience

My father, Josh, and I built the first survey questionnaire based on narrowly drawn initial assumptions from the client team. It included concepts and questions familiar to people close to the Christian world, but foreign to the people the ad campaign absolutely had to reach – young Americans and religious skeptics.

What we did next illustrates what makes my firm unique: We are highly motivated researchers who carefully ask questions others don’t ask; curious and unafraid analysts who follow the data to unconventional insights; partners who deliver results that drive profit and success.

We turned the original survey questionnaire inside-out, replacing huge chunks of the Christian-familiar language with questions crafted for respondents with cursory knowledge of Christianity. We used plain language. We left room for respondents to express uncertainty or even disbelief about religion, rejecting the standard eight-minute survey in favor of a roughly 15- to 20-minute conversation with each respondent.

Opening the aperture

In other words, we opened the aperture beyond the obvious – dedicated Christians’ understanding of Christ – and fished in broader waters. Our findings helped drive the creative process behind a landmark advertising campaign that launched nationally in 2022. Less than a year later, He Gets Us carried that message onto one of the largest stages in American life with two ads during the 2023 Super Bowl.

The campaign portrayed Jesus as a universal figure who can relate to people of all backgrounds and beliefs. It showcased Jesus as someone who can help people overcome their struggles and lead a fulfilling life.

The scale was extraordinary. The campaign’s first round of ads drew 32 million YouTube views in just 10 weeks. One of its most visible spots, “The Rebel,” showed exactly what the strategy looked like in public.

Against seemingly menacing images of young Americans, many of them Black or brown, the narrator describes a rebel who took to the streets, challenged authority and drew the fear of community and religious leaders. The apparent threat, the ad reveals, was Jesus and his followers. They were not spreading hate and terror. They were spreading love.

Our work with the Servant Foundation spanned about three years. We are proud of the research role we played in helping shape an advertising campaign that sought to make faith accessible to the skeptical. I’m prouder still for what the “He Gets Us” campaign says about our firm.

The discipline behind the work

McQueen Analytics is a boutique strategic research agency that gives nonprofits and values-driven organizations access to rigorous analytical work that until now only the Fortune 500 could afford. Working as an outside analytical partner for leaders facing consequential decisions, we ask hard questions before the money moves, assemble fragmented data into a picture clear enough to act on, and stay in the room long enough to make sure our findings drive success.

I spent a decade inside one of the largest financial institutions in the world, eventually joining an independent analytics group that answered to neither the bank nor the brokerage. That structure gave us the freedom to tell the truth to everyone. My job was not to make a leader look good. It was to investigate evidence from systems never designed to fit together and translate it into something a decision-maker could act on.

Large organizations accumulate data in silos – customer systems, financial systems, and operational systems – that don’t speak to each other and weren’t built with strategic questions in mind. I learned to work across those divisions to find the signal in fragmented evidence, build a picture that held up under scrutiny, and deliver insights clear enough to support savvy decisions.

I brought that approach to McQueen Analytics: We’re not afraid to tell you what the research says and bring you unique insights derived from that research.

Two generations of research

I didn’t build this philosophy alone. My father spent 30 years at Leo Burnett doing research for some of the world’s most recognized brands. He came to understand that the great campaigns – the ones proven to move people and grow profits – were built on a foundation of trust: trust between brand and audience, between insight and action.

Two generations of rigorous, independent, evidence-driven research.