Norman Ralph

Since leaving university and stepping down from my positions with the AHS and Leeds Atheist Society I have had quite a bit of free time on my hands, much of which has been spent looking at new ways of developing a national identity for atheists.

I don’t know how many of you will have ever tried looking at how many different groups exist for atheists and the seemingly endless associated groups, humanists, secularists, brights, freethinkers, rationalists, sceptics etc, but there are a lot. Almost every conceivable name and wordplay related to atheism, humanism, secularism etc has been used and there is a group set up. However, the majority of these groups have relatively low numbers and small areas of influence. In fact with the exception of the British Humanist Association and National Secular Society, these groups receive little to no national attention.

I think this is a problem. I think it is perhaps a greater problem, however, that there is no unified group representing all non-religious people. Whilst it is true that no two atheists (and I will use atheist from now on as an umbrella term for anyone who describes themselves as non-religious) have the same desires, ambitions or even world views, they do tend to exhibit broadly similar political and ethical views. These views should be expressed to decision makers, politicians and commercial leaders. Atheists should have a national voice that should be listened to.

Having spent some time with the BHA I can report that they do sterling work in the name of humanism and the NSS, likewise for secularism but they don’t represent enough people. Their image is not attractive to young atheists, for example, and their membership demographics highlight this. There is a need for a unifying brand to be created and heavily marketed. The most difficult thing for atheists to grasp at the moment seems to be the need to start running an organised, national atheist centred organisation that represents everyone, regardless of the name they call themselves. Moreover, this organisation needs to be run like a business.

The more time I spend delving into local and regional groups, and even some of the larger national groups, is the feeling that they are not meant to be attracting new faces, finding new blood. What is more depressing is the fact that the large organisations do not have the resources or, seemingly, the desire to recruit and retain members.

In order to develop the kind of business, the kind of brand that I have alluded to above, requires a rethink of how atheist organisations should approach marketing, recruitment and ultimately their basic business model. People in today’s world are consumers. We consume everything. We should start appreciating this fact and begin to treat members and potential members like customers and potential customers respectively. If atheist organisations approached recruitment like a service brand approaches their customer base I believe they would be far more successful.

These organisations need to start marketing themselves not as a luxury, discretionary purchase such as a large screen TV or an expensive tailor made holiday, but an essential! Once you have started to change people’s minds about how essential their worldview is to their lives then you can start to turn your customers into fans. Brand loyalty is something that the religious organisations have built up and the strength of this loyalty is stronger than that of household names like Coca-Cola and Sky. Atheists should be aiming for that kind of loyalty.

This kind of loyalty can only be developed if atheists stop thinking of themselves as idealists and start thinking of themselves as offering a service, a product.