The current church president has worked in LDS public relations for decades and since becoming president in 1995 has worked tirelessly to help the church shed many long-standing negative stereotypes. As he told Mike Wallace of the CBS news magazine "60 Minutes," in what many see as a watershed public relations coup for the church, Latter-day Saints are not "weird."

And Bonneville Communications, the church's advertising arm, has produced the most-awarded public service advertising campaign in history with its Homefront series.

For marketing students at Brigham Young University particularly, the lessons provided by the church on how to market are closely examined. Several have started their own LDS marketing efforts.

Gary Rhoads, professor of marketing at BYU, said the LDS Church does "great in-house marketing research" to determine members' needs. "If there is a product or service they should provide to strengthen members, they do it — virtually for free."

Indeed, formal church distribution centers "make available at nominal cost materials that members need to study, teach and share the gospel," Bills said.

David Alcorn, director of BYU's Institute of Marketing, said the push for LDS products is a direct result of several factors, chief among them a growing membership and a well-defined set of needs that people who are familiar with the church can meet easily over the Internet.

The church has its own generation of baby boomers, he said, who have "come not only to expect, but to demand of themselves the notion that the things they pursue are consistent with gospel teachings. You see that both in entertainment and in the products and services" Latter-day Saints buy.

Alcorn spoke last week with the president of a national retailer who told him the company was convinced its Utah stores needed to carry more modest women's fashions for LDS buyers. "This is a huge market that can't be ignored any more," he said.

And as LDS students graduate from college and move to other parts of the country, they take a distinct message with them, Alcorn said. "LDS people aren't that different, but they do have some different needs, and marketers are picking up on that."

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E-mail: carrie@desnews.com