shirien | 
06 1st, 2008| 
I have this “tradition” I do with my mom every night. She watches the Arabic dish at night — sometimes watching sheiookh give lectures and other times watching the salah from Al-Haram — and while she sits there watching, I sit under her feet and talk to her for like 10 minutes every night. Tonight was no exception.
Today, I walked by our den and saw her watching this nature show. It showed all these different safari animals, much like a show found on The Discovery Channel, only it was narrated in Arabic. There was no music, so I decided ‘OK, let me watch it with her.’ We sat there watching as the cheetah with its three cubs would go hunting for food. The mama cheetah ran and attacked a gazelle and chewed it up on camera. “Subhanallah!” I thought. I’m kind of squeamish, so It was a little difficult for me to watch the cheetah tear into the flesh of the gazelle while the narrator described what was happening in detail.
The story gets better.
So now the cheetah jumped over a little pond, but her three little cubs were still behind. So then something weird happened, the narrator started talking for the cheetah! “Come swim to me my little ones,” she said in a baby voice. I turned to my mom and I told her this is why I hate Arabic satellite. “They should keep it professional and not try to be cute and insert words into the animal’s mouth,” I complained. One after another animals were hunting each other, blood was shed — it showed the whole food chain in action. Every once in a while the narrator would cut from serious voice to a child-like voice speaking on behalf of the animals.
If you are squeamish, you shouldn’t watch the video. But subhanallah this isn’t the video, but surprisingly it’s EXACTLY the same scenario with the mama cheetah hunting for food for her cubs. And this is about the same type of gore that would be shown. Very amazing, subhaallah:
Then at the very end of the show a song came on in which little children were singing, “Ya ayyuhal atfaal!”
The show was made for children! That was some pretty morbid stuff for children to see. Me and my mom start laughing. And in case you don’t know my mom, she can be quite a comedian sometimes. So my mom started to make her own theme song for the show:
(in Arabic)
Mom: “O children come gather around. Gather around for blood and death”
Shirien: HAHA
Mom: “Watch this show and go to sleep, so that you can get nightmares.”
Shirien: “Oh mama, you’re so funny!”
Mom: “So go get your diapers kids, because you may have an accident…”
Shirien: “Haha, oh man…”
Mom: “So gather round for blood an gore..”
Shirien: “OK mama… stop….”
Mom: “(hehe) We guarantee a good time…”
Shirien: “No, seriously mama… stop…”
Mom: (laughs but continues)
Shirien: “Seriously mama, you’re funny but you don’t know when to stop…”
Haha, gotta love my mommy, MashaAllah.
———
What’s the point of the story? It’s not enough to know who your target audience is. Rather, along knowing your target audience you must also know the how to properly convey the message in both tone and content. The show would have been AMAZING if they geared it toward adults and didn’t insert childish voices.
That can apply to any of the mediums of communication. I know it seems kind of self-explanatory but it’s actually something crucially important when sending your message for mass publication or viewing. Tone and content and how appropriate they are to your target audience is key to making it effective.
In fact, to give an example of where this can kind of get tricky think about toys and toy advertisements. Advertisements geared toward children are perhaps the most criticized of all. In fact, in some countries it has been banned altogether. Here in the US, there are strict guidelines. Some people link these advertisements to child obesity and turning children into consumers very early on.
But is it really the children that these advertisers are really trying to target as their primary audience, or is it the children’s parents? Who has the money?
There is no doubt that TV advertisements with the little dolls and action figures target children who watch shows on Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network. But that’s all an attempt to get the children to convince the parents to seal the deal and to ultimately make the purchase. This marketing strategy is commonly referred to as “pester power” or in other words, how much a kid can nag their parents into buying the toy. But that doesn’t work unless the advertisers also show the “importance” of the toy, knowing parents only want what’s best for their children.
And why wouldn’t they, parents collectively spend over $2 billion on toys each year. So it gets pretty tricky for marketers to sometimes balance appeal to kids while inserting messages of “importance of the toy” for the parents, without changing the tone of the advertisement.
I’ll go more in depth on the different tones to use for different audiences and different messages at a later date, inshaAllah.
Wallahu Alem.
