Bayyinah Drawstring Bag?

What do you think? Keep your class material/water bottle in…

Advertising in the United States has often influenced the pop-culture identities of religious and ethnic minorities. To be targeted by marketers serves as an invitation to join in the national narrative of capitalism. To shop is to be American.

In 2009, the US marketplace will begin to truly recognize and court the $170 billion purchasing power of American-Muslims. To date, pop-culture representations of Islam are either cloaked in evil or infused with pathos. But as Hallmark, Wal-Mart and 20th Century Fox aim to engage this consumer demographic, it will slowly help to prove that American-Muslims are, as Professor Farid Senzai says, “boring as the rest of us [Americans].”

When considering marketers’ slow embrace of Muslim consumers, we must acknowledge legal scholar Leti Volpp’s point that “September 11 facilitated the consolidation of a new identity category that groups together persons who appear ‘Middle Eastern, Arab, or Muslim.’ This consolidation reflects a racialization wherein members of this group are identified as terrorists and disidentified as citizens.”

It is this conflation that bore the 2008 Dunkin Donuts controversy. Spokeswoman Rachel Ray wore a scarf that looked like a keffiyeh in a TV commercial and right-wing blogger Michelle Malkin then chided Ray for wearing a ‘jihadi chic’ garment. Dunkin Donuts dropped the advert. At no point was the spot even attempting to engage Islam or the Middle East, yet there was backlash.

No doubt that marketers considering this space are wary of the Islamaphobic chatter within media. And are likely confused by the diversity of people and practices within the American-Muslim population. But I posit that this may be similar to the hurdles brands faced when first reaching out to gay and lesbian consumers. And as Saad Ahmad, of the blog Chill Yo, Islam Yo, said “seeing that we live in a capitalist society, [including Islam] in advertising is really just an economic issue.”

2009-01-28-BurgerKingRamadanyoyo.jpg
Such inclusion has been discussed within the ad industry, but little action has been taken. Yet consumer demand is there and (full disclosure) our company is responding to it. We’d be heedless to ignore Long Island radiologist Almas Abbasi. who told the New York Times “If Ramadan starts, and you see an ad in the newspaper saying, ‘Happy Ramadan, here’s a special in our store,’ everyone will run to that store.” Now, American brands indeed do this within primarily Muslim countries – Burger King in UAE, HP in Bangladesh, Oreos in Indonesia etc. Though to date, no Muslim holidays are seized as a sales opportunity within the US. Except perhaps in Dearborn, Michigan, a city with the highest concentration of Muslims and Middle Eastern folks in America. Wal-Mart has opened a store in Dearborn designed for this demo. Newsweek reports that:

Wal-Mart offers its standard fare, plus 550 items targeted at Middle Eastern shoppers….walk through the front door of the 200,000-square-foot supercenter and instead of rows of checkout counters, you find a scene akin to a farmers market in Beirut. Twenty-two tables are stacked high with fresh produce like kusa and batenjan, squash and eggplant used in Middle Eastern dishes… a walled-off section of the butcher case is devoted to Halal meats.

Ikea has taken measures to court Dearborn shoppers and the local McDonalds and KFC serve halal meat. On the national scale, Hallmark carries Eid cards and the USPS issued an Eid stamp in 2001. But that’s about it.

While tailoring products to reach this consumer base is one important step for retailers, Yasmine Hafiz reminds us that “the average Muslim consumer is much like the average American consumer, with wants and needs mainly dictated by their income, education, and type of family. Their socioeconomic status dictates their spending habits more than their religious affiliation… there’s a lot of untapped buying potential amongst all these doctors & engineers.”

And as noted on the blog Muslim Canvas, “I guess the value I see in this marketing stuff is the effect it’ll have on the American psyche, rather than the Muslim psyche necessarily. [Seeing] a hijabi mom spreading Jif peanut butter on her son’s sandwich, or of a long-bearded man answering the door on a Domino’s commercial, could go a long way for our “image”.

The forthcoming US version of the CBC sitcom Little Mosque on the Prairie could be a space for product placement. That said, brands must be adroit and not fall prey to tropes like the soul-claps and sombreros that plague too many minority-market campaigns. Nor forget that only half of American-Muslim women wear a hijab or think that Islam is the sole aspect of Muslim consumers’ identities.

While engaging Islam may appear complex, what remains quite simple is that there are millions of American consumers still being ignored. Millions of consumers who are waiting to see which brands will be smart enough to embrace them as fellow Americans.

NOTE: This is an excerpt from the white paper American-Muslim Identity: Advertising, Mass Media + New Media, which will be included in the forthcoming book Muslim Societies in the Age of Mass Consumption from Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

Michael Hastings-Black is the co-founder of Desedo Films, a NYC production company that specializes in new media + minority markets.

Alhamdulillah, I’m proud to announce that Bayyinah and AlMaghrib have officially joined hands! Many of you probably heard the announcement at TDC, but I wanted to expand a little more on what this means for both organizations, the following is a Fact Sheet I’ve created for the purpose of informing people about the partnership:

THE NEW MARRIAGE BETWEEN BAYYINAH AND ALMAGHRIB INSTITUTE

Overview:

Carrying forward the vision of providing the best Islamic education available in the West, Bayyinah and the AlMaghrib Institute have finally joined hands!

Students from all over North America and the UK will finally be a step closer to getting their bachelors degree in Islamic studies, without having to cross any oceans.

What this all means:

• Bayyinah offers high quality Arabic education, with a special emphasis on the Qur’an. Those students who take Bayyinah classes will not only learn the fundamentals of Arabic, but those who excel will be able to understand the language of the Qur’an in a whole new way.

• The AlMaghrib Institute offers students the chance to earn their bachelors degree in Islamic studies. To earn this degree a student must:

• • Memorize a portion of the Holy Qur’an
  • Complete 90 mandatory credit hours*
  • Complete 20 Electives credit hours
  • Complete 18 Arabic credit hours

• This means that those students who wish to earn their degree with the AlMaghrib Institute must complete at least 18 hours of Arabic, which will be offered by Bayyinah*.

• The Arabic classes will be conducted in cities in which AlMaghrib seminars are regularly conducted, insha’Allah.

• Bayyinah classes will be run and managed by the Bayyinah Institute and will not be run under the qabeelah system.

*See almaghrib.org for more details on accreditation requirements

*Register at bayyinah.com

——————————————————————

I’m definitely really excited about this partnership, you all should be very excited. Especially since we will be launching our new class “Divine Speech: Literary Characterisitics of the Qur’an” in 2009 in your city or a city by you.

Now, if you love the Bayyinah instructors, or if you’ve never had the privilage of attending a Bayyinah seminar, inshaAllah we’d like to give you a taste of the beauty of Arabic.

In order to get EXCLUSIVE videos from Bayyinah, you can only access them through this website:

UnderstandArabic.com

Once you put your name and email, everday for about two weeks you will be able to access our exclusive videos, including Br. Nouman’s take on the 10 FAQ of Arabic.

This is for your benefit inshaAllah, so take advantage of it!

Me too. That’s why I’m looking for a couple of dedicated individuals to help me with marketing (specifically online.)

I’ve created a Google Group for the purpose and am looking for just a few more individuals. If you’re interested, go ahead and send me an email at shirien@egyptiangumbo (dot) com. Or if you’ll be at TDC come see me Saturday morning at our (one-day) booth, where I’ll be recruiting, and let me know you’re interested.

You have to be the type to engage in discussions as well as give feedback on ideas.

Jazakum Allahu Khairan.

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.

For those of you who don’t know, I do a lot of the PR work for Message Mastery. I really only do PR work for projects I really, truly believe in. MM is one of those projects that subhanallah, not only I have full faith and support in, but sheiookh like Yusef Estes, Muhammad Alshareef and Yasir Qadhi have also all showed interest and support in.

(If you know about Message Mastery, we want to know your thoughts and/or how you heard of the program. So be sure at the end of this post to leave a comment letting us know.)

If you knew the amount of work that goes into making something like MM successful (by the Will of Allah) then subhanallah, you too would find this to be something rare and a great opportunity for all Muslims.

Some of you have seen the Message Mastery videos, some of you haven’t. I’m not going to talk about things you might already know (from the videos and the website) but rather, I’m going to tell you the “backstage” stuff that goes on; things we discuss and only insiders know and things that will be released publicly soon, but you hear it here on my blog first

But before tell you the inside stuff, here’s just a little bit about Message Mastery: It’s all about training Muslims to be well-rounded in several areas of the media; not only for the sake of their own work, but for the betterment of Islam, inshaAllah.

10 things you might or might not know:

1. Plans for the Message Mastery System:

The upcoming film making class (on May 31st) is NOT Message Mastery. That is just ONE CLASS in the Message Mastery system. The plan is that we are establishing this as the first webinar of many to come in the future. There will be other classes like marketing/viral marketing 101, photography , and surprise, surprise — a media writing/PR writing 101 class taught by none other than yours truly, inshaAllah. Those among many other classes, bi’ithnillahi ta’ala. So this really is going to be an all inclusive “getting Muslims in the media” system. Awesomeness, no?

2. Special Deals Still Under the Rug… Until Now:

Shh, word on the street is that if you sign up for the first class (film making) you’ll get into all the other future classes free. Why is this genius? It’s genius because only 200 people will get this deal. Everyone else will have to pay for every other webinar they want to take when they come out.

3. People Who Actually Make Awesome Projects/Films Will Have the Opportunity to Get Client Work in the End. There is more work being sought out then there are the Muslims with the skills to do it. We know who’s looking for promo videos, news articles, marketing for their projects/companies. And inshaAllah those people who show the best work will be given these opportunities.

4. The Awesomeness and WEIRDNESS of Our PR Team.

If there was ever an example of a “mastermind group” this would be it, mashaAllah. I must say, we have all different types of personalities on the team but somehow we all compliment each other’s ideas and thinking in the end.

We have the social members of our group — the ones who love to give input on everything (which is great) and we have the silent ones who out of no where “bust out” with their great ideas. We have the nice members of our group and we have that one sarcastic “mean” member of the group who makes us all gasp in disbelief at some of the things he says . Ahem… see (www.themanoffewwords.com and www.islamify.com.) –Oddly enough, he too, brings forth great ideas and puts his words to action… so we’re all happy to have him on the team.

5. More Weirdness:

We all make fun of each other’s grammar and spelling, we have about 30 posts for every topic we discuss and we all read them — it’s the nerdiest group you will ever come across, and I love it. Hafsa will email me all my mistakes in this post (which I love), the poor brother and sister from the UK stay up all night just for our conference calls, Manoffewwords always insults all members of the group only for all of us to end up laughing at it, despite its meanness, and several members of the group keep trying to get Belal in trouble with the authorities by suggesting project names like “Youtube Jihad.” Sorry Belal, you have bad friends.

6. Taking Over Ideas and Us Acting Like We Know What Br. Belal is Talking About:

Belal, who makes the videos, usually has a specific vision for what he wants his next videos to turn out like. He usually has it all planed out until we, his PR team, decide that he should do something completely different. And subhanallah, he doesn’t hesitate to go with our advice. He also likes to make up a lot of words — i.e. “ordinatory, UPPOPPR” — and uses them a lot, expecting we know exactly what he’s talking about.

7. If You’re Worried About the Cost, You’re Worrying Over Nothing.

I don’t work for scams. If I truly didn’t think that people would get their money’s worth, I wouldn’t be promoting it. ESPECIALLY with this first class (since you’ll get all the other ones free.) We debated and debated over the cost, and really $247 was what we came up with due to all the things we KNOW that will be provided for those who register. Trust me, people pay thousands of dollars for less than you would get with Message Mastery.

8. Most of Us Just Want to See His Little Sisters in the Videos…

…share the spotlight. All up in their “grill” like that.

9. We’re all Becoming Masters of Viral Marketing.

Seriously, we’re discovering so many secrets and techniques that will blow anyone’s socks off. We also have so many ideas that are being worked on right now with regard to viral marketing, all of which will be taught inshaAllah in one of the future Message Mastery webinars.

10. None of Our Success Could be Possible Without the Will and Help of Allah.

Walhamdulillah.

OK, this post became a little too long. If you haven’t already go ahead and check it out and TAKE the opportunity while you can, inshaAllah.

To be honest, hate using the word “opportunity.” I’ve too been jaded way too much by that term. “You have the opportunity to go to outer space! Oh, did we mention you just have to have 20 million dollars.”

However, this really is an opportunity for any Muslim with some interest in any of the areas within mass media. So I suggest you check it out at www.messagemastery.com.

P.S. before any of you label me as stupid, I wouldn’t really write a post if I knew it was something that could get me in trouble and cost me my job .

Let us know your thoughts. A new video will be coming out any day now, inshaAllah — stay tuned.

Do you have a blog that’s kind of slow with traffic? Want more people to review your posts on Stumble Upon? Need more Muslims to come to your website? Read on…

Let’s be honest with each other: why would I want to expose my awesome secret to everyone for free? Well, for one, I too have something to gain. (And because I’m nice. And if you disagree, I hate you.) As all of you now know, I have just officially registered my PR company, Minbar Media. This is a PR company aimed at doing public relations work for Muslims.

In order for me to better serve you, we need to develop a way to reach the Muslim masses quickly and efficiently. What does this have to do with my secret? If done properly, not only will this help YOU drive traffic, subscriptions and potential customers to your websites but this will help develop a new era of Islamic Marketing and Advertising.

So what did I do to get these results?

Welcome to the beginning of a HUGE, genius campaign – and it all starts here at EgyptianGumbo.com.

So, bloggers, stumblers and Muslims, this one’s for you:

A couple of days ago I wrote my “Hijab Challenge” post. The attention it got afterward was not what I expected. That, in turn, lead hundreds of people to my site (by the way, welcome .) Afterward, I did what I normally would do and submit my posts to Stumble Upon, only this time instead of submitting it to the usual “Islam” category I submitted it to a different category. (you’ll only be able to know the category if you follow the next steps)

Anyway, the result was over 2,000 new people coming to my site via Stumble Upon in a period of 2 days (hey Stumblers .)

And just to see if this method really worked, I tried it again with some of my previous posts on the Leechon Films Blog. Sure enough, 20 minutes later about 127 people had already come via Stumble Upon.

WHAT DO I HAVE TO DO TO GET THESE RESULTS? Just keep reading:

OK, so what exactly IS this campaign? We need to educate Muslims on Stumble Upon. Why? The very fact that posting my posts in a category other than “Islam” –which in turn drove so much more traffic to my site– shows the lack of Muslims using these social networking sites.

The result was in an increase in traffic and subscribers (which is all great), but not my primary target audience; Muslims.

The more Muslims that use Stumble Upon and  who are active in pressing the “Thumbs up” or “Thumbs down” button, the more our content will be read by our target audience; the Muslim masses all over the world. Thus, driving more traffic, subscribers and consumers to our sites.

More importantly, in order for Muslims to really get stronger — especially in the West — we need to know how to take advantage of these sites and use them to their full potential- so those Islamic articles you’ve written for the Sake of Allah, imagine how many more people will be able to read them and how much more ajr you can get, truly this is the best way to utilize these sites. So, after consulting with the PR team, we agreed that we should launch a PR campaign aimed at educating Muslims on “new media”– specifically, Stumble Upon.

WHAT TO DO:

Alhamdulillah, I had already written a post on the Leechon Blog on what Stumble Upon is and a tutorial on how to use it.

So if you haven’t already registered with Stumble Upon, go ahead and read this post I made and follow along:

“Stumble Upon Something Addictive: New Media Part 2”

Once you have the Stumble Upon Toolbar, go ahead and add the “Islam” category to your interests. Then, go ahead and give this post a thumbs up (to spread it around) and then post something on YOUR blog or website about this campaign. And tell all your friends that also have blogs and websites to do the same. Finally after this done, let me know and i’ll let you know exactly which categories I’ve observed get the most traffic via Stumble Upon.

The potential result?

-immediate attention to the campaign, increase in traffic and subscriptions to your blog, very rapid educating of Muslims around the world, and the ability to reach and connect to our brothers and sisters everywhere

Long post, I know. But it’s sooo worth it… inshaAllah.

Shirien