Desedo | Des Temps » Minority Markets

American-Muslim Consumer Conference

MHB — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 15:18:37 +0000

This Saturday is the American-Muslim Consumer Conference at Rutgers. The speakers and audience will be a mix of marketers, businesses and scholars, all there to discuss this overlooked $170 Billion consumer demographic.

One Hundred and Seventy Billion Dollars.

That’s a lot of spending power still overlooked by most agencies and F500 companies. At Desedo, we see opportunities in this market gap. So, I’ll be there and presenting some thoughts from my white paper American-Muslim Identity: Advertising, Mass Media + New Media.

Give a shout if you want to learn more.

Love in London

MHB — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 18:34:35 +0000

We are back from London and giddy with excitement. Why? Because we just won Babelgum's Pixel Pitch award for our transmedia tale Heart of the City! Given the competition and the jury, we're still shocked. Here are some lovely spots of press from ScreenDaily and ARGNet. More news and excitement is forthcoming...:)

Heart of the City

MHB — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 20:28:30 +0000

What if Kanye West met Lord of the Rings...? The Story Our transmedia story Heart of the City is a narrative set in the surreal world of urban teens, rife with mischief, rabbit holes and romance. The storyworld encompasses a web series, ARGs, original products and a feature film. It all begins one hot day in Brooklyn when our two heroes, Jai and Sash, buy a dusty talisman from the back wall of their local [...]

Asian Efficiency

MHB — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 15:07:34 +0000

One of the best books I've read in '09 is Digitizing Race by Lisa Nakamura. In her essay The Social Optics of Race, she writes that the racio-visual logic of...science fiction films that depict interface use set up distinct roles for particular races, and distinct ways of conceptualizing the racialized body as informational property... [and that] Asians and Asian-Americans function as the material base for technologies of digitized vision.... I was reminded of it when [...]

Desedo Does DC

raafi — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 16:47:40 +0000

How, you may ask, did team Desedo score passes to the national media pool? Well, there are trade secrets, alas, even in our open-source hearts. Look for some motion pictures of the inauguration from us soon. But we've also covered the event in the industry press. Here's an article I've written in AdAge on diversity, youtube, and the industry. The advertising world has had its own race issue, on the table now for more than 40 [...]

Muslim Ad Network and Desedo FTW!

MHB — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 02:29:54 +0000

As Agency Spy teased last week, we're working with LA-based Muslim Ad Network (MAN) to launch the first ever US advertising agency that will focus on the American-Muslim consumer demographic. MAN has aggregated the Muslim new media space for ad placement, providing vertical access to +10 million page views each month. BFD? Well, yes. This is an ignored demo with $170 Billion of spending power. And in this recession, brands are aiming to [...]

Blue Ocean?

MHB — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 01:42:27 +0000

Both Ad Age and Huffington Post published the below essay I wrote for the forthcoming book Project 100: Marketing in the Social Media Era. The idea that online is 'colorblind' is now thankfully being replaced be a more intelligent discourse on the topic. No doubt, you can see more about it here at Desedo, cause it's the world we live in. Truth In Advertising? New Media + Multicultural [T]he proliferation of media voices and sources [...]

The World According to James

raafi — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 17:35:22 +0000

9SiQKxja79M The popcorn, jokes, and testosterone zing around the room with all the patience of an electron. Across town the same scene is amplified in a crowded bar, long and skinny, the popcorn substituted with beer. In both rooms the flicker of television screens -- rhythm -- and the dance between sports and advertising provides the meter by which the hours will unfold. Where elbows and dripping bottles crowd one space, coasters and crumbs crowd [...]

Islam within Advertising (update)

MHB — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 20:20:16 +0000

So...my white paper about Islam, Identity + Advertising has been getting some pixels round the internets. Did interviews with Religioscope + Agency Spy and Ad Age reprinted an excerpt. And it's getting published in print by Cambridge Scholars Press, cause you know I'm an armchair academic. Was invited to a conference about Religion and Media in Iran, waiting on some visa issues. Linking up with Fatemeh Fakhraie, EIC of Muslimah Media Watch, to [...]

American-Muslim Consumer Identity

MHB — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 18:55:55 +0000

UPDATE: Below is the white paper I wrote for the Contemporary Muslim Consumer Cultures conference at Freie Universitat in Berlin. In Fall 09, Cambridge Scholars Publishing will include it in their book Muslim Societies in the Age of Mass Consumption and it will be available as as PDF. Excerpts from this paper and interviews relating to topic can be found in Ad Age, Religioscope, Huffington Post, Agency Spy and The National. I've seen [...]