Des Temps – Page 20 – a blog by desedo

The only blog you’ll ever need.

Islam within Advertising (update)

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 do content + consulting for agencies/brands. Quite curious to see what’s next….

November 21, 2008
Into The Night

Spent the last week producing an episode of the German TV show Into The Night for our friends Avanti Media. We ran around town with the econ gurus Joe Stiglitz and Bruce Greenwald. Learned lots.

Now at MIT’s Futures of Entertainment conference. Learning more. Soon my brain will be full. Then what?

November 21, 2008
I Want To Start A Chick Band

Been thinking a lot about our nostalgia for analog and how we use digital to simulate that space, like this photo app. Or this shutter sound. But the real real is always best, which is why I had to snap pics of this here flyer. 10 years ago, I might not have noticed, but now see it as unique.

November 14, 2008
Ad Age: Muslim Consumers

this could run well in Dearborn, MI

Today Ad Age ran an excerpt from MHB’s white paper about the American-Muslim consumer space.

November 10, 2008
Slang

I’m outspoken, my language is broken into a slang / But it’s just a dialect that I select when I hang. -Special Ed

I’ve been thinking about the use of slang and LOLspeak in advertising and have deduced a simple rule. The logic is as follows:

Standard language is a strategy for communication. Slang is a tactical response to linguistic strategy – a way to speak within the space, yet occasionally cloak or subvert your content, creating a space of insider/outsider. Sometimes slang will cross the fence from linguistic tactic to strategy. An example would be the words bling or phat. Once slang, now OED English.

So with that in mind, if an advert aims to use slang within a communications strategy – to sound like the target demo and be edgy – the slang must do one of two things. Either contain code that employs a real insider/outsider barrier or (better yet) truly be subversive. Otherwise it does not achieve the desired effect of being decoded.

Two examples of deft slang use are the Gossip Girls poster that says “OMFG” (ie Oh My F*cking God) and the Akademiks “Read Books, Get Brain” poster (ie Read Books, Get A Bl*wjob). The target demo knows what these posters are saying and that if the copy were written sans slang, the adverts would not pass the censors. Equally important, they know that many passerby are clueless to their code, yet your brand is in the know.

November 8, 2008
Comunicado

Fearless director Jordan Alport has teamed up with the cheeky wizards at Hopr to helm a spot en espagnol for the service provider Mobile Bridges as they launch their first consumer product suite in the US.

November 6, 2008
Capture the Flag

…Below is another Obama Supporters, Riding Subways story from my cousin Sarah Doe.

Last night, as I stepped onto my old familiar L-train, I felt like it was New Year’s Eve. It was after midnight and the train was packed with exuberant 20-somethings. But best of all, as I got on the train, the whole packed car erupted with whoops and cheers and claps. This trend continued at every single stop along the train, from Union Square to Grand Street in Brooklyn, as new passengers got on the train and old passengers left, we all joined in shared celebration. For the first time in our voting lives, a collective hope had been answered with true promise of a better tomorrow. Like us millenials, the cheers were primal and a tad coarse, howls in the night that we could not contain.

In the early hours of yesterday evening, my cousin Michael was full of joy and energy. He compared this pre-returns joy to that of new lovers: maybe it’ll turn into a 4-year relationship or maybe it’s fleeting, but either way he was happy to be happy. And later my friend questioned the degree of change that would occur after Obama won the election.

So it was with great curiosity when I woke and walked to the train for the ‘morning after’ of this new and beautiful relationship. Would people still be shouting in the subways? Would there be ponies and rainbows everywhere? Well, no. There were not those things. Nor was there the unbridled jubilation that had filled the night just hours before. But there was, in the packed rush hour train, a new gentleness. As people pressed into the cars, they negotiated the empty spaces, rather than pushing for a spot. The girl who softly bumped me even more tenderly apologized, and all around the train (speckled with Obama buttons and a few stars and stripes) there was a hesitant trust, not necessarily in Obama or in the political system, but in each other, in ourselves, and in the potential for our futures.

Yes We Did.

This is what Obama has done and will continue to do. This is the deepest part of the change he brings, that grows like grass through pavement because it is rooted in every one of us. This is the power of democracy, and this is why, I can say with a straight face, that I am now proud to be an American.

November 5, 2008