As with all projects I involve myself in, I enjoy taking a step back periodically and sharing the progress that’s been made. The following progress coverage is on Abdullah Puppet from a marketing stand point.

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Initial Challenge

In November 2009 my wife wanted to produce a children’s program targeted toward Muslim families in North America. The last known success of such a program was “Adam’s World” by Sound Vision which was nearly a decade ago. I told her to go ahead and that I’ll support her.

As a marketer, my first recommendation was to start off by doing some preliminary research. We spend several weeks planning and researching to decide whether or not we were going to commit to this.

We started with a competitive analysis looking at each brand that was either active in the past or is currently active and seeing what their strengths and weaknesses were in the Muslim market as well as what strengths and weaknesses we had based on available resources and in what ways we could position ourselves in an effective manner.

After completing the research, we weren’t able conclude whether a venture such as this would be profitable for us or not. We decided to test the market with a pilot-program on as light of a budget as possible and dedicate any and all resources toward garnering social-capital through the use of social media and marketable publicity.

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Tasked Responsibility

We put fort a set of objectives which were fundamentally measured by sales. The success of a business venture is determined by whether or not it meets sales objectives. All else is commentary.

We also put forth a set of values that we were going to operate under:

• In keeping with sharia principles, content produced would not have any score produced with sounds that were sourced from musical instruments.
• Content that was sold was to be produced at the highest production quality that the budget would allow
• Videos had to be educationally entertaining to the point where kids and adults would sit down for the an entire episode at least three times.
• The values and ideas that would be expressed would be aligned with Islamic principles
• We want people to relate to and like the characters on screen.

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Approach

We realized that since were operating on a shoestring budget, our approach had to be much different from what all the others were doing.

Upon completing our initial research we realized that the success of this pilot program will depend on the level of publicity and publicity for children’s programs are usually driven by event marketing in key locations.

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Results Report

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First Marketing Step – YouTube

We decided that the initial marketing approach will be via the production of social media content.

My wife decided that she was going to make her own puppet using supplies from a local arts and crafts store. That night my wife went to work making the puppet while I went to bed. In the middle of the night I was woken up to the scariest, most poorly made looking puppet I’d ever seen.

Out of her excitement, she wanted me to help her make a short video for YouTube introducing the puppet. I was a bit cranky being woken up to this puppet and decided I’d express it in the character of the puppet impromptu.

Later we decided to make a second video the same way while working on a theme song for the program.

We left those two videos up online to marinate into the search engine indexes for the next month and watched the comments and views come in. Based on the overall vibe of the comments and emails we got, we decided it was time to call Milo Productions, the producer of “Hurray for Baba Ali”.

I had met AbdurRahman Milo – the main man behind Milo Productions – at a DiscoverU seminar I attended in Toronto in March 2009. I figured he’d have some good lessons to share from his experience of producing and marketing the “Hurray for Baba Ali” DVDs.

The main advice he shared with us was to minimize production cost and concentrate on event marketing.

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Second Marketing Step – Free Full Episode & Email Marketing

We set  our sights on completing first the pilot DVD, getting the content aired on Muslim targeted satellite TV channels and then using event marketing to promote the show.

The DVD was targeted to have two or three 15-minute episodes of following Abdullah in an adventure and extra educational content for kids to follow along with.

One of the things we had found in our initial research was the content other Islamic kids’ shows had was either mostly educational with very little entertainment value or mostly entertainment with very little educational value.

We wanted to strike the balance of “edu-tainment” while approaching the delivery in a theme based story. Each story would be an adventure that the viewers would follow Abdullah – the main character – as he learns different lessons that propel him forward in the story.

In addition to the delivery form, we figured it would add to the marketability of the show if we included guest appearances by known personalities from the North American Muslim community.

Upon release of the first episode in the first month we gathered about 1000 email addresses and close to 600 fans.

If you haven’t seen the full episode yet, click the image below:

Website: http://www.abdullahpuppet.com/
Facebook Page: http://www.facebook.com/abdullahkidshow

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Third Marketing Step – Website & Social Media Integration

With the ICNA convention approaching an opportunity presented itself to us where we could share a bazaar booth with an individual. Prior to the start of the ICNA convention, we launched the Abdullah Puppet Website.

We used the convention as a means of getting more people aware of Abdullah Puppet by interviewing people as well as passing out business cards with a web address link to the website. But more as an opportunity to record content to syndicate over social media to drive traffic to the website which in turn would continue to grow the list of email database subscribers.

We figured this step would also allow us to also give more life to the Abdullah Puppet character where he can have his own voice outside of his TV show adventures.

At this point in time we also had a review about the first episode’s release published by MuslimMatters.org:
http://muslimmatters.org/2010/06/08/review-abdullah-kids-show/

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Fourth Marketing Step – Complementary Book

One of the challenges we had yet to address was how to do events with a puppet. I’m am not the best puppet master when it comes to being in front of people nor do we have the budget for a Barney like mascot.

As part of my wife’s vision for a kid’s show, she wants to have complementary merchandise such as toys and books that would help drive the sales and marketing of the project.

Her first attempt was entertaining – read about it here:
http://egyptiangumbo.com/writing-for-kids-isnt-easy-picture-book-fail-555.htm

Her second attempt turned out a little bit more appealing.

Ideally we’d like to get the book published via a publisher, but we haven’t found one that has found the book to be in line with the publisher’s M.O. (For those who don’t know, it means “Modus Operandi” which is Latin for “method of operating”).  We used Lulu, an on-demand book printing service – to publish the book online and on Amazon.com

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Fifth Marketing Step – Search Engine Marketing

This step hasn’t begun yet. The next month will be spent settinging up tweaking SEM (Search Engine Marketing) tactics to  drive targeted traffic to AbdullahPuppet.com to continue to grow the email database, social media engagement and sell books.

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Sixth Marketing Step – Community Events

We’re thinking the main driver of marketing “Aliyah’s First Ramadan” will be young-family geared community events at masajid across North America.

Not many Muslim communities across North America have implemented the concept of “story time” for children as a means of bringing people to the masjid. Currently most young-families bring their children to the local library for such outings.

We believe that in theory this “story time” event approach will allow for many more people to become aware of the book as well as Abdullah Puppet. At the moment we’re still developing the event marketing process that would go into systematizing this from community to community.

More news to come as we make more progress. Do share your thoughts and suggestions here.

This blog post is simply the story behind the production of the Ilm Summit videos.

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The following message is an excerpt from an email I received recently from SaqibSaab on the image of AlMaghrib to the masses.

The IlmSummit videos. MashaAllah the experience of the ‘ilm and the summit was beautifully portrayed and I was glued to updates that came almost everyday, jazaAllah khair to the players involved.

At the same time, a lot of the image of AlMaghrib offering an incredibly high caliber retreat was put side by side with some “fun” scenes to show the great time everyone had.

I laughed and enjoyed them personally, but a brother once wrote to me:

I don’t think AlMaghrib adopts cheap tactics, overall they are slick with their stuff but sometimes things get out of hand.

The only thing I disagree strongly with AlMaghrib is the videos, and I don’t just mean the beat-boxing.

I really think some of the Ilm Summit videos will do a disservice to AlMaghrib. That is supposed to be the intense 2 week academic seminar. It just bugs me when the cheesy experience is sold instead of marketing.

It’s so weird to see Yaser Birjas talking about qawaid al fiqhiyyah in one video and then cookie monster and dinosaurs in another. Or see Wisam doing an AWESOME recitation, for it to fade out and into a groggy brother being woken up by 3 people.

If you’re wondering what this message is all about, you probably haven’t seen the videos.

You can view all the Ilm Summit videos via the index thread on the AlMaghrib Forums.

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TO THE ANONYMOUS PERSON who sent the email to SaqibSaab:

I respectfully disagree with you.

The videos were produced to tell the story of the students at Ilm Summit and what they experienced. Fundamentally it is part of marketing that these stories be told. However, the purpose of the video’s wasn’t to directly sell AlMaghrib or Ilm Summit.

The videos communicated exactly what was meant to be communicated, which is the atmosphere and environment of Ilm Summit. Not only on the side of brotherhood and sisterhood but also the academic side of things.

By far, everyone I’ve spoken with and my wife has spoken with who’s attended Ilm Summit 2009 agree that the videos communicate accurately what was seen and felt by the students.

You’ll notice that first week of videos contain a mix of the academic and the fun while the second week of Ilm Summit videos are much more academically inclined.

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The purpose behind me going to Ilm Summit 2009 was two fold:

• Gather footage that can be used in an AlMaghrib promo documentary laying forth the academic nature of the institute.

• Produce short “GemReels” for every day of Ilm Summit 2009 that tell the story of the people attending and also show the academic nature of the retreat.

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WHO’S IDEA WAS IT ANYWAY?

The idea of producing a daily video came about as a discussion between some of AlMaghrib’s HQ people and myself at AlMaghrib’s Ilmweek that took place in Toronto in May 2009.

We figured the idea is great especially since no other Islamic organization has really pulled off daily video blogging in an effective manner. The idea certainly gave me butterflies since I personally never produced so many videos back to back.

I’ve always wanted to do something like this ever since I saw Kevin Sites do it back in 2006 with Yahoo’s “Kevin Sites in the Hotzone.” — I just never realized how much work was in store for me.

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WHAT WENT INTO PUTTING THESE VIDEOS OUT?

One of the lessons I’ve learned from past projects is — In order to meet deadlines you need to set a time limit for how much footage you’re going to gather.

I set a time limit of maximum two hrs of footage to edit every day into less than five minutes. A 24-hour turn around time sounded reasonable considering my current skill level and experience – until I got down to editing.

Sleep literally went out the window. I remember having slept only four or five times in the 16 days I was there, and it was only out of exhaustion that I slept. My body would simply shut down.

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CHALLENGES THAT MADE ME YEARN FOR SLEEP

In an event where there is going to be filming, the attendees are usually notified.

During registration they’re suppose to be given release forms to fill out or at least have a sign saying “filming in progress” or something.

It’s been done past events that I’ve filmed at, but for some reason it wasn’t done at Ilm Summit.

For the first five days or so I was able to keep to my 24-hour turn around time schedule.

People were being cooperative and others were quite enthusiastic to be in front of the camera.

However it only took one sister’s complaint for me to receive an “executive order” to re-edit or completely take done some of the videos.

This basically led to a meeting with the heads of Ilm Summit where we decided on the policy of what to film, how things had been going thus far and how we wish to move forward.

Yasir Qadhi made it a point to announce the fact that there is filming and I’m not that hard to miss. Therefor if anyone doesn’t wish to be caught on camera they should stay behind my “contraption” and at the same time I would be making the best effort to keep certain people out of specific shots.

One of the other issues we addressed in the meeting was that not enough of the academic nature of Ilm Summit is being put out there.

The “academic nature” of “What Is Your Story: Ilm Summit Day 08″ and the latter videos was a direct result of that meeting:

From this point forward I was constantly playing catch up, however the videos that came forth were given more exposure for the academic nature of Ilm Summit 2009.

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Next post will be address some personal reflections I’ve had as well as what’s to come next with the Ilm Summit and AlMaghrib stuff.

Some marked their calendars to save up and prepare themselves for the release of major May blockbusters like Wolverine, Star Trek, Terminator Salvation, and Disney-Pixar’s Up.

Some saved up and prepared themselves to attend the first ever Ilm Week hosted by QMajd, Toronto’s student body of AlMaghrib Institute.

I had the audicity and excitement of doing both.

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:: What’s the point?

Do you wish to learn more about me, the characters I meet or something else?

It might be a good idea to discuss the story of Yusuf and compare that to the foundational elements of these major May blockbusters and apply the lessons to apply to our projects, but then I figured – most people prob don’t even fully know or appreciate the story of Yusuf-may peace be upon him in the Quran.

Sad reality is that many Muslims – especially youth – haven’t taken the time to connect with the Qur’an or any of the characters that Allah has presented to us in it.

It’s not really their fault. People just haven’t relayed who these awesome characters are.

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:: What connects us to people and characters?

This is a question that I’ve been asking myself for a while. What REALLY connects us individuals to people? Whether or not they’re fictitios, what makes us love them or hate them?

I saw Disney-Pixar’s UP yesterday with my little sisters. It’s about following one’s dreams, acheiving goals and keeping promises. I laughed and – almost – cried in that movie. I know there were others in the theater who did shed a tear.

It’s no wonder that Pixar’s consistantly releases hits. Their characters totally connect with the audience.

When we watch movies, TV shows, webisodes, vlogs – are we connecting with the story, eye-candy, or the character(s)?

I’m convinced that subconsciencely as human beings our goal is to connect with the character. When it comes to people, whether or not they’re real we want to love or hate, but never tolerate.

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:: What does this have to do with you and I?

Whether were in busines, education, dawah, or entertainment – in order for us to effectively communicate our message we need to develop our characters.

Lay out not only the character in relationship to the story we’re telling but revealing and developing them as the story progresses.

Ask yourself questions like:

• What are the character’s basic human needs, wants, desires, and aspirations?
• What are their internal and external struggles that they’re contending with?

As the story progresses, what do you want to reveal about them to the audience so that the audience can releate and connect with them?

• What do they LOVE?
• What do they HATE?
• What do they FEAR?
• What makes them ANGERY?
• What moves them forward?
• What makes them SAD?
• What makes them HAPPY?
• What makes them ANXIOUS?

The answers to these questions is what adds depth and realism to any character. If you yourself want to connect with an audience, perhaps you want to think about revealing some aspects of YOUR character to people to connect with them.

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:: What does this have to do with Leechon and the work I’m doing?

Coming out of my comfort zone, really excites me. It’s a chance for growth, experiencing new things, and making new friends.

After releasing my second episode of Browntourage I decided to take the time out and ask YOU what you felt that could be improved. The feedback that you gave on Facebook and Leechon Blog-post was excellent and definetly woth applying, but it was missing something.

As I had been filming for the coming episodes, I wondered what is it about me and others that you want to learn about? It’s for that reason that I posted on “Tweet-booked”,

Flying out to Vancouver mon with Sensei (Muhammad Alshareef). If you could ask him a question, what would it be? Rply n I’ll ask it for you.

I figured people would want to know more about a “character” that I would be featuring in my episode – Muhammad Alshareef in this case – but turns out the questions they asked were of a different nature…

It’s for this reason I shared a “commenty” of sort on Facebook (click the image)

This sort of brings me back to my original question – what is it about the characters on my trip that you wish to learn? What do you want to know about them? Am I the character that you wish to know more about?