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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.
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