Ad men Mad men?

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Ad men Mad men?
Barr
04/01/01 at 08:13:11
Assalamu'alaikum,

Did anyone of you catch the talk at Westminster?
The one by Sheikh Hamza Yusuf and George Mondio (sp?)?

How was it?

Thanx :)
Re: Ad men Mad men?
BrKhalid
04/01/01 at 10:08:19
Asalaamu Alaikum ;-)

Alhamdulillah it was really good ;-)

It was actually aimed at a wider audience and not just to Muslims although the majority of people there (apparently 2,500 tickets were sold) were Muslim.

I didn't make any notes when I was there but I scribbled some stuff down when I got home. InshaAllah I'll post these up once I've put them into some coherent form.
Re: Ad men Mad men?
Barr
04/01/01 at 12:16:39
Wa'alaikumussalam warahmatullah...

I'll be looking forward for it...

I wish I was there! :-)
Re: Ad men Mad men?
se7en
04/01/01 at 19:17:22

wa alaykum as salaam wrt,

me too.
Re: Ad men Mad men?
haaris
04/02/01 at 06:13:04
Salaam,

My wife went to that talk.  Subhana' Allah, she said that it was a real eye opener.  Like Brother Khalid she didn't take notes then but I've been pressing her to write down something from memory.  Insha' Allah I'll post them up sometime soon.  It'll be interesting to see whether the same things stick in my wife's mind as in Br. Khalid's.

One thing sticks in my mind though.  Apparently there was an Arab scholar in the audience and before he began his talk, Hamza Yusuf asked his "elder's permission to talk".  Masha' Allah, what grace and manners.

Salaam
Re: Ad men Mad men?
BrKhalid
04/03/01 at 07:38:10
Asalaamu Alaikum ;-)

Here is just some stuff from the conference which I noted down. Please note this was compiled from notes made after attending the conference so any mistakes are purely my own. I've tried to give an overview of what was said and haven't really gone into details.

[hr]

First to speak was George Monbiot. He's recently written a book called the "Captive State" about the corporate takeover of Britain and it seemed to me that much of his talk was derived from this. Some of the interesting things he said included the following:

Consumption

Apparently the world has consumed more in the last 50 years (from 1950-2000) than in *all* of the time before. Since he's an environmentalist, he says this will undoubtedly have a negative impact on the world we live in.

But is this consumption needed? This leads to the question of……

Advertising

He quoted from many current advertising executives on what they deemed to be "good advertising". All of these quotes came back to one recurring fact:

Advertisers need to desensitise you in order to get you to buy their product. (Think about that for a second)

That's what the ad men aspire too. Namely that they have to stop *you* actively thinking before purchasing something and to convince *you* of what *you* need and what will make *you* happy.

Basically they boast about how they turn people into sheep. Someone who doesn't think of what he's buying or why he's buying but just consumes and satisfies a need and a want which was created by the corporate market and its medium of advertising.

The ad men recognise that adults are less susceptible to this advertising attack. So what do you think they do? Yep, they *actively* target children from an early age. I didn't realise but the UK is one of the few countries in the European Union which permits children's adverts. The ad men espouse a "cradle to grave" mentality, namely once you've got them hooked from a young age, you'll always have them.

He cited the example of Channel One in the States [Have you guys heard of this?]

Apparently they give free videos and TV's to schools if the school can guarantee that the children will watch their programmes for a part of a day. These programmes obviously include adverts and at the end of the day that's what they want. A captive audience which can't hit the remote control or get up to make a cup of tea, and whose minds are the most vulnerable.

One quote he mentioned was of an advertising executive who said that an advert was a success if they could get a child to nag their parents for something they had seen advertised.

He concluded that the ad men could only work if they turned you into a sheep, a theme which was taken up by……….

Sheikh Hamza

He was in a rather subdued mood I thought. Maybe this was due to the fact that he told us about his grandfather (they had never met) who passed away at the age of 44. He used to work as an advertising executive in New York City.

He said humanity was in "trauma" and it was characteristic of a trauma patient that he refuses to believe anything is wrong with him.

He gave an example when he went to Hajj where he saw a man fall from the Jammarat to the ground below and he was bleeding internally. Sheikh Hamza and another physician were by his side and were encouraging him to lie back and stay still. The man however was in obvious trauma, and started standing up, saying there was nothing wrong with him. A few moments later he died.

Advertising, he said, has helped put us into a state where we think there is nothing wrong with us and we continue to consume without really thinking (ie like sheep)

Islam isn't like this. As Muslims we should make an active choice when buying something and shouldn't be led blindly. He said there should be mutual benefit between buyer and seller:

"O ye who believe! Eat not up your property among yourselves in vanities: [color=Black]But let there be amongst you Traffic and trade by mutual good-will[/color]: Nor kill (or destroy) yourselves: for verily Allah hath been to you Most Merciful! " [4:29]

He then touched on the recurring theme of sheep with the following hadith:

"Each of you is a shepherd, and each is responsible for those under his care. A ruler is a shepherd; a man is the shepherd of his family; a woman is the shepherd of her husband's house and children. For each of you is a shepherd and each of you is responsible for those under his care." [Bukhari & Muslim]

He likened the ad men to the wolf and how the shepherd makes sure he keeps his flock from being devoured.

One of his solutions was to boycott all corporate culture. I'm not sure logistically what he meant by that but he compared it to how society as a whole would be if we bought our goods from our local shops instead of large corporations.

Given the different messages our children are bombarded with at school, he mentioned the dangers of such an environment especially when the teachers themselves were acting and behaving like sheep. How could they teach our children any differently?


Overall I came away from the conference with my eyes widened about a medium which nowadays we take so much for granted. These ad men want to control you. Maybe not in a physical way, but by infiltrating your mind and controlling what you deem to be good to eat, good to wear, places you should visit etc etc. This is in stark contrast to our Islamic beliefs.

How many of us buy trainers (sneakers) because we deem certain makes to be better than others? Who tells us Nike is better than Adidas or that Reebok is better than Hi-Tec? Like it or not, they feed our minds and going to the conference gave me a reminder that I have to be aware of what the ad men are trying to do and ensure, InshaAllah, that I don't get sucked in.

May Allah [swt] forgive me if I have said anything in error.

Wasalaam
Br Khalid


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