Post Advertising

Mass adoption of Facebook

Jim Boulton — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 12:47:00 -0400

Since May, visits to Facebook have increased 22%. The interesting thing to note is that the number of visits by 18-24 year old's to the site has actually fallen. The increase is a result of more visits by 25-44 year olds, suggesting mass adoption of the social media platform. Check out the Hitwise article for the full details.

Editorial content, search engine marketing and seeing the wood for the trees

Jim Boulton — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 05:39:00 -0400

$22 billion was spent on Google Adwords in 2008. According to Econsultancy, Adwords represents 85% of the paid search market, making the entire market worth $26 billion. That's a lot of money. The same Econsultancy report also indicates that there is an increasing shift in emphasis from natural to paid search. What a mistake.

Yes, paid search is an agile marketing technique in that it is fast, effective and can quickly demonstrate ROI. However, it is in effect, short-term, above-the-line advertising, the benefits of which only last as long as the investment. For long-term success, it is essential to invest in editorial content, which will not only automatically improve natural search rankings but it may even inform and entertain the visitor, possibly giving them a reason to come back! Not only that, editorial content works harder the longer it's online. An initial investment in editorial will pay for itself many times over for years to come.

I've been building websites for 12 years and those that succeed (Agent Provocateur, Bang & Olufsen, Duchy Originals, The Kick Racism out of Football Campaign, Oasis Stores to name drop a few) are not those with the biggest marketing budgets but those that invest in content - hell, that's why we're a content marketing company, it works. It comes down to respect, those brands that respect their customers time, respect their investment in their brand and reward them accordingly with relevant, informative content, engender customer loyalty that very quickly turns into sales.

The smart thing to do is to use paid search tactically to augment your natural search strategy. Develop a content plan around search terms and while you're rolling it out, use paid search to plug the gaps. Paid search is the perfect environment to experiment and establish the keywords that resonate with visitors, use it as a market research tool and then create editorial content based on those keywords. Marketing spend will go down and conversion will go up.

As more and more brands join the feeding frenzy and Google degrades it's own service (and raison d'être) in order to maximise short-term profits, pay-per-click inflation will force brands to re-think their blinkered approach to online marketing. In the mean time, think on this - search engines are designed to find the most relevant content based on a search term, why not do the right thing and create that content in the first place rather than paying Google to look the other way?

Image thanks to distorted smile

CALL ME, G.O.P.: Can the Social Web Save the Republican Party?

Kirk — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 09:45:00 -0400

Blessings and thanks to The Daily Beast for reporting that Story Worldwide, the agency that brings you this blog, has launched an experiment to use the social web to find a true, authentic and sustainable brand for the Republican Party, presently a total and humiliating disaster. To join the struggle to find the new soul of the G.O.P., go to the site we've created: Call Me, G.O.P. (as in "Call me anytime for help or advice").

Here at Post-Advertising (and at Story), we're deeply interested in brands, of course. We continually question how best to create and launch a great brand, or how to turnaround a profoundly troubled one in the era of post-advertising, web 2.0 and all that. A lot of folks out there, tired to death of shallow or phony advertising claims, have come to understand "brand" as a euphemism for "slick lie." And such skepticism isn’t entirely unwarranted; brand is a statement of identity, and such statements can, of course, be either true or false. But in the post-advertising age, where everything is fighting for attention and openness and honesty are valued above all else, a brand simply has to encompass the most resonant central truth about a product, a company or an organization. Your brand must be a compelling story about why you exist, or you will cease to exist.

Now, it's a fact, Jack, that there is no more troubled brand in America than the Republican Party. Nobody knows the G.O.P.'s story anymore; it doesn't have any apparent reason to exist. Voters are disavowing the party in droves. Nearly 4 in 10 Republicans don't even like the Republican Party, Gallup tells us.

Prominent South Carolina Republican Senator Lindsey Graham actually told ABC News that he doesn't want the G.O.P. to be a party of "angry white guys...that nobody listens to." So we know that "We're angry and white!" is not a promising Republican brand position. And it's equally evident that something less angry, like favoring taxpayer-paid flights to Argentina to get laid, also isn't the rallying cry to rebuild a Republican majority. (Remember what we said about humiliating?)

Where should the G.O.P. turn for an authentic new brand at this moment? Given the widely accepted truth that brands now belong to their audiences, not to their marketing departments, we'd argue that the social web is not just the best place, but likely the only place where the Republicans can find a core story around which to rebuild. So that's what the Call Me, G.O.P. experiment is all about.

The Republicans, for better and worse, are not paying us to do this. They are NOT a client. Many of the folks at Story who are involved in this are NOT Republicans (although some are). (This experiment is the first to be fully funded by our newly founded Story Innovation Labs, our internal R&D arm, dedicated to testing new aproaches and tools before making them available to our clients.) The idea: If the G.O.P. wants a bigger tent instead of an ever-shrinking one, they need to reach out to everybody for ideas and comments. So tha's who we're reaching out to: everybody.

Over the next eight weeks, we're going to use the tools of the social web and some tools of our (Story's) own to listen to and analyze people's ideas and conversations and to craft the story that can rebrand the G.O.P. into a viable force in American politics once more. As a (very) liberal Obama supporter, I'm ambivalent about this whole enterprise. But my (very) conversative partner Jim Small (@Jim_CallMeGOP) adores the idea and is tweeting and blogging hard for the future of the G.O.P. (Jim tells me that Michael Steele is now following Jim on Twitter. So the party is listening.)

If, like me, you're one of the 6 or 7 of every 10 Americans (depending on which poll you cite) who do not care much for the G.O.P., you may be thinking, "Why should I help these bozos — the party of W., Cheney and Limbaugh? They made the mess they're in. Let them wallow in it for a few decades." I'm not saying that's the wrong thing to think, but try thinking this, as well: Democracy depends on vigorous debate. So we barely qualify as a democracy when we have two functioning national parties. What's going to become of us if we only have one?

As Barack Obama said at a press conference back in February, "...the strongest democracies flourish from frequent and lively debate, but they endure when people of every background and belief find a way to set aside smaller differences in service of a greater purpose." If that doesn't move you to help out, I don't know what will.

Whatever happens, we're all going to learn a lot about how to make the best use of the social web — blogs, Twitter, Facebook, email, and on and on — to help brands find their true souls and tell their most powerful stories in the much altered terrain of modern communications. So even if you're apolitical and just fond of marketing experiments, join us and follow the action at Call Me, G.O.P.

Crowdsourcing Journalism

martinh — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 08:15:00 -0400

The Guardian is often held up as a great example of how social tools can be integrated into a website to create a real community feel. Well, this article (via Mark Earls) demonstrates how powerful that community can then be. I love seeing this type of feedback loop, where a brand is driven to provide ever more creative ways to interact and the commmunity responds with enthusiasm.

(Photo by internets diary)

There are some really interesting lesson here for any brand (beyond the four outlined). The required speed of response is telling - they had to launch untested. The identification of the correct tools to use. Their instinctive understanding of design and social media participation tools - make it fun, make it visible, reward those who get most involved with recognition (more whuffies?).

It's also nice to know that there is a lab at Harvard working out what journalism is going to do in the internet age. That'll be added to my RSS feeds.

Here comes everybody

Jim Boulton — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 17:34:00 -0400

OK, here's the drill, this guy appears to have stolen Dave's camera, laptop and Nintendo DS and we're going to help track him down in a vigilante 2.0 style. If it doesn't work, blame Clay Shirky, if it works then Iain over at crackunit.com gets the credit.

The stuff was stolen from Pratt Mews, London, NW1 and you can see the CCTV footage here. Note that the suspect walks in with one bag and walks off (frame 4) with two, one of which appears to be Dave's Lowepro camera bag.

Making Whuffie

Jim Boulton — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 07:11:00 -0400

Two mentions of Whuffie in the same week, one by our esteemed leader at our recent Health 2.0 seminar and one by James Cherkoff over at his Modern Marketing blog, is too much of a coincidence, so I thought I'd jump on the band wagon while there's still time.

Whuffie is the reputation-based currency of Cory Doctorow's 2003 science fiction novel, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom. The book describes a world where the basic economic problem, scarcity of resources, has been resolved and therefore money is no longer necessary. Social status is no longer determined by an individual's wealth but by their behaviour, which is dynamically evaluated and uploaded to the net. Being rude or anti-social diminishes your reputation; doing a good turn, being creative or pleasing people enhances it. The good stuff all contributes to your Whuffie score. Cory would have got Whuffie points for Down and Out being the first novel released under the Creative Commons license; he would have lost points though because it apparently isn't very good (although I haven't read it, so shouldn't really say so for fear of losing Whuffie points myself). Of course, the advent of the social web, with inbuilt popularity indexes, and "deep web" search engines, like Pipl.com, are making Whuffie a reality.

As I have previously written, our behaviour is increasingly transparent, and our reputations only a Google search (or a wire tap) away from a dogged investigator. In the age of the Internet, a decent dose of Whuffie is now a pre-requisite for success — for brands, for businesses and for individuals.

TV Advertising advertising about TV advertising so advertisers will advertise on TV

Jon King — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 10:22:00 -0400

But follow the money. They won't, anymore.

There’s an exceptionally lame TV ad campaign running in the UK at the moment for Thinkbox, the television marketing body for the main UK commercial broadcasters.

The scene: a shrink sits alongside a hypnotised patient, encouraging him to regress and express profound, moving memories. Guess what? He sings iconic ad jingles from the golden age of TV advertising, when ads used to work and when, back in the day, commercial television was valued higher than junkbonds. It’s almost funny, and the catchy slogans take me back, back to the days when we couldn’t avoid seeing commercials.

But, given a choice, I’d rather not have had permanently burned into my memory tunes like: “Nuts! Whole Hazel nuts! Cadbury’s take them and they cover them with chocolate!” Thankfully, we’ve all moved on. It’s a blessing that consumers don’t have to – and won’t - put up with interruptive tosh trying to burn slogans into our brains. We’re no longer passive. Like trying to find a use for a slide rule when PC’s arrived, all this campaign does is to remind us that mass market TV advertising is over.

Power to the patient

Jim Boulton — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 06:16:00 -0400

I was reading in The Independent last week about a simple new test that can detect the onset of Alzheimer's with 93% accuracy. The fact that this test can be perfomed at home without medical supervision prompted me to see what other home testing kits existed.

I was expecting to find blood pressure monitors, pregnancy, allergy and cholesteral testing kits but was amazed to discover home tests that can detect conditions including colon cancer, prostate cancer, stds, the menopause, osteoporosis, rheumatoid arthritis, thyroid problems, anaemia, stomach ulcers, diabetes and the list goes on.

I was so enthused by this discovery and the implications on the healthcare and pharma industry that I bought a book, "The Innovator's Prescription" by Clayton M Christensen. Furthermore, I read it. In it, Christensen talks about the typical pattern of innovation - things start complicated and expensive and gradually get simpler and cheaper. For example, the telegraph became the fixed line phone, which in turn became the cell phone. Similarly, it used to be very complicated to produce and sell albums in the music business and as such only a limited number of companies participated. PCs, the Internet and the MP3 format now mean that almost anybody can create, promote and distribute music from their bedroom. YouTube and digital cameras have done the same thing for video, the same has happened to desktop publishing and exactly the same thing is happening in the medicial diagnostic industry.

Improved diagnostics means that treatment is becoming less intuitive, less based on personal experience and more based on process. In these cases, treatment can be given by nurses, caregivers and the patients themselves, rather than doctors. Improved diagnostics also means more precise medicine, which will herald the end of blockbuster drugs and treatments (which is re-enforced by increased competition from generic drug manufacturers). This means there will be a fundamental shift in the way pharmaceutical and healthcare companies operate. We are already seeing "dis-integration", the outsourcing of research, clinical trials and drug development for example, reducing the costs of entry and resulting in a more crowded marketplace. We are also seeing increasing communication directly with the patient and more and more patients forming online communities and talking directly to each other. These developments demand authentic, differentiated brand positions that resonate with the patient, an area in which the healthcare industry, with a few notable exceptions, is way behind.

In short, the availability of simpler and more accurate diagnostics, more data, more sophisticated information and improved decision making tools empower patients and caregivers to self-diagnose and self-treat. These patients will invariably use the Internet to talk to each other and pool data, improving diagnosis and treatment further, resulting in more precise medicine, more competition and therefore the need for more meaningful brands. And the cycle continues.

Photo thanks to Jim Frazier

The Comment HuffPost Doesn't Want You to See

Kirk — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 18:05:00 -0400

So, some guy named Jarvis Coffin wrote this rather ridiculous post a week ago on Huffington Post titled "Reports of the Death of Advertising Are Exaggerated." (They aren't, by the way.) I was directed to it by a friend, so I read it word for word. Then I dashed off a comment because the web is all about interaction, right? So I interacted.

HuffPo warns you that it moderates all comments to prevent "ad hominem" attacks and abusive comments and off-topic nonsense and other crimes against nature or humanity. So I tried to keep it clean and impersonal, clicked "submit" and waited patiently. And waited. And checked back after a bit. And waited. And so on. Ten hours passed. Then about 144 more.

Like I said, the web is about interaction, not interminable delay. Interminable delay is the core of traditional media, not digital. Finally, with nothing of my comment yet in sight, I have decided to take action and do what good netizens are supposed to do: Publish the comment myself. So here it is:

One potential problem with HuffPo is that anyone, apparently, can shoot off his mouth with any or no justification. There is not a single fact in this meandering post. And the offending language -- which is the traditional media exec's verbal equivalent of a jerking knee or a facial tic -- can be found here:

"As an industry we have discussed that changes may have to be made by some... For the most part this means specialization, or enhanced relevancy. Newspapers don't have to disappear, but they may have to stop trying to be all things to all people. Ditto most every media business."

See? He did it. He just changed the subject. In the middle of talking about advertising, he suggests that traditional media's all-too-evident problems with tumbling ad revenue (down roughly 30% across print properties in Q1) can be solved by changing journalism or somehow fixing other content.

Now tell me: How exactly does that work? That's like having your plumber tell you he's going to fix that clogged toilet by repainting the bathroom. But when he's done, you'll just wind up with a pretty pink bathroom knee-deep in excrement instead of a blue one.

If you think that comment is ad hominem, abusive or off topic, please let me know. Otherwise, please let HuffPo know that their moderators should move a little quicker in the 21st century. And also let them know that reports of the death of advertising have been understated, if anything, except by Jarvis Coffin.

It was actually him all along!

martinh — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 09:01:00 -0400

If you're anything like me (and let's face it, you are, whether you like it or not), you'll enjoy telling a good story with an amusing denouement. That's French for punchline. You'll also be aware of the intense frustration that arises when someone butts in before the end and delivers the puchline for you, wrecking the delicate timing/set-up you'd mentally worked so hard to achieve. My point is that a good story is easy to wreck.

(Cheers to Dr. Snafu for the pic, brilliantly entitled "Why the long face?")

This morning I saw an interesting ad in The Metro (London's free newspaper, a kind of early morning visual valium). It was a full page B+W ad on page 6. Those of you who have worked in this game for far too long are already thinking, "Page 6? B+W? That doesn't make sense". Well done you. That's what I thought. It is a badly art-directed, cheap looking ad for an firm of East End tailors called Jimmy's Suits. "The Savile Row of East London", it declares, in a hideous, cheap looking font that manages to conflate a single shop and a street.

Hmmm, I thought. There's something going on here.

Page 11, bottom Left Hand 25x4 (Did I ever tell you about my days in Direct Response? Well, just send £2 to the normal address and I'll send you a leaflet). An ad for Maggie's Salon, apparently "East London's sharpest cut". This one is in colour, but a kind of pinky saturated effect that I think I could manage on photoshop despite never having used it.

Interesting, Maggie's Salon opens at the same time as Jimmy's Suits.

Hmmm.

In the recruiment/classified section, there's another 25x4 for Jimmy's Suits and an ad for a Strip Club called Dexy's. Auditions are at the same time as the previous two.

This is fun, I thought. I like what they are doing here (I'll be honest here, I also thought that I figured out what it was for, and I felt a bit clever. But in the same way that you wait for the punchline to laugh even though you worked out the joke, I was playing along here. I was ready for some fun).

So I gets into the office, right, and I enters the URL, www.jimmyssuits.co.uk.

Jimmys Suits.

How disappointing is that?

Here's the other two.

www.dexysstripclub.co.uk (disappointingly sfw.)

www.maggiessalon.co.uk

Do you know what? I was going to watch it thanks the the blanket coverage on Sky. Now, I'm not even going to mention it's name, I mean, if that's their approach to storytelling, they can .

Social beach media: soggy origins

Kirk — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 09:00:00 -0400

I have a long memory that can be short on details. For example, I have this bizarre idea that social media didn’t just APPEAR on the planet in September 2003 or March 2006. For the longest time, I couldn’t imagine why I entertained such an unfounded (and potentially unpopular) theory. Then, a couple weeks ago, I recalled this weird tradition that people have been practicing on a tiny, tropical island in the Caribbean for nearly 40 years. Let me tell you about it:

Photo credit: Click here.

A long, long time ago—maybe 20-some years—I was wandering the Caribbean in a boat when some friends on St. John directed me to a steep little rock in the British Virgins called Jost van Dyke. “Go to the Soggy Dollar Bar in White Bay,” they said. So I went.
In those days, there was a road, no electricity, and no dock at White Bay. (The road and power arrived in 1995. There’s still no dock.) So the only way to get to the sun-bleached shack that was (and still is) the Soggy Dollar was to anchor off the beach and swim ashore. Hence the name.

I anchored. I swam. I wandered up the beach and into the bar. It was easy. The Soggy Dollar is open on three sides and has no doors.

I ordered. And then I looked around and saw that the bar’s back wall—really, the only wall—was covered with dozens and dozens of pieces of paper, in at least a dozen languages, each scrap inscribed with a name. “Barbara.” “Dick.” “Amy.” And a message: “Have 4 of everything on me.”

The bartender explained that it’s a Soggy Dollar tradition. People buy a drink for an absent friend and leave a note on the wall. When the absent friend wanders up the beach one day, the gift and the note are there, waiting for them.

What really impressed me, though, is that the people who wandered into the Soggy Dollar that far-off afternoon invariably checked the wall before doing anything else. It was the same reflex that sent my parents’ generation to check the mailbox out front every afternoon. It was also the same reflex that forces mine and my daughter’s generations to check our inboxes 212 times a day, to check Twitter 2,363 times an afternoon, to check Facebook… You get the idea.

Except, at the Soggy Dollar, the community-forging social medium was ink on paper and the device was a wall. And you had to come to the message. The whole idea was that the message would never come to you. In fact, a critical characteristic of the message was the need to receive it on the beach at White Bay and nowhere else.

I called Tina Chinnerie to fix the holes in my memory. Tina has been operations manager at the Soggy Dollar and the newer, next-door Sandcastle Hotel since 1999. “Oh,” she interrupted as I described the wall, “the Drink Board.”

“Actually, it was the idea of a woman who used to work here. She thought it would be a natural idea that you come and, if you actually have a friend who’s coming later, and you just want to leave them a few drinks, you can do it,” Tina said.

The friends might turn up in an hour. Or a day. Or a decade. Or maybe never. Tina said she has between 300 and 400 notes now, some of them dating back to 1998. “Enjoy my island,” one old one says.

But the important thing was that if you did show up one day, the note would be there on the Drink Board, welcoming you and naming you an official member of the Soggy Dollar community. If you never show up, it's still good. You can sit in your third-floor walk-up in Buffalo in December knowing that your name is on the Drink Board and your Painkiller (the bar's signature rum and juice concoction) is on the bar, sweating cooly in the afternoon heat of Jost. Waiting. Either way, you're part of the scene.

Social media is now faster, of course, and more ubiquitous. But the power of the Drink Board to attract and form a community is certainly no less awesome than Twitter’s similar, but more virtual power.

I love Twitter. But I adore the Drink Board. I told Tina I was heading back soon to check out the Board and see if anyone’s left me a message and a Painkiller in the last 20-odd years.

Land of Hope and Trickness

Richard Parker — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 04:20:00 -0400

My bike is tricked out with Hope gear.

If you watch to the end of this video you'll see why.

This is old school, classic content marketing off the back of athlete sponsorship. Inspired and Hope sponsor Danny MacAskill. Amateurs like me buy the gear. There's no need for a hard sell, Danny tells the Story. He's the best, and if you want to be the best you get the gear.

The video kind of speaks for its-self. I just wanted an excuse to post it.

And I'm kind of flattered that our office manager actually asked me whether I could do what Danny does. The answer is no, in case you were wondering.

Thanks to Oandu for the image

Content? Let's Define It.

Kirk — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 10:42:00 -0400

The central word in the web revolution turns out to be an old one—content. (Our battered old Oxford English Dictionary says it's derived from the Latin word "contentum," which must go back a few thousand years. It was early in the 16th century when the word was first used in English to mean something similar to what we're getting at today—something written down.)

Everybody is throwing around the word content these days, but I get the feeling there is no general agreement about what it means. So let's all get together and define the term.

I'll hazard a beginning:

Content is the symbolic representation of emotions, information and experiences, which is, itself, presented as an involving experience.

Suggestions? Amendments? Please wade in. The only rule is that your definition must be suitable as a tweet — 140 characters or less. (Mine is 119.)

New medium, old thinking

Krista Morgan — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 10:42:00 -0400

Having lived without a television for almost 10 years now, I really like the fact that all the major networks are putting their shows online. I like it so much, in fact, that I don’t even mind the adverts they make me watch. What does annoy me though is that, despite investing all this time and money, the networks still don’t seem to have grasped the potential of the medium – either for viewers or advertisers.

Last night I saw back-to-back ads for competing banks in the same show multiple times. After watching three different shows on the same network I ended up watching the same three ads more times than I can count. Now, while it might be a bit much to expect people to actually enjoy watching adverts, I think it’s probably counter-productive to make them watch the same ads to the point where they begin to dread them. At this rate I’ll be back to renting the DVDs in no time.

What’s frustrating is that there’s no reason for things to be this clumsy. Unlike television, the internet gives networks the opportunity to track what shows people are watching, which ads they may have clicked on or not and most importantly who they are based on a login. This information costs networks a lot to get offline but now they can get it all for free. Amazing right?

You’d think networks would have jumped at the opportunity to take a new approach to advertising and really target ads to consumers – something that would benefit both sponsors and consumers. Not that I love ads, but if I haven’t seen an ad before I’m more likely to watch it and, if it’s for a brand or product that’s relevant to me, I’m also more likely to take an interest.

With remarkable short-sightedness, the networks have simply done exactly what they do on television and moved it online. To me, they are missing a great opportunity to develop a new business model that optimises the advantages of the online environment by providing a better experience for consumers and increases revenues for both the networks and their sponsors.

Are you what you read?

Amar Patel — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 06:36:00 -0400

While reading about the upward buying power of the Western Muslim middle class in the always brilliant Time magazine, I stumbled upon an equally brilliant magazine called emel.

Founded in 2003 by editor Sarah Joseph and her husband, amid post-9/11 tensions and the divisive "War on Terror", this succinctly self-proclaimed ‘Muslim lifestyle magazine’ has gone from bi-monthly availability in specialist Muslim bookshops to monthly placement on the shelves of Asda, Borders and WH Smiths (priced at £3.50 and with a unofficial UK circulation of 20,000). Its core audience is the UK-based, English-speaking Muslim population – reportedly the fastest growing segment of the middle class in Britain – and other readers in over 60 countries curious about the rich tapestry of work carried out in society by this misunderstood body of followers.

It is the second part of this audience that is most fascinating because it originates from the Muslim community’s evolving 360-degree sense of self.

A larger proportion of the world’s 1.6 billion Muslims are younger and richer than ever. They buy more magazines and want brands to speak out to them, whether its Saaf halal cosmetics, Duchesnay’s vitamins (free of gelatin and other haram items), free downloadable recitations of the Koran direct to their Nokia phone or even halal McDonalds restaurants. In the process, Western Muslims are sharpening their sense of identity.

Derived from the Arabic word for ‘hope’, emel, a portal to this developing world, demonstrates the power of publishing to engage and overcome ignorance or prejudice. A world where different cultures and religions can find common ground foundered upon positivity, devotion, quality, ethics and shared enjoyment of the planet instead of abstinence. self-interest, political discordance, isolation and ultimately, radicalsim.

Issue 57 – yes, this is a late but true discovery – positively glows with green and its ‘Eco Jihad’ mission. There’s delight after delight over the 120-odd pages, starting with the cut-out-and-play board game on the cover (‘May the greener player win’).

Then there’s the factual: did you know that human beings are described by God in the Qur’an as ‘stewards’, entrusted with the safe keeping of the earth? Or that 25 billion foam cups are thrown away each year?

There’s also the experiential: Lucy Bushill-Matthews living in fear but learning to trust; author Shelina Janmohamed pulling religion from oblivion and arguing that it’s real value comes from making a positive contribution to the lives of others. Not forgetting the acute, imaginative use of illustration and photography (look out for the ‘Our World’ spread of polar bears ripping apart the carcass of a bearded seal – beauty in power – or photographer artist Chris Jordan’s stunning waste mosaics.

Rounding out the experience are pieces on UK wilderness getaways, retracing an ancestors' horticultural roots, Mediterranean snacks for the summer evenings, the merits of the Honda Civic Hybrid, knocking stress on the head and the meaning of true companionship in marriage.

Punchy copy, airy pages, colour when needed, a zest for life…

In a recent Doha Debate Sarah Joseph won over the audience by expressing her frustration at generalised definitions of the "west" and "political Islam". With emel she has succeeded in articulating core Muslim values to explore the complex relationship between these two groups and then making that relevant to the wider world.

Like me. I’m not a Muslim and I’m no shrewd marketing manager but, from this moment on, I’m an emel reader. That's the power of real-life stories in publishing.

Look out for further publications from emel Media Ltd.