A debate is raging in Toronto this week about Muslim elementary students conducting Friday prayers at Don Mills public school. The issue at hand is whether the practice of girls praying behind boys is a discriminatory practice of Islam, and if so, is the school complicit in this discrimination by allowing its Muslim students to conduct prayers on school premise during school hours.

An example of the flame war can be found in this story by Toronto Star Columnist Heather Mallick. And yes, I do recognize that this is Toronto (Fox North) Star, so I won’t claim that this is the sentiment of the majority of Torontonians.

My partner brought the story to my attention. We have a unique relationship to this story: she’s a staunch agnostic feminist, while I would describe myself as a moderate or light-practicing Muslim, born in the Middle East to a moderate Muslim family (a match made in heaven! If she believed in the existence of one). Naturally, we indulge in frequent discussions about raising kids in such a dynamic, if we ever decide to have some.

As any inter-faith couple would attest, these discussions are often… intense. I’m yet to walk away from one feeling like I’ve won the argument properly articulated my point of view. Needless to say, this particular story initiated a similar discussion, and we (ehm!) agreed to disagree. But just to be safe, I think I should send flowers tomorrow.

So here’s what I think about this story.

Is this Gender Discrimination:

We can’t call Muslim prayer line-ups discrimination when those who wish to practice differently are not prevented from doing so. This isn’t Rosa Parks being prevented from sitting at the front of a bus.

I don’t think schools or governments should get into telling entire religious groups how they should practice their religion as long as they follow the law of the land. Just because a parent or even a minority group in the same social/religious group takes issue with a practice shouldn’t lead to the annexation of the wish of the majority. At the same time, the wish of the majority shouldn’t preclude the minority from practicing and engaging fully in what they think is right, within the confines of law/policy.

So, really, if someone has an issue with Muslims conducting their prayers according to the customs observed by over 1 Billion of them around the world, we should ask two questions. First: is the person with the issue a Muslim? If not, then that person is free to voice their opinions, but their individual inconvenience or distaste of the practice should not trump the rights of an entire social group to assemble and practice their religion according to their custom.

Second question is whether a minority of members of the same social group are taking issue and feeling like this practice is precluding them from full participation. If so, then I believe that one group’s practice shouldn’t stop the other from practicing as they wish. In fact, that right is guaranteed to them by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

If the liberal group would like to pray at a later/earlier/same time and have a co-ed prayer room with mixed rows, then this isn’t an issue of discrimination, it’s simply an issue of school policy. The school can decide to make accommodations for two prayer sessions, or not. The conservative group can come out to pray on-time following the teachings they believe in, and the smaller group of modern interpreters can have a co-ed session whenever they want.

Now, to me, this sounds like a lot of “accommodation” for a school to be making. If every religious group wanted similar arrangements this can get out of hand. My personal opinion, as a pragmatic ‘modern Muslim’, is that Friday prayers should not take place in schools of a Country that does not have existing policies to accommodate such interruptions to the school day. Islam has made an ‘accommodation’ for such cases as well, allowing Muslims to make-up for missed prayers at a later time if they are unable to practice their worship due to hardship or circumstances outside their control. Although, despite hardships, some Muslims would still go the extra mile for additional brownie points.

Kansas University junior Bazigha Tufail prays in the Spahr Engineering Library on Wednesday after her 1 p.m. structural engineering class. The Muslim student prays five times a day and often feels misunderstood by other students. Photo by Nick Krug

Therefore, the discussion should remain confined to policy. Should schools accommodate religious practices, for all religions, and how? A school shouldn’t attempt to determine whether a particular religious practice of a specific group is discriminatory. There are other avenues for that. These doctrines have been around for thousands of years and no school board should touch that land mine with a 10 foot pole.

The question in this case is not whether a particular religious practice is discriminatory or not. The question is whether prayers can happen at schools. You can’t piecemeal a religion and say “only that part of your prayer is OK with us non-Muslims, but the other part is weird and we don’t understand/like it, so you can’t do that one”. If some Muslims take offense to the way prayer line-ups are formed, they have the full right and freedom to worship as they wish (like I do), so I’m not sure how they’re being discriminated against if their rights are not withheld by anyone.

Policy or Social Engineering?

Canada is a multicultural melting pot where everyone can maintain their unique culture and religious practices while adopting Canadian values and way of life. That was the social contract that most Canadian Muslims were born or immigrated under, unlike France where the social contract clearly opposes multiculturalism when it comes to religious practice. It’s not fair to bait and switch on people who thought they can enjoy a certain amount of religious freedom and accommodation in this great country. These people are now faced with calls to change their practices, not so much because they’ve been proven as discriminatory, but because their practice has now crossed into the visible public domain and people are offended by its strangeness.

Talking in generalities is knee-jerk xenophobia. And flogging this particular religious practice as a means to score points on a larger discussion of morality, social values, student/child development, and gender issues is not fair to Muslims. Some folks are suggesting that this religious practice in Islam is an example of anti-social practices that engineer Muslim children along gender lines and affect their long-term development and integration into Canadian society, and that making accommodations for Muslims to pray in schools on a Friday assists in this negative social engineering.

There are many contributors and factors that affect the development of young adults in Canadian society, both girls and boys. Schools are but one factor. Home environments, peers, media, pop culture, and religious subscription are other factors along with many more. Weekends in Canada have been selected to accommodate Christian prayer practices, and those practices contribute to the development and social positioning of Christian teens just as much as practices of any other religious group in Canada affect the teens of that particular group.

And the hypocrisy of it all…

We don’t flog the government for instating Sunday as a holiday to allow the practice of a religion that discriminates against women even more than Islam does, and we don’t call on Catholics to abandon their subscription to the concept of “original sin” if they want to pray in publicly-funded areas like Muslims are being asked to change the way they line-up, and how they “think” about women, if they want to pray in public schools.

So why is Sunday a government-sanctioned holiday for a religion that doesn’t ordain female priests and dictates that men and women should be separated in Church? Because of Canada’s Christian heritage. And because subscribers to the faith are free to worship as they please: those who want to attend a conservative Church with separate seats for men and women can, and those who want to attend a Church the allows people to sit where they wish can do so as well. That answer is enough for me.

And why do Muslims pray the way they do? Because their heritage dictates it, and other Muslims who wish to do it differently can do so in Canada. That answer should suffice for the majority of those crying foul at how Muslims line up in their area of prayers.

That’s where the features of the Pomegranate Phone start to draw skepticism from people. But the features that follow leave no doubt that this is a gag-ad. The ad showcases the phone as a personal shaver and mobile personal coffee brewer.

Thus begins Nova Scotia’s latest, slickest, and most expensive endeavour into using new media and social networking to pass the message of the ‘Come To Life‘ campaign to their unsuspecting target market. The viral campaign peddles this ‘it does everything’ phone with all the might that a $300K advertising budget can provide. Yet it seems that the jury is still out on the effectiveness of this campaign.

Visit the website by clicking the image below. Or see the videos below.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fq2A6bi_sDE

The campaign was produced by Bristol Group, Egg Films/Hatch, and Breathe Media.

• Art Director: Dan Couto
• Copy writer/creative director: Albert Ianni
• Production Manager: Collette Snow
• Designers: Andrew Grantham, Michael Gatto
• Internal Programmer: Melissa Castle
• External programmers/designers: Breathe Media
• Production/Post: Egg Films/Hatch Post
• Actors/Models: Christopher Killam, Lita Lewellen, John Beale, Laura Bleasdale, Andrea Wilson, Pasha, ?Others?

Synopsis:

The impossible-made-possible features of this phone are not so far fetched. In early 2007, I reviewed a new product by an Israel-based technology company that produced a pocket projector device not unlike the built-in fantasy projector showcased for the Pom. The Explay Nano Projector is effectively the world’s smallest consumer projector and was planned to launch to market in 2008. The company was working on providing the technology as OEM for cell phone and camera manufacturers to incorporate into future devices. Click picture below to visit their website.

Similarly, the voice translation function currently exists, though the technology is not fit for seamless speech recognition yet (only phrase by phrase). Devices combining voice recognition and translation software are a dime a dozen. A simple speech-to-speech voice recognition translator can be bought from Ectaco for a little under $400 CDN. The software itself is available for installation on smart phones.

Last but not least, a hybrid musical instrument phone was recently launched by Japan’s Kddi in collaboration with Yamaha. See my review of this technology here. It can be played as a harmonica, trumpet, flute, and various other instruments.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-76oq_AHHg

The campaign can be said to have three components:

• The medium
• The message
• The actual product it peddles.

The Medium:

A great viral campaign by Bristol, Hatch, and Breathe. World class, really. It achieves the desired effect of getting people to pass around the url to give their friends and colleagues a quick chuckle. The campaign was implemented in Boston, Toronto, Calgary, and Ottawa. On Tuesday of last week, 200 pomegranates (the fruit, not the phone) containing the url (pomegranatephone.com) were passed around to people by street teams in Boston, Ottawa, and Toronto during their morning commute.

Yet, there appears to be a disconnect from the Pom site and the site containing the client’s message. It’s as if two different companies were hired, one for the flashy viral campaign, and another for the Come To Life mini-site.

The Message:

Here is where it gets tricky. Critics of this campaign point to how the message is hard to locate in this viral. Even when you do get to the mini-site containing the video clips that are meant to pitch Nova Scotia to the target market, there appears to be a disconnect between the demographic target of the videos and the demographic target of the Pom’s viral.

The Pom’s viral appeals to a tech-savvy younger demographic that spends a lot of time on the internet and enjoys passing around virals. Other demographics that spend a lot of time on the internet and pass around junk mail and viral videos are employees, stay at home parents, and teenagers without much to do.

Yet, Bristol notes that the key demographic they are after is “influencers and business leaders in key markets”, a group that usually stays on top of trends and the latest in technology.

Bristol is correct in that influencers and business leaders stay on top of technology and trends. However, perhaps a fatal flaw here is that the Pom phone is neither a new technology nor a trend, so it would be of little interest to business leaders to visit the site or forward to their contacts. It is just a gag site, and we have already established who is attracted to gag sites. Leaders and influencers are too busy leading and influencing to spend time checking out gag sites.

So, ultimately, the main visitors that ended up on the site were teenagers from around the world, and expat young professionals who out-migrated from Nova Scotia seeking opportunities in other Canadian or international cities. They clicked, they chuckled, some sent it to their friends.

Some followed the viral into the Nova Scotia Come To Life message, and were disappointed. The video testimonials mainly showcase entrepreneurs, doctors, and enterprises. No representative age group was showcased doing the things these expats fled the province to do elsewhere. This brings us to the third and final component of this campaign.

The product:

Regardless of how flashy the packaging is, the sale ultimately relies on the product itself. Does the product deliver as advertised? Is it reliable? Ultimately, the expat demographic left Nova Scotia for a reason. They are aware of the challenges, and are in touch with the motherland enough to know if these challenges have been overcome by the province/city or not.

So, you want people to ‘Come To Life’ in Nova Scotia? Many believe all Nova Scotia has to do is actually provide the product they are peddling, not just market a false image with pretty packaging and slick marketing. What if HRM City Council actually spent time implementing this fantastic 5-year Economic Strategy they came up with in 2005?

I will leave you with this MSN conversation between me and one such expat that might shed light on what I mean (look! He is using technology too!)

Jeff Lohnes graduated from Saint Mary’s University with an excellent record in student leadership and community involvement. Shortly after, he left for Toronto, where he currently works for the National Speakers Bureau as a Youth Market specialist.

And so participating Torontonians descended on the TTC yesterday, and proceeded to casually remove their pants and ride the train. The story appeared on the Toronto Sun today.

The requirements for participation were simple:

1) Willing to take pants off on subway
2) Able to keep a straight face about it

The Parisien artist handcrafts his shoes under the label Ndeur. The line ranges from soaring pumps to old-school high-tops and are fashioned using a canvas of vintage leather footwear, on which he doodles street-art-inspired scenes with oil-based paints.

The effect is fresh – a stylistic palate cleanser after the bland taste of your same-old, overpriced, black pumps.

And it seems we’re not alone in this opinion. In the short time since his introduction into streetwear boutique The Rage (13 Kensignton Avenue, Toronto, ON, Canada) Missaien has been raved about in several publications and included in Vans Shoe show in Toronto.

To add to the mystique of owning your own wearable piece of shoe-art, all of Missiaen’s works are one-of-a-kind. On The Rage’s Etsy site, you enter your feet measurements and style requests for hand-tailored effect. They’re also reasonably priced – from $120 – $180 – so the savvy shoe-ophiles among us will have no trouble chalking this one up to a necessary cultural investment.

(By L.Harper via thecoolhunter.net)

Kick Media is the first and only provider of LCD digital screen advertising inside limousines and taxis exclusively servicing the Halifax Stanfield International Airport in Nova Scotia, Canada. The advertising channel is ideal for businesses that target business, tourism, and general travel passengers.

Kick Media is working closely with the Halifax International Airport Authority (HIAA) to ensure that airport passengers receive a quality travel experience. Airport taxis/limos will display relevant tourism and travel information alongside a number of ads for products and services that maybe of interest to the passenger.

This new innovative advertising channel is receiving a lot of interest from hotels, restaurants, tour providers, theaters, shopping malls, retailers, and other businesses interested in limo/taxi-riding airport travelers. Advertising and marketing agencies in Halifax are also beginning to add this medium to their roster of ad-placement offerings to their clients. Digital mediums in airport vehicles offer rich media capabilities (video, animated graphics, etc.) and a captured audience (30 minutes average trip time between the city and the airport).

Taxi advertising is popular in cities like Toronto, Montreal, and Calgary. However, the extent of advertising has been mainly restricted to the outside of the taxi, with in-cab advertising being limited to print-ads/posters. However, recent upgrades by the Toronto-based company ‘Cabads’ ntroduces LCD advertising inside taxis, in a movement similar to the recent decision by the New York City taxi authority to outfit city cabs with LCD screens that offer visitor information via touch-screen interactivity, in addition to available ad-space for revenue generation.

Kick Media in Halifax will be entering the market as the trend begins to gain popularity in Canada, and potential advertisers become more aware of the proposed medium.

Does this depict an online dating experience that you or someone you know might have had?

Agency: Zig, Toronto
Creative Director: Martin Beauvais
Art Directors: Craig Ferguson, Laura Rogers
Copywriters: Steven Barr, Melanie Hurst
Music/Sound Design: Mr. Tunes, Elliot Fienber

Evolution was featured in IssmatBlog a while ago, along with one of the masterminds behind the Dove Campaign For Real Beauty and the supplier of its realistic models: Ben Barry.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3eihluKwRo0

Agency: Ogilvy Toronto
Creative Directors: Janet Kestin, Nancy Vonk
ACD/Writers: Tim Piper, Mike Kirkland
Production Companies: Worldwide Productions, Miami; Steam Films Canada, Toronto
Director: Tim Piper
Sound design: Vapor, Toronto

Did anyone see the new TV spots for Viagra, featuring a couple of people talking gibberish with the word ‘Viagra’ intermittently inserted into their conversation? The ads are currently playing in Canada only, but Alex Brenson of the NY Times caught one and commented on it.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/v/ExQKZKnk6rA]

The made up language is more than simply a creative brainstorm by the Toronto Agency ‘Taxi‘. In Canada and the US, pharmaceutical companies can avoid mentioning side effects in their advertisements as long as the commercial has no mention of what the drug actually does. These ads are referred to as ‘Reminder ads’. Pfizer has been able to get around this issue with a number of campaigns that rely on the fact that users of Viagra already know what it’s for, and so Pfizer can get around the advertising rules by making up a gibberish language that insinuates what the two mid-aged characters are speaking of, but not really say it out loud.

Similar constraints affect the marketing of Viagra in the Middle East, albeit largely cultural. Take a look at the campaign below from JWT‘s Kuwait office. (Click the image below to enlarge).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d57hQdM9PbM

By: DraftFCB, Toronto. via The Ad Show.

Another WWF creative ad is below. Where do they get the money to pay for this kind of work? Click the image below to see the full print ad.

Agency: BBDO Guerrero Ortega, Makati City.
Creative Director: David Guerrero
Art Director: Joel Limchoc, Joni Caparas
Copywriter: Simon Welsh, David Guerrero
Photographer: Dindo Villaester

Via Adgoodness.