week&groove – Satellite Song

This week’s track is Satellite Song by Kumisolo feat. O. Lamm. After many world tours with The Konki Duet, this Tokyo-based francophile takes the dive for a solo career with her new album “My love for you is a cheap pop song”. This former love-letter and lo-fi composed with two hands on an tiny casio, quickly became a big hit in the electro pop, pop, three-times pop underground scene.

This track is a gigantic rainbow of desires, moods and tempos altogether reflected in the distorted mirror of the 80′s.

This week& visual is a special desktop wallpaper (1920x1200px) that you can enjoy while listening to Kumisolo. Or not. Click on the image to download the high-resolution file.

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Satellite Song – Kumisolo feat. O. Lamm

week&groove‘s mailing list is elastic. To be added, please send me your email addresses and the ones of potential groovers you may know.

Interested groovers, send “I wanna groove” to weekendgroove@zalum.net

week&groove is a weekly ritual brought to you by bruzdesign

week&groove encourages you to purchase the albums of the artists you like.

week&groove – Consequences

This week’s track is Consequences by Dajla feat. Dr. Madd Vibe. Dajla is one of the few French singers able to match American soul artists. Her coming-back album “The meaning of life” (2009) is a visionary blend of cosmic soul, urban blues, afro-funk and electro-hip hop. The success of this album is due to her spiritual, musical and human encounters all over the globe. Angelo Moore (aka Dr. Madd Vibe) is a versatile artist from L.A. who enjoys fluctuating between poetry, performance art and music. Together, they gave birth to this harmonious “AfroDelic Soul” creation in which magic, dream and reality become one.

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Consequences – Dajla feat. Dr. Madd Vibe

week&groove‘s mailing list is elastic. To be added, please send me your email addresses and the ones of potential groovers you may know.

Interested groovers, send “I wanna groove” to weekendgroove@zalum.net

week&groove is a weekly ritual brought to you by bruzdesign

week&groove encourages you to purchase the albums of the artists you like.

You want to know more about Social Media?

Social Media Exchange (SMEX) is organizing Lebanon’s first dialogue between local grantees and representatives from major donor organizations about the role of social media in civil society in Lebanon and the Middle East tomorrow, on Saturday November 21 from 2:30 pm to 5:30 pm in their offices in Beirut.

“President Barack Obama called for a ‘new beginning’ in America’s relationship with the Muslim world during his historic speech in Cairo in June. Speaking in Morocco earlier this month, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton signalled the US would turn to the web to reach this goal, announcing a $5m initiative to ‘empower grassroots civil society organizations’ by helping them use digital technology.”

With this foray into ‘social media for social change’, the US government is demonstrating that the internet will be at the center of foreign aid and development policy in the years to come and funding opportunities are on the horizon for civil society and non-profit organizations in the region.

What are the real opportunities for organizations in Lebanon and the Middle East and how social media tools are already being used?

Many practitioners will be talking about their projects and the problems they encounter working with online technology in a low-bandwidth environment explaining whether social media really can help empower us and our communities.

Register or view the entire press release.

week&groove – Feel The Same

This week’s track is Feel The Same by Groove Armada feat. Angie Stone. This is what happens when you fuse the core of House music, Downtempo and Soul. Groove Armada is probably best known to the mainstream public for producing music that have featured in numerous advertising campaigns, movies and computer games. They also happen to be one of my favorite bands. Angie Stone (“Wish I Didn’t Miss You”, 2002) is an American R&B and Soul singer-songwriter with a spectacular Deep House voice.
This song is a bonus track that was released on the limited edition package of the GA’s 2007 album “Soundboy Rock”. It is an awesome crowd-teaser track that can’t stop me from jiggling my head when I play it. No matter when. No matter where.

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Feel The Same – Groove Armada feat. Angie Stone

week&groove‘s mailing list is elastic. To be added, please send me your email addresses and the ones of potential groovers you may know.

Interested groovers, send “I wanna groove” to weekendgroove@zalum.net

week&groove is a weekly ritual brought to you by bruzdesign

week&groove encourages you to purchase the albums of the artists you like.

Online Marketing and Advertising: Why is it growing slowly in Lebanon?

Online advertising is still in double digit growth worldwide: after a 19% growth in 2008 and a 9% growth in 2009 (yes it is due to the crisis and NOT to the market saturation) worldwide online advertising growth is expected to reach 11% in 2010 (according to e-Marketer). So yes, the spending on online advertising is very healthy ($64.69 billion).

Online advertising and communication include many frameworks. Whether it is to create a website, an online newsletter, to launch banners on many existing online sources (newsmagazines, diverse websites, social networks…) or to monitor what is being said about your brand on social media and to engage online communities in your brand’s (or company’s) project, online media are very efficient (if not the MOST efficient) when to comes to acknowledging reputation (by mastering word-of-mouth), targeting people according to their interests, and measuring the impact of your campaign, especially for small businesses (contrary to what one may think)

But why are we still behind in Lebanon?

There are about 1 570 000 internet users in Lebanon today (for a population of 4 million people) against 950 000 in 2007 according to Internet World Stats. Despite this growth of 65%, the online advertising market is still behind especially compared to other forms of advertising. It appears that one of the main reasons comes from the advertising agencies themselves that are still reticent which is why they do not always include an online section part of the global strategies they sell to their clients.

Why? Simply because there are two types of clients: the ones who have caught the importance of being present online, because their marketing executives are young and they were born with the digital era, and the ones who still don’t see the interest in converting to these new forms of marketing because the traditional means are enough for them. They do not understand that internet is the unique mass media allowing a direct interaction between the brands and their consumers. Will all lebanese based advertising agencies will be able to sell cross-media campaigns to their clients when it is the right thing to do?

The main obstacle to an unstoppable growth of online advertising strategies in Lebanon is essentially (and unfortunately) structural. It comes, and it is no surprise for anyone, from the underdeveloped telecommunications facilities. Without the appropriate infrastructure, internet will never become common practice whether it is for the ad agencies, their clients or the consumers.

The explosion of the number of Lebanese on social networks such as Facebook and Twitter  and the emergence of bloggers and other digital influencers talking about subjects other than politics as well as the majority of newsmagazines going (or growing) online is, without any doubt, the main signal that the Lebanese audience is ready, not only for online advertising, but most certainly for a web 2.0 revolution.

Let’s just hope that broadband won’t be arriving very late…

week&groove – Lama’s Dead

Here’s the concept: Every Friday, we will propose a track that will stimulate your iTunes and other media players. Hip, groovy, folky. Not particularly recent but rather unrevealed.

We will also disclose a visual that I shaped during this week. Impromptu, random, graphic. Not particularly relevant, just capricious.

This week’s track is Lama’s Dead by Karma. A 100% Lebanese song written and composed by Zeid Hamdan in homage to a friend of his who became addicted to heroin. It depicts the failure of her beloved ones as well as the solitude of addicts. Fortunately, Lama didn’t die. The singer Karma is a friend of mine and a great graphic designer. She never considered singing as a career, but I strongly recommend her to seriously start thinking about it. Now.

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Lama’s Dead – Karma 

week&groove‘s mailing list is elastic. To be added, please send me your email addresses and the ones of potential groovers you may know.

Interested groovers, send “I wanna groove” to weekendgroove@zalum.net

week&groove is a weekly ritual brought to you by bruzdesign

week&groove encourages you to purchase the albums of the artists you like.

Kibot is my new pal

I love this guy!!

Kibot is fun, smart, creative. You can check out his adventures on his blog!

Here are some of my favorites:

Open Letter from a very angry Lebanese to Oprah Winfrey

Dear Oprah,

You should’ve researched your subject before the show. You should’ve researched Lebanese identity.

How dare you stereotype Lebanon like that? A very conservative country ‘al.

How can you not get it? How don’t you see it? We are THE people who can party!!!! Ask anyone! Me and my friends, we can drink up to 17 bottles of champagne every night. We can get from the beach to the ski resorts in 40 minutes. Our girls are the most beautiful on earth, (we train them in beauty salons since the age of 4).

This is what you should be talking about. How dare you mention secondary, non-representative issues to stereotype us.

It doesn’t matter that we have a nonexistent government, illegal armed forces, lack of running water or electricity, shitty internet connection, more than half the population living in poverty, the humongous national debt, the nationwide corruption, the constant threat of a regional war on our soil… what matters is, WE CAN STILL PARTY!!! That’s what you should be giving us credit for. How many people do you know who can simply make abstraction of all their problems just by getting wasted? Really, how many?

So, out of respect for our accomplishment of being party animals, you should refrain from ever mentioning any other issue concerning our country. If you don’t comply, we can mobilize over 20, 000 people on a Facebook group. We have the power to do it, and we won’t hold back.

A Proud Angry Lebanese Party Animal