Ido Aharoni--Marketing Israel

Ido Aharoni, Head of Israel's Brand Management Team at Foreign Minestry

Ido Aharoni's presentation was very successful because it was very well organized, goal oriented, defined a problem, and showed feasible solutions. It was not simply interesting in terms of learning about Israel but in terms of analyzing marketing. There is a fairly new phenomena of actually trying to brand places. Aharoni was first inspired by the branding of New York City in the 1970s.

The "I [Love] New York" logo that seems so ubiquitous today was actually the result of a very contrived marketing goal to redesign New York's image (designed by Milton Glaser. http://www.brandchannel.com/features_profile.asp?pr_id=328 ) At the time, NYC was far from the glamorous "Big Apple" that we imagine today in the epicenter of the world. That city, at the time, was Paris, while New York was "loved" little by residents and tourists. The goal was to change the perception of New York and bring other Americans to New York to visit (at the time it was not much of a tourist destination,) and eventually that image would permeate overseas. As we can see, the success was astounding! First of all, the ubiquity of "I love New York" and "The Big Apple" in themselves show that the campaign was successful in its far reach and its durabilty, and the fact that the images that we associate with both are positive tells us tat the campaign effectively attained its goal.

So what is branding?
You cannot create a brand logo without also taking an action to create a real life association (otherwise it is sort of like green washing.) If you are going to change the brand, you must change the product, and vice versa.

Some objects already have an association.

BRAZIL=FUN: When we think of Brazil, what are our immediate associations? The beach, Carnival, parties, bikinis, bright colors...many of our immediate associations tend to be possitive. Brazil is the most dangerous tourist destination in the world. This means that the overall expactation is high while the real life payoff is low.

ISRAEL=DANGER: Israel is associated with a war zone. People associate very little in addition; they tend not to even consider culture, food, dance, beach, nightlife, or investment opportunities. So in the cae of Israel, expectation is low while in real life the pay back is high.

Sociological Experiment
The experiment took place in the US, and the goal was to study people's perception's of countries. On numerous trials, about 10 people in a conference room were asked various questions. One question: Imagine that the world is one neighborhood, with each house representing a nation. You are invited to several house parties. When I tell you which house you are invited to, list off all of the associations that come to your head to describe what the party will be like.
Italy: Food, wine, family, relaxation, cards, welcoming, stay a long time, leave reluctantly
(several other examples of countries at random before the groups finally arrives to...)
Israel: Cement, wire, not welcoming, angry men, no women, unsafe, leave quickly, conservative. There was never any color association, no interior descriptions, and overall absolutely no descriptions at all of culture. Woah! Totally at odds with reality! Perception does not match reality. In perception, war topics are 100% of Israel. Thus, Aharoni's goal must be to show other sides of Israel so that war becomes a small, accurately sized piece of a big puzzle in our mind.

Interestingly, while this negative, war zone perception was seen across the board in testing, 7 to 1 in the US support Israel. So while abstractly we support Israel, we would never want to go there. Also, perception of Israel changes with demographics: the older (55+) age group with 100k+ income are the most supportive of Israel. The younger (18-39) age group are the least supportive of Israel, probably because they have no association with the pre '68 Israel. This is a serious problem in the eyes of marketing Israel because this younger group is the group most liekly to spend capital and invest.

New Quest to Brand Israel
Aharoni's goal is to rebrand Israel as was done in New York. Recently, one example is a Tel Aviv skyline exhibit that began to travel around to cities worldwide: a long strip of Tel Aviv skyline is accompanied with sand and a bar, to show an attraction of Tel Aviv.

This presentation was very interesting, in addition to the presentation of it, because it made me more conscious of how I will portray Israel in the US. If someone asks me about the conflict as their first question, perhaps first I should bring up: Israel's interesting environmental solutions (those being solar water heaters, battery run cars, desalinization, and extra efficient crop watering systems;) Kibbutzim, the movement, and the state of the kibbutz today; the Mediterranean; the Dead Sea; the history of Masada; Cuban Salsa Mondays at Universities; the conflict between secular and orthodox Israel; the culture of extended travel; the story of Ethiopian Israelis; fruit juice; cheese; culture of brotherhood that makes hitchhiking completely normal; start up companies...