It’s in your hands

March 30, 2009 - 10:42 AM by Nicky · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Environment, General, Movies, Pop Culture, design 

Well, if Rafael’s Bollywood advertisement made you give up hope that Israelis could ever do marketing, then hopefully this advert will make you think again.

Created free by the ad agency, Shalmor Avnon Amichay/Young & Rubican for EcoOcean, a non-profit organization dedicated to marine education, it’s a touching but simple advert that gets its environmental message – about saving Israel’s turtles – across cleanly and powerfully.

The Hebrew message at the end: “Life is in your hands.”

No baby turtles were hurt during the shooting of this video.

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Beijing gets an Israeli tourist office

March 13, 2009 - 9:09 AM by Harry · 1 Comment
Filed under: A New Reality, Business, General, History and Culture, Politics, Travel 

The Beijing skylineIsraeli-style Falafel can be found in far-reaching places like Amsterdam and Mumbai, but that doesn’t mean that everyone the world over who’s enjoying a taste of Israel is interested in coming on over to check out the real thing.

And with the standard mechanisms for finding visitors to Israel running into trouble thanks to the global economic slowdown (foreign tourist hotel occupancy down by 13% during the final quarter of 2008, according to Haaretz), the Tourism Ministry is aggressively going after new sectors.

Last week, the Tourism Ministry opened its 15th office currently in operation outside of Israel, this time in Beijing (pictured). The office augments an active Israeli embassy in Beijing, which already serves as an active center for outreach to the Chinese, largely by co-sponsoring cultural events. But the Tourism Ministry outpost should have plenty to do as well, with projects including compiling and publishing tourism guidebooks to Israel in Chinese, assisting the Israeli private sector with marketing packages to Chinese audiences, liaising with Chinese wholesalers interested in selling Israel trips, and arranging introductory visits for Chinese tourism industry leaders and media types.

On the occasion of the opening, Tourism Minister Ruhama Avraham-Balila released a statement:

“During the last decade, China’s outgoing tourist market has demonstrated rapid growth and it is still considered to have significant growth potential. The Tourism Ministry has made plans to realize this potential once the global economic crisis has passed and global tourism industry has recovered – both in terms of marketing and in the removal of obstacles, receiving tourists and welcoming them in Israel.”

It’s all part of the new tourism partnership between China and Israel, formalized this past fall. As I wrote back then….

Officials at the Israeli Ministry of Tourism ought to be drooling over this potential, given that the Chinese populace is currently estimated to be numbered at well over 1.3 individuals. So far, 2008 has shown a 45% increase in Chinese tourist arrivals here, and Israeli officials are aiming for a grand total of 15,000 Chinese visitors by the end of December.

It’s estimated that about 50 million Chinese tour in Israel’s neck of the woods, but very few of these actually make it to Israel. “We need to prepare to absorb some of that,” Israeli Tourism Minister Ruhama Avraham-Balila announced at a press conference in China in early September.

The potential is being sought after further here in Israel as well, with last week also marking the launch of a Chinese-language course for Israeli tour guides, with 40 participants studying cultural idiosyncrasies and various dialects for over five months.

Image courtesy Jonas in China from Flickr under a Creative Commons license.

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Israeli arms dealer goes Bollywood – uh oh

March 11, 2009 - 2:37 PM by Nicky · 9 Comments
Filed under: Blogging, Business, General, Movies 

Sometimes, just now and again, a YouTube video comes along that is so crummy, that it’s almost a masterpiece. Dubbed the worst marketing movie ever made by the blogosphere, an honor it undoubtedly deserves, this piece by Rafael Advanced Defense Systems has got to be one of the most ill advised advertisements an Israeli company has ever made.

Undoubtedly, if you’re a defense company it must be hard to keep coming up with new and interesting ways to sell your products. I mean how many ways can you sell a missile?

Rafael execs decided they had to do something different, and so for last month’s Aero India 2009 show, they took their weapons, sprinkled them liberally with a seasoning of Bollywood and voila! A Bollywood-style movie featuring a man (Israel), and four dancing girls (India) in full Bollywood costumes dancing between a range of Rafael’s phallic shaped missiles.

I guess most missiles are shaped like this, but it’s not usually something you think about until you see men and women skipping suggestively between them.

The women sings: “I need to feel safe and sheltered. Security and protection. Commitment and perfection. Defense and dedication.” And the man chimes in: “I promise to defend you, fulfill your expectations. Shield you and support you. Meet my obligations.”

And the unforgettable chorus to this meaningful exchange? “Dinga dinga dee…”

Oh dear, oh dear.

The truth is Israel’s defense relationship with India is pretty darn strong these days – Israel recently became the country’s main defense supplier. And the government-owned Rafael is in a particularly good position. Just last August Rafael and Israel’s IAI signed a joint $2.5 billion deal with the Indian Ministry of Defense.

After a period of circling one another tentatively, the two countries have realized they have much in common – particularly in the wake of the Mumbai terror attack last November.

But that still leaves us with a question. Whatever possessed Rafael to make this movie? It’s a question Saurabh Joshi of the Web site StratPost asked a company representative at the Rafael stall. He was told that the video was intended to “help build familiarity between India and Israel and Rafael.”

Not everyone sees it like that. On Wired’s Danger room blog, Noah Shachtman called it “the most atrocious defense video of all time.” While on the blog DEW line, Stephen Trimble, called it a “catastrophic collision of Bollywood and the arms industry, and dared his readers to watch the video “and, if you’re able, immediately erase the awful tune from your brain.”

It’s harder than you think. Dinga dinga dee.

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