Volunteering for Rhianna

March 14, 2010 - 9:37 AM by David · 1 Comment
Filed under: A New Reality, Business, General, Israeliness, Life, Music, Pop Culture, Social Justice 

Even a seemingly ‘everybody wins’ scenario can hit some snags when thrust into the realities of Israeli life. Take, for example, the upcoming concert at Jaffa’s Bloomfield Stadium by R&B sensation Rhianna.

The concert’s promoter and its sponsor, cell phone provider Orange, have hooked up with the international organization Rockcorps, which has successfully galvanized thousands of young music fans into performing community volunteer projects, by offering tickets to shows by artists like Lady Ga Ga, Nelly and Akon in the US and England to youth who sign up for and carry out four hours of volunteer work.

Tickets to Rhianna’s show cannot be obtained through normal means – you can’t buy them – you have to be between 16-25 years old and you have to sign up on a special Orange Rockcorps Web site for one of the hundred or so volunteer projects they list and then get authorization that you carried out your task. The projects listed on the Orange Web site include working in Keren Kayemet forests clearing brush or painting pathway marks, distributing food at soup kitchens and sorting donated clothes.

It sounds like a splendid idea that will benefit everyone involved, until you realize that there’s a hefty percentage of Israelis in that age group who are currently serving in the IDF. According to some soldiers, and their moms, the policy is unfairly discriminating against them, as their free time is severely curtailed by their military assignments.

“Most of the people in this country between the ages of 18-25 are soldiers and a great portion are soldiers living on bases. This is completely unfair to them,” said Sharon Bar-Lev, a Kfar Saba resident whose daughter, a diehard Rhianna fan, is currently serving in the IDF.

“I would like to know how soldiers, who come home once every two weeks, and leave their base around noon on a Friday, can possibly do four hours of community service and make it home before Shabbat, using public transportation to arrive at the volunteer site and from there back home.”

Bar-Lev added that she was more than willing to buy a ticket for her daughter to see Rhianna, but a call to the ticket office confirmed that no tickets were being sold to the show.

Bar- Lev hopes her grassroots campaign will get the policy changed. Just last week, frustrated Metallica fan Tal Mussman was able to force promoters of the the American hard rock band to significantly lower prices for the group’s Ramat Gan show by launching a page on Facebook calling on fans to boycott the show.

While applauding the efforts of Rockcorps and Orange, Bar-Lev said that her daughter and other Rhianna fans serving in the army shouldn’t be penalized for doing their jobs.

“Isn’t my daughter giving two years of her life to serve in the IDF enough of a volunteer project?”

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Nostalgia Sunday – The day Cellcom launched

December 13, 2009 - 10:04 PM by Rachel Neiman · 1 Comment
Filed under: Business, General, History and Culture, Israeliness, Life, Nostalgia Sunday, Pop Culture, Technology 

Cellcom_Jpost_Dec_28_1994We stayed up till past midnight last week to witness the first launching of iPhone in Israel . And, like the proverbial lead balloon that was Y2K, we waited… and waited… and nothing happened.

Apple importer iDigital put a good amount of effort into creating a special website with a slick-looking countdown clock and promises of streaming video broadcasts live from their store in the Dizengoff Center. But the Twitter feeds from those standing on line should have tipped us off. “There’s more photographers here than customers,” one person Tweeted. “There’s only about 40-50 people standing in line,” posted another. The online video only confirmed their reports: an airy atmosphere with plenty of room to move around. No pushing. No shoving. No thundering hordes.

Let me just state for the record (although everyone knows) that the main reason why the iPhone launch failed to generate any excitement was that anyone in this country who wants an iPhone already has one. This is a country of gear-heads and gadget freaks. Little obstacles like local cellular companies not providing service or support did not stop anyone over the past two years from buying the coveted device abroad and having it hacked, cracked and operational within hours of landing at Ben Gurion Airport.

How things have changed from the days when it took years of being on a waiting list before being assigned a landline by the state-run Israel Telephone Company! The days when you had to rely on being in your neighbors’ good graces if you wanted to make or receive a phone call. The days when, if you were lucky enough to inherit a line, you had to bring the phone company your grandmother’s death certificate and pay hundreds of lira in installation fees just to keep an already-installed line.

The creation of semi-privatized phone company Bezeq in 1985 did little to change the situation, except that phone company clerks were now free to tell any customer complaining about their inefficiency, “We are Bezeq. We are efficient now.”

Phew! That little trip down memory lane just raised my blood pressure a good 10 points. And not just mine but the rest of the population who, enterprising as always, figured out a way to bypass the phone company by leapfrogging technology. Already comfortable with walkie-talkies from their army service, by the mid-1980s, Israelis executives were happy to pay exorbitant sums to Pele-phone for the use of heavy-as-a-brick Motorola cell phones. More accurately put, they were happy to have their employers pay.

And then, in 1994, the Ministry of Communications announced it would license a second cellular phone company, thus introducing competition into the field and hopefully lowering prices. On December 28, 1994, the day that Cellcom opened its store in the Dizengoff Center – yes, the very same – I was sent, as a junior business reporter for the Jerusalem Post, to cover the event.

At 9:00am, people were already crowding the entrance. Cellcom had assigned a bevy of pretty girls to hand out red roses to the crowd. Had they done any realistic market research, they would have assigned a battery of security guards armed with clubs and mace. Because every small businessman, man-with-a-van, man-with-a-plan — not to mention pimp, drug dealer and any other person in need of a phone device you can use while running – showed up. And they were not in the mood for flowers. Thinking that I was handing out numbers to stand in line, a few gentlemen pushed me into a corner and tore my notebook out of my hands, then threw it back in disgust when they realized I wasn’t. Although service at that point was limited only to Tel Aviv, Cellcom sold out every device in a matter of hours.

Now that was a launch. The air was electric because it was a true revolution in communications in a budding free market economy, plus you might have gotten knifed if you weren’t careful. It was great. I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.

With the advent of relatively cheap cell phone service, the public even forgave Cellcom a few weeks later when there was a product recall and thousands of devices had to have a chip replaced. Cellcom’s very savvy PR man Nissan Balaban advised the company not to cover-up the problem but to face it head on. This time they got their demographic right: a massive repair event was held at the Ramat Gan soccer stadium, there was food and drink, everyone’s phone was fixed and no one got hurt.

Today there are two cell phones for every one Israeli, three and a half cellular phone service providers, and no one ever need knock on the neighbors’ door to make a phone call. Public phones are almost non-existent. So pity not the poor iPhone importer – eventually they’ll lower their (over)price to a competitive one and we’ll have three cell phone devices for everyone.

For more information, there is a nice article in Wikipedia about the history of Communications in Israel.

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Israelis ignore debut of iPhones, world ends

December 9, 2009 - 12:20 PM by David · 1 Comment
Filed under: A New Reality, Business, General, Israeliness, Life, Technology 

iPhone_israelTwo years after it was launched in the US and Europe, the wildly popular Apple iPhone is hitting the Israeli market this week.

All three of Israel’s main cellular providers – Partner Communications (Orange), Cellcom Israel and Pelephone Communications – signed deals to distribute the iPhone with Apple’s official representative in Israel, iDigital Ltd. Each of the carriers is being required to buy 80,000 iPhones to resell, which means that there’s going to be alot of Israelis – who are already world leaders in per capita cell phone usage – walking around with the damn things in the near future.

Polls reported in the Israeli financial media showed that nearly 25 percent of Israeli cellular users want an iPhone, and that nearly 30 percent would switch to a different provider if theirs didn’t offer it. In Israel, the iPhone was set to retail for NIS 2,800 (about $735), but each provider was expected to subsidize NIS 2,000 ($525) of that amount. Customers would pay NIS 800 for the phone, be charged a monthly iPhone fee of NIS 150, and pay for monthly airtime and data packages.

At the mall inside Jerusalem’s Central Bus station, the Cellcom store was waiting for a deluge of customers when the iPhone went on sale at midnight on Wednesday morning. Salesman Marc Frankel told The Jerusalem Post that there has been substantial advance interest in buying the iPhone.

“Absolutely, we already have a list full of names of people who are ordering the iPhone once we have it,” Frankel said. “There has always been an interest in the iPhone, and we expect there to be a lot more names to add to that list.”

According to some reports, there are already 10,000 iPhone users in Israel, who bought their phones abroad. The deliberations in Apple about marketing the phone here were covered nicely earlier this year in a post by Harry.

For some reason, Cellcome received a 24-hour jump on Pelephone and Orange where it will only be sold from Thursday morning. iDigital, which opened the first Apple store in the Ramat Aviv Mall last year, will sell the iPhones at Dizengoff Center in Tel Aviv on Thursday and launch a concept store at Haifa’s Grand Canyon Mall at the end of the month.

After a wait of two years, Israelis are evidently going to take to this latest communication device with a vengeance and enthusiasm that is totally in character.

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Freebies

July 16, 2008 - 1:53 PM by Jessica · Leave a Comment
Filed under: A New Reality, Business, General, Immigrant Moments, Israeliness 

In the 14 years I’ve lived in Israel, which isn’t a very long time compared to some, I’m consistently amazed by the increasing sophistication of product placement in this country. Granted, there are a few other things to be impressed by, whether it’s the Silicon Wadi, medical advances or perhaps other items of a higher moral standard.

But when you’re coming from a place that practically created product placement — whether it was the plastic Coke cups from which we slurped our 7-11 Slurpees or the Tropicana orange juice t-shirts that were available through a mail-rebate offer — to go live somewhere that doesn’t know from touting its products, well, it’s just missing some flavor.

So you can imagine the pleasure and pride I felt at two recent events where different companies used the opportunity to tout their products in a fairly creative, somewhat useful manner. The first was at the opening event of the Jerusalem Film Festival, where each attendee received a hot cup from Nescafe, including packets of the all-important Nes coffee packets inside. I’m not a particular fan of drinking ‘Nes,’ and would have much preferred another of the light fleece blankets that Pelephone handed out last year, but I could appreciate the effort.

The next handout was a few nights later, at another film festival event, one of the free outdoor movies at Jerusalem’s old train station. After getting our free tickets, my friend noticed the Orange mobile phone posters telling customer to punch in the word ‘Enjoy’ and send it to 999 for a treat from the company. With great excitement and anticipation, I approached the stand and was handed my gift in an Orange bag. Could it be a blanket? But no. It was a sweet, slightly edgy gray teddy bear. Perhaps useful as a cushion while watching The Band’s Visit from the hard, stadium-style seats and certainly a welcome collection to my stepdaughter’s stuffed animal collection. Yet nothing like the white Bezeq-branded cushions we were given years back at a Shlomo Artzi concert in Caesarea.

Still. Effort counts. And I’m getting a lot of use out of my complimentary Khalifa pen; received when I purchased my new pair of Teva Naots. So that’s something.

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