Israel Branding 101

Haaretz reports that a British P.R. firm is helping Israel launch its rebranding efforts by year's end. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has spent years trying to fine-tune how Israel's image should be presented to the world.

Richard Cravatts best articulated Israel's need for rebranding:

New products can be positioned from the outset in whatever way the marketer wishes. For existing brands, however, such as countries, a branding effort generally involves a re-positioning effort, which involves redefining the attributes, benefits, and overall image of the brand so that customers see its value-relative to competitors-in different and more positive ways . . . .
The irony is that Israel's founding brand story, that of a tiny, plucky new nation emerging from the ashes of the Holocaust, defeating an Arab onslaught, and bringing bloom to the barren desert, was a powerful, resonant image for the first 20 years of the State's existence. That position has effectively been pre-empted by the Palestinian cause now, as they have assumed the victim role and their own struggle for nationhood and self-determination has eclipsed that of Israel and has garnered wide-ranging sympathy.

In other words, Israel's image -- to an excessive degree -- has been defined by the Arabs and the media. But the Mideast conflict, Israel's struggle to survive, only represents one side of the country. There are many positive facets to Israel that the world can identify with if given a chance: resiliency and can-do optimism, rich cultural diversity, numerous technological achievements, and of course, the cradle of monotheism, to name a few.

Before discounting Israel's rebranding campaign, consider the origins of what may be the most successful rebranding effort of our generation:

A film short called The Big Apple came out in 1938, with an all-Black cast featuring Herbert “Whitey” White’s Lindy Hoppers, Harlem’s top ballroom dancers in the Swing Era. In a book published the same year, bandleader Cab Calloway used the phrase "Big Apple" to mean "the big town, the main stem, Harlem." Anyone who loved the city would have readily agreed with Jack FitzGerald: “There's only one Big Apple. That's New York."
The term had grown stale and was in fact generally forgotten by the 1970s. Then Charles Gillett, head of the New York Convention & Visitors Bureau, got the idea of reviving it. The agency was desperately trying to attract tourists to the town Mayor John Lindsay had dubbed “Fun City,” but which had become better-known for its blackouts, strikes, street crime and occasional riots. What could be a more wholesome symbol of renewal than a plump red apple?

Nation branding isn't only about boosting tourism. It's about the associations made when people around the world hear the name "Israel." And as Haskell Nussbaum argues, Israel's supporters have a role to play in branding efforts too.

Posted at 11:54 AM