The BL[OZ]

When the journey takes an unexpected turn

Understanding limitations and optimizing capabilities

Challenging the norms

It’s not about overstepping the bounds of the approved claims, but we also don’t want to take a step backward in the name of conservatism.

Structured and managed conflicts are an opportunity

Play smart

If you’ve nodded your head while reading this it’s time for us to talk.

Nirit Elyovich, MBA VP Strategy Contact Us

Brand Strategies Tailored for Healthcare Companies Moran Faibish Global Marketing and Business Development Strategist Read more

But first, a disclaimer: My name is Rivi, and I'm a proud Zionist (I believe in the Jews' right to self-determine in their ancestral homeland).

In recent years, while immersed in the online world of Hasbara, I’ve witnessed firsthand the challenges of representing Israel's narrative in a vast digital landscape. With Jews comprising just 0.2% of the global population, our voice can easily be drowned out in the maelstrom of social media.

This blog post examines a fascinating case study in digital activism: how a simple fruit emoji became a battleground for narrative control. We'll explore the marketing strategies at play and their implications for Israel's online presence. While we analyze these tactics objectively, our goal is to empower pro-Israeli voices in this ever-evolving digital dialogue.

At the end of this blog, you'll find actionable recommendations on supporting content creators who are amplifying Israel's perspective in the online world.

The Roots of a Symbol

As we approach National Watermelon Day on August 3rd, let's slice into a juicy marketing tale that's more complex than meets the eye. It's the story of how a simple fruit emoji became a powerful symbol in one of the world's most enduring conflicts. The roots of this story begin back in the 1960s, when the watermelon, with its colors reminiscent of the Palestinian flag, became a covert symbol of Palestinian identity. Palestinian activists used the watermelon imagery in graffiti and posters, primarily because in 1967, Israel passed a law prohibiting the raising or display of Palestinian flags (which had been canceled, during the Oslo Accords in the 1990s). The watermelon became a symbol of political resistance, and if we fast-forward to today's digital age, this symbol has found new life as an emoji, skillfully wielded by pro-Palestinian activists in their online narratives.

A Clever Marketing Strategy

1. Bypassing Algorithms: By using an innocuous fruit emoji, activists can often fly under the radar of content moderation systems. It's a digital sleight of hand that marketers call "Algospeak."
2. Viral Potential: Emojis are the universal language of the internet. They're easy to use, easy to share, and can convey complex emotions and ideas in a single character. It's virality in its purest form.
3. Continuity of Message: By adapting a historical symbol to modern digital platforms, the pro-Palestinian movement maintains a consistent narrative across generations. It's brand continuity at its finest.

The Israeli Perspective

Marketing Insights from the Emoji Wars This digital tug-of-war offers fascinating insights for marketers:

1. The Power of Symbols: Who knew a fruit could carry so much meaning? It reminds us that in the right context, even the simplest symbols can convey complex messages.
2. The Importance of Proactive Strategies: The pro-Israeli response underscores the need for brands to be vigilant about their symbols and ready to reclaim them if necessary.
3. Authenticity Matters: The most effective responses are those rooted in genuine cultural connections. Israel's agricultural tie to watermelons provides an authentic base for their counter-narrative.
4. David vs. Goliath in the Digital Age: The pro-Palestinian digital presence significantly outnumbers the pro-Israeli one. It's a reminder that in the world of digital marketing, it's not always about who's loudest, yet sometimes it is.

Beyond Emojis: The Real-World Impact

Conclusion: The Power of Digital Symbols

Building a new brand or giving an existing brand a facelift, is a golden opportunity to create a one-of-a-kind standout brand promise that will make a difference in the world. Building a significant brand is complex, but B2B brands bring a whole level of complexity that simply doesn’t exist in the B2C world. Decision-making processes are lengthy, decision-makers come and go, and increasingly, the decision-makers are Gen Y and Gen Z. The road to the end user is paved with importers, distributors, and dealers. The orientation of most of the people you are working with is engineering or sales. Your brand needs to make its way into everyone's hearts on the long and winding road ahead. From time to time, I still hear that "in the business world, people make rational decisions." In my experience, people are people even when they sit in the decision-making chair. Their considerations are professional, business, and personal and the brand needs to touch all these points

1. Be relevant

Before you begin, define your audience. Unlike launching a product line that appeals to distinct customers, a B2B brand speaks to a wide range of audiences – existing and potential customers, employees and candidates, investors, suppliers, opinion leaders, and influencers.

However, you operate in a very specific world, so finetune the audience that interests you and create circles of influence. Who is in the first circle and who is in the more distant circles? The brand needs to speak directly and accurately to members of the first circle and still be relevant to other circles.

To be relevant, you need to know your audience, what their challenges are, and where you can help them deal with their challenges well. To motivate people, we must touch their “operating” buttons, speak their language, and solve the problems that bother them. We want to sell them what they want to buy and not what we want to sell — even if it's the same thing.

2. Build a differentiated value proposition

To build a differentiated value proposition, start with A, B, and C: Assets, Benefits, and Core Values. Assets – What are your biggest assets? What strengths are you most proud of? Make a list of the things you're best at – unique patented technology, people with unique knowledge, exceptional support and service, and more. Make sure that every strength that makes up your list is grounded in reality, and not an aspiration for something you'd like to have. From the list, extract the three most significant strengths. As much as possible, select those that differentiate you from the competition. Benefits –Step into your customers' shoes and think about what they get out of your strengths. This is where you ensure that you provide professional benefits that help them upgrade their professional field; business benefits that contribute to their business performance; and no less important, personal benefits. Ultimately, everything is personal simply — because people want to make sure that choosing you promotes their reputation within the organization. Core Values – Brand values are always important, but even more so in the B2B world. People are an integral part of your value proposition – whoever defines the specifications with the customer, develops, sells, installs or integrates, provides service and support – all these and more bring the brand to life. They must follow a uniform set of values to ensure that they deliver the benefits to the customer and subsequently deliver on the brand promise. If the company was founded recently, the values may be naturally infused into the brand. If the company is alive and kicking, the values are usually passed down over the years. Make sure the values reflect the company's DNA.

There's nothing new under the sun You may find that your competitors have an asset, benefit, or value that appears to be similar to yours. However, the combination of assets, benefits, and values must be unique to your company. That's why starting with unique assets and formulating benefits that address your clients' deep and diverse needs is important.

The more you get to know your clients, the more likely you will produce differentiated benefits. This is another opportunity for differentiation: your founders, owners, and significant employees are the unique spirit that makes your company what it is.

3. Bring inspiration to life with a promise

To make sure your brand inspires you and everyone you meet, go back to your vision. The thing that fascinated you when you started your business or that attracted you to join the company. The reason you get up in the morning and go to work. The North Star lights the way for you, even on days when visibility is poor. Your vision is an ambitious statement that describes what your organization ultimately wants to be. Spoiler alert: you're not supposed to get it, you’re supposed to aspire to reach it. As Aviv Geffen put it, " The moon is so high up there that we can't touch it, and there are some who are still trying.” Your vision is there to lift you high above your daily activities and inspire you.

Building or refreshing a brand is a strategic task

Don’t cut corners. Enjoy the journey as much as the destination. Get as many people involved in the process as possible to make everyone feel a part of it. This is how to make them the best ambassadors for your brand.

Formulating a brand strategy is an extremely important and complex process, but it’s only the beginning. From now on, the entire organization has to fulfill it, to bring the brand into the lives of those who experience it exactly as you intended. In the B2B world, your brand will touch a lot of people for many years to come. Make sure that everyone has the same experience, irrespective of the language they speak.

A brand is a promise. A strong brand is a promise that is fulfilled every day in every encounter between the brand and the world.

• Automated image editing features — analyzes images to intelligently suggest enhancements and automatically makes adjustments such as color neutralizers and detail enhancers. This speeds up the editing process and is a valuable resource if you’re looking for inspiration or need to make quick refinements.
• Content-aware fill and object removal tools — by understanding the content of the image, enables you to easily remove unwanted objects or fill in gaps within a scene. This allows greater flexibility and streamlines the editing workflow.
• Accelerates the ideation and iteration phases — lets you explore diverse concepts efficiently.
• Intelligent recommendations — makes suggestions for shapes, layouts, and color schemes based on the context of their project. This makes the conceptualization phase faster and may even help you overcome a creative block.
• Organization and management of design assets — automated tagging and content categorization make asset management easier and help you quickly navigate vast libraries of resources. It’s able to analyze vast datasets and identify patterns that we might miss.
• Rapid prototyping — enables quick experimentation with lots of variations.

Traditional graphic tools have also made huge strides

If AI can do all that, why do we need humans?

The human touch

Don’t fire your designers!

Step One – How to Start the Branding Process for a Business?

Step Two – How to Implement the Branding Process?

Step Three – How Does a Business Change as a Result of Branding?

2. What’s on the menu? “When planning the user experience, we have to put ourselves in our users’ shoes. We all have limited time and between work, home, and family, we don't have time to scroll through endless websites in the search for information,” says Naomi.

3. Make some space!

4. Give the footer the respect it deserves “Just because the footer’s at the bottom of the website doesn’t mean it doesn’t deserve a place of honor,” notes Naomi. “While the footer may be located on the ’fringe’ of the site, we shouldn’t treat it as such. When specifying the site structure every part of the site is important. We’re not going to add unnecessary pages or elements to the site, but the footer appears on every page and needs to be designed accordingly.”When building a brand strategy for businesses, it’s important that it speaks the same language – everywhere it appears – and that includes the footer. Give it space and design it in a brand-compatible manner, incorporating creative brand elements and enticing messaging. Scroll down to Unilog’s footer to see how it reflects the brand’s personality.

5. No more excuses! That’s so yesterday “Leave the excuses why you can’t build a website in 2022,” says Naomi, adding that, “Many businesses avoid building a website on the grounds that they don’t have sufficient budget, information, or products to build a complete site. But keeping your website short and to the point puts paid to that excuse.”

Refresh or rebrand?

1. Defining a clear rebranding strategy.
2. Reanalyzing your company’s vision, mission and values.
3. Conduct market research and competitor research including new players who may have popped up more recently.
4. Research existing customers, potential customers and target audiences.
5. Redefine your message.
6. Create a new visual identity.
7. Create new marketing materials.
8. Relaunch your brand (internally and externally).

Spreading the news

Rebranding with OZ

10 – Visual content

9 – Big (big) data

8 – Authenticity

7 – Content and influencer networks

6 – Shift of focus from millennials to Generation Z

5 – Mobile, mobile, mobile

4 – Shift in KPIs

3 – Data protection

2 – Native ads and smart content

1 – Take advantage of the FOMO effect

How to break into the Chinese market:

Afimilk case study: all you need is lab

How can we ensure that we don’t lose or dilute our essential values and brand promise as we become a cross-continent corporation?

How can your B2B organization transform itself into a digitally mature organization and leave a lasting impression on millennial buyers?

Focus on the Customer Experience

Assign the C-Suite Responsibility for Digital Strategy

Employ the Right Third-Party Solution Providers

Getting on the Short List

• Only recruiting employees who believe in what you believe in.
• Engaging your employees by creating a challenging and fulfilling work environment that encourages innovation and maintains a healthy work-life balance.

• Israel is a melting pot of immigrants from multiple countries. These immigrants bring with them unique cultures, approaches and schools of thought, and when these spill over into their work environment, magic happens and innovation and creativity abound.
• Israel is a young country that faces constant challenges in the realms of security, agriculture, energy, and more. As a result, many Israeli companies focus on developing solutions to these problems and once they do this successfully, often export these solutions to the international market.
• Israel places a lot of value on education, and Israeli students are encouraged to focus on STEM subjects. Once they complete their high-school education, they are recruited by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) where these skills are nourished even further; and as a result, many young Israelis are snapped up by hi-tech companies as soon as they finish their military service or higher education.
• Israeli “chutzpa” or directness, and a belief in getting things done at all costs also contribute to a highly productive environment where efficiency comes before protocol.
• As part of a true belief in the power of technology as an industry changer, private and public funding bodies invest large sums in Israeli startups.

Traditional tendency for a product-centric approach

Focus on the why and not on the what