HUG Haifa – SALES & MARKETING ALIGNMENT

Written by

Jonathan Cohen

August 8, 2019

The first HUG Haifa was a complete success where we learned from Stephen Fuery, principal Implementation Specialist at HubSpot and Ofir Marx, Marketing Manager at BERMAD fascinating topics that will take our Marketing and sales project to the next level.

The first part of this extraordinary event started with Stephen defining Sales & Marketing alignment (SMarketing) as the practice of bringing a company’s sales and marketing departments together to achieve better communication, greater efficiency and as a result increased profitability. This is one of the premises of most of the companies that have both departments interacting with each other on a daily basis.

But, why is aligning Marketing and Sales difficult?

Here we have some facts that can help us with these answers:

  • 87% Of the terms sales & marketing use to describe each other are negative
  • 20% – The amount of revenue increase companies with strong sales & marketing are able to achieve.

If you hear… 

  • I don’t know if the sales team is working my leads
  • I don’t know the ROI of my marketing campaigns
  • I’m getting too many leads and can’t prioritize them
  • I don’t know what to do with these Marketing leads.

This indicates that your sales and marketing teams are not aligned. The following tips will help you to solve this:

Service Level Agreement (SLA)

This is a commitment between Marketing & Sales to deliver on specific goals. How do you create an SLA? Glad you asked 😊.

Use Historical data to understand your goals, putting into consideration the common goals between the two teams.

Ask yourself these questions as a roadmap to creating an SLA that serves both the marketing and sales teams:

  • How many MQL’s is Marketing creating?
  • Are Sales working MQL’s?
  • At what rate are MQL’s converting to Customers?
  • What % of deals are attributed to Marketing?

Decide on future SLA’s and build reports to measure them, presenting SMART (Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Relevant, Timely) goals.

Let’s compare:

Goal 1: I want more website visitors, leads and sales.

But this is too general, what about?

Goal 2: I need 20,000 visitors, 500 leads, 12 customers within 12 months in order to achieve our revenue goal of $600,000 from Inbound.

Goal 2 is a SMART goal. It will give you a complete picture of what you want to achieve.

Agree on Fit 

This is a measurement of how well you could serve a lead if they were to become a customer.

Segmentation: 

Let’s divide segmentation into two parts:

  • Lifecycle stage: a way of categorizing where any given contact or company is within your marketing and sales flywheel.
  • Lead Scoring: Lead scoring is a methodology used by sales and marketing to determine the worthiness of leads or potential customers by attaching values to them based on performance.

These steps are just the beginning of any successful and satisfying alignment between Sales and Marketing as was explained impeccably by Stephen.

It’s astonishing how many things we can learn from two experts aiming to achieve your marketing and sales goals. Ofir Marx took over the second part of the event where he talked about how to communicate with end users and get feedback and its importance.

One of the most important topics that he mentioned is how the rules of engagement have changed. The following Marketing activities will help you to understand your end user:

  • Publishing professional blogs, case studies, and white papers
  • Sending out nurturing emails to leads
  • Posting on social media
  • Using marketing automation to convert a lead to SQL

But wait, why talk to end users?

Ofir explained that it is paramount to get the real market perspective from the end users and not from someone in the middle. This allows you to understand the real need for solutions, giving you, the businessperson an opportunity to evaluate the real potential in any specific market or territory. You need to always add value to your end customer.

Ofir went further to demonstrate how BERMAD shows an increase in awareness and quantity of leads from places where they don’t have representation. They give specific solutions to clients to the extent of flying over to different countries to understand all the technical requirements that were involved. These efforts eventually translated into actual sales. This is definitely how you should know your end customers!

From the HUG Haifa to you, these were the recommendations on how to take your marketing efforts to the next level:

  • Increase involvement in LinkedIn discussion groups
  • Target campaigns in specific locations
  • Blog in other languages
  • Introduce Account Based Marketing activities.

Truly, HUG Haifa speakers gave a great amount of knowledge and tips that you can implement to ensure satisfactory relations with our end customers and give a boost to your Marketing efforts as well as align your Sales and Marketing teams for the overall success of your clients. This was the first of a series of HUG events that are going to take place in Israel.

This HUG was brought to you by OZ Global B2B and Cacao Media Marketing Agencies, HubSpot Partners and experts in B2B marketing.

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OZ AI Sugar and Side Effects v1

AI, Sugar, and Side Effects

By 
Dorin Peleg
, 30/03/2026

AI isn't a magic fix; it’s an endless candy store where it’s easy to get lost in the noise. Discover why a surplus of tools makes selection your biggest strategic challenge, and how to shift from chasing "the next shiny thing" to a purposeful process that puts business goals before technology.

min read
In a world of endless AI possibilities, the real challenge is knowing how to choose the right tool for your specific needs. A few minutes ago (in my imagination), I walked into a massive candy store. The shelves were packed—colors, flavors, gimmicks. Every item promised, “I’m the best.” At first, it feels like you’ve found a paradise of solutions. But after a moment, your focus starts to scatter, the choice becomes harder, and your heart beats a little faster. That’s exactly what’s happening today in the world of AI. An abundance of options doesn’t make decisions easier—it makes them more challenging. Because when you need to choose the right tool, the question is no longer “Which tool is popular?” but rather “How do I make a decision that truly serves my goal?”

Why More Tools Don’t Always Help

The problem with abundance isn’t the technology itself-it’s understanding what we’re actually trying to solve. Every tool can look appealing. It can offer automated writing, visual creation, smart diagrams, marketing content, advanced research, and more. But without a clear process, it all becomes noise. Like a child in a candy store who can only choose two candies before checkout, we need selection tools-not just solution tools.  

How to Get It Right (Without a Sugar Overdose)

When we work with B2B brands, we always come back to a simple question: What do our customers really need? And what is our business goal? Once the goal is clear, the abundance of tools stops being overwhelming. It becomes a repertoire of solutions tailored to what’s needed—instead of what’s possible.
  • The key is: Define the need, not the tool
  • Before choosing an AI tool, start with the question: What outcome am I trying to achieve? What does success look like?
  • Build a decision framework Don’t let every shiny new idea set the pace. Create a structured set of questions and criteria that connect to real KPIs.
  • Don’t lose the human context AI is the result of human creativity-not the answer itself.
 

So What Does Choice Look Like in Practice?

If we go back to the candy store-not every candy fits every moment. The same goes for AI. There are great tools for every task, but the choice doesn’t start with the tool’s name—it starts with the need. For example: When I need to generate text, I usually work with ChatGPT or Gemini. Both are fast and powerful, but the choice depends on tone, precision, and the outcome I’m aiming for. When it comes to visuals-surprisingly-ChatGPT delivers great results as well. Gemini (especially Nano Banana) excels when combining existing products, and in other cases, I like working with Midjourney or Artlist-each offering a slightly different level of control and style. For animation, I often use Freepick and Gemini-especially when I need fast solutions without fully compromising on quality. For voiceovers, ElevenLabs is almost always my go-to, delivering results that sound more natural and accurate for most use cases. And for music, while you can generate it with Suno, if you’re not a professional musician, it’s often more efficient to use platforms like Freepik, which now offer a solid and user-friendly music feature. In practice, we almost never rely on a single tool. The real choice is always a combination-between multiple tools, and between those tools and human thinking that connects them. So the real question isn’t “Which tool is the best?” It’s “Which combination of tools serves the goal most effectively?”  

What Actually Makes It Work

Earlier, I mentioned a confused child in a candy store. But the one who really knows how to choose isn’t the child-it’s someone with experience, knowledge, and an understanding of what to look for. Behind every valuable AI tool are people: developers, researchers, creators, designers-those who know how to connect technology to real business needs. They’re the ones who give these tools meaning. Without human intention, context, and strategy-even the most advanced tools won’t lead to real results. AI is not magic. It’s the outcome of accumulated human creativity.  

The Real Choice

In an age of abundance, the advantage isn’t the newest AI tool. The advantage lies in the ability to:
  • Choose wisely
  • Execute with understanding
  • Stay focused on clear, business-driven goals
Because in the end-AI is like a candy store: the more options you have, the smarter your choices need to be. And that’s the difference between using tools-and thinking with them.
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OZ  Ai animation in 2026 v2

Animations In The World Of Ai

By 
Eliav Yosef
, 23/03/2026

AI didn’t make motion design easier—it made it more strategic. Discover how the world of animations is shifting from manual execution to high-level direction, and why the human element is now your brand's most critical asset.

min read

Animations have been changed forever by AI — but not in the way many people first imagined. If you're a B2B marketing leader, you might assume AI-driven animations are simply a cheaper, faster way to churn out content. But this isn’t a story about replacing motion designers or animators; it’s a story about redefining the craft, reshaping workflows, and clarifying where human creativity and brand strategy in animations become more important than ever.

In 2026, creating animations with AI is not about pressing a button. It’s about directing systems, shaping narrative, and knowing where automation ends and design begins. More importantly, it is a tool that allows complex B2B brands to visualize abstract technologies through high-quality animations faster and more effectively before committing to a final, expensive 3D render.

Here is a look at the modern AI ecosystem for animations, how the workflow has evolved, and why the human element remains your brand's biggest asset.

The AI Animation Toolbox: What’s Actually Being Used

AI animation is not powered by one “magic tool,” but by ecosystems of platforms, each serving a different creative role.
  • Cinematic AI Video Generation: Tools like Higgsfield focus on video as cinema, not as motion graphics. They allow creators to define camera movement, pacing, and visual language using prompts that resemble directing notes more than animation instructions. These are ideal for short cinematic sequences and concept films with strong mood and intent.
  • Workflow & Creative Orchestration: Freepik Spaces, Weavy, ComfyUi or any node-based AI platform represents a new category: AI as a workflow environment. Instead of jumping between disconnected tools, designers can build idea-to-video flows, experiment visually, and treat animation as a system rather than a single file. This is especially powerful for B2B studios managing complex creative pipelines.
  • Experimental Ideation & Visual Exploration: Platforms like Google Labs are less about production, and more about creative exploration. They help designers rapidly test visual directions and build moodboards to explore aesthetics before animation begins.
 

From 2D to 3D: AI-Driven Dimensional Thinking

One of the most impactful shifts in AI animation is the ability to move from flat images to spatial scenes. Modern AI engines can infer depth from a single image, generate basic 3D structures from 2D visuals, and enable camera movement inside static compositions. For B2B brands selling complex hardware or medical devices, this is revolutionary. It allows motion designers to start with intuition and sketches, and only later move into structured 3D workflows—reversing the traditional, time-heavy pipeline.  

The Right AI Animation Workflow (Step by Step)

AI doesn’t eliminate process—it demands a better one.
  1. Concept & Narrative Definition Before touching any tool, you must ask: What is the story? Is this cinematic, playful, abstract, or informative? AI performs best when creative intent is crystal clear.
  2. Visual Language & Mood Exploration This is where AI shines. Designers can rapidly generate visual styles, test lighting, and explore pacing. At this stage, speed matters more than precision.
B2B Use Case: Imagine a cybersecurity firm launching a new cloud product. Instead of spending two weeks storyboarding, the motion design team uses AI to generate three distinct visual moods (e.g., highly technical vs. abstract and secure) in two days, allowing the marketing director to choose the emotional direction before a single keyframe is animated.
  1. AI-Generated Motion & Video Using video diffusion engines, creators generate motion drafts and experiment with rhythm and transitions. Think of these as rough cuts, not final films.
  2. Human Refinement & Direction (The Brand Check) This is the most critical step, and the one AI cannot replace. This is where designers shape timing, ensure narrative clarity, and fix inconsistencies AI inevitably introduces. Most importantly, this is where the visuals are strictly aligned with your brand guidelines. B2B brands need exact hex codes, corporate typography, and regulatory compliance—nuances AI simply cannot manage alone.
 

What AI Enables vs. Where Professionals Are Essential

The Democratization of Ideation: AI enables anyone to generate basic animated visuals, create short experimental videos, and prototype ideas without technical expertise. This democratization is powerful — and positive. Where AI Alone Falls Short: However, when it comes to high-stakes B2B marketing, "almost right" isn't good enough. AI struggles with:
  • Strategic storytelling and complex narrative structures
  • Strict brand consistency
  • Emotional nuance and long-form animation logic
This is where experienced motion designers and studios become irreplaceable.  

The New Role of the Animator

In the AI era, motion designers and animators are no longer just executors of movement. They have evolved into visual directors, narrative architects, and AI system orchestrators. They act as the vital translators between brand, story, and technology. AI handles generation. Designers handle meaning.  

Final Thought: AI Doesn’t Replace Motion Design, It Raises the Bar

Animation has always been about movement. But today, it’s about intentional motion. The designers and marketing teams who thrive in this era won’t be the ones who master every new software update. They will be the ones who know when to use AI, when to override it, and when human judgment is the difference between digital noise and a compelling brand story. AI didn’t make motion design easier. It made it more important.
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lion 2

The Jewish Lion: How to Build a Brand That Lasts 3,000 Years

By 
Amit Sakal
, 04/03/2026

Beyond ancient symbols: How do you build a brand that lasts for millennia? Discover the fascinating branding strategy behind the Jewish Lion – from the Bible to the modern battlefield.

min read

How do you build a brand that lasts for millennia? If you are wondering how to build a brand that lasts for generations, the answer lies in one ancient symbol.Lately, certain names have resurfaced: “Am KeLavi” - A People Like a Lion. “Roaring Lion.”

Operation names. Security language. Headlines. But from a branding perspective, this is a fascinating choice. In an era when nations invest billions in narrative, public diplomacy, and perception management, Israel repeatedly returns to the same ancient symbol: the lion. Not a refreshed logo. Not an updated digital aesthetic. Not a passing graphic trend. A lion. And when you examine it closely, it may be one of the most consistent branding moves in human history.  

A Brand That Hasn’t Rebranded Since Genesis

The story begins long before content strategy or visual systems. In the Book of Genesis, Jacob blesses Judah with the words: “Gur Aryeh Yehuda” - Judah is a lion’s cub. This wasn’t merely poetic imagery. It was a foundational positioning decision. The lion wasn’t chosen because it is the strongest animal in the wild. It was chosen because it is perceived as sovereign - a natural authority, a presence that does not need to strive for dominance. In branding terms, this is precise positioning. The lion does not symbolize reckless aggression. It represents restrained power. Not “we attack.” But “we are here - and we are not going anywhere.” That is a far deeper message than brute force.  

Design in Exile: When There Is No State, There Is Still a Visual Language

For nearly two thousand years, there was no sovereignty. But there was branding. The lion appeared in synagogues, on Torah arks, in manuscripts - often flanking the Tablets of the Covenant, sometimes crowned. From a design perspective, this was brilliant: When political power disappears, you reinforce the symbol. During exile, the lion was not a call to rebellion. It was an anchor of identity. A form of brand consistency in the midst of historical chaos. Real brands are not built in comfortable eras. They are tested in difficult ones.  

Zionism: Rebranding Without Losing the DNA

When modern Zionism emerged, it did not invent a new emblem. There was no dramatic visual overhaul. The lion simply shifted tone. Less mystical - more national. Less decorative - more upright. Less memory - more action. This was not a rebrand. It was a tonal update. One of the most powerful visual moments in Israeli cultural history is the “Roaring Lion” monument at Tel Hai. Not a victorious lion. Not a charging lion. A wounded lion - roaring. That is a courageous branding decision. It does not sell “absolute power.” It sells endurance. Resolve. Cost. A brand built on courage through standing firm lasts longer than one built on dominance alone.  

The IDF: A Language of Consciousness, Not Just Operations

When military operations are named “Am KeLavi” or “Roaring Lion,” this is not biblical romanticism. It is narrative strategy. Operation names are never merely technical labels. They are messages. Inward - to soldiers and society. Outward - to adversaries and to the world. The lion enables Israel to position itself as restrained yet determined. Not a wild force. Not an imperial aggressor. But an actor capable of patience - and action. The distinction is subtle. And critical.  

Why It Still Works

Because the lion carries rare historical depth. It bridges scripture and sovereignty. An ancient verse and a modern fighter jet. Memory and statehood. In a world where brands redesign their logos every five years, the Jewish lion is proof that true brand equity is built across generations. Not through trends. Through consistency.  

What Can Branding Professionals Learn From This?

  1. A strong symbol doesn’t need to shout constantly.
  2. Deep brands are anchored in story, not aesthetics alone.
  3. Long-term consistency outperforms cosmetic refreshes.
  4. Restrained power is a strategy - not a weakness.
And perhaps this is the real secret: The lion does not roar all the time. But when it does, it doesn’t sound like a trend. It sounds like history. 🦁
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