Chen Aharoni

Transcription

>>Male #1: Welcome everybody, my name is Thomas Sharon and I'm a User Experience Researcher here in Google New York and a proud Israeli. I'd like to briefly share two very quick stories with you so first story's about Albert Einstein back in the '40's. When he was a professor in Princeton, there came the time to the final exam of the year, four hundred students in the room. His assistants pass the tests and then one of his assistants tells him that-- he notices that the questions are the same as last year's questions. So he comes to Einstein, tells him that, he looks at the form and says, "Hmm. That's okay." And the assistant says, "How come it's okay? It's physics and we have-- you know it's the same questions--they'll know the answers." He says, "Physics has changed so much in the past year the answers are now completely different so it's okay." [laughter] The second story is--two weeks ago I was on vacation in the West coast with my family, and at one point we came into a local supermarket to buy some sandwiches and a woman was standing behind us in line and she listened to us speak in Hebrew and then she approached us and of course asked a question, "What language are you speaking?" and I said, the typical Israeli answer, "Uh, what do you think?" And she said--she--after a few guesses--wrong guesses-- she said-- I told her that this was Hebrew. Her eyes lit. She said, "I'm from, I'm originally from Morocco and I'd love--I want to visit Israel." And I asked her, "What stops you?" and she said, "Well, the situation and that it's not safe." And then I asked myself really still we need to answer those questions and I'm asking you and I’m asking myself almost every day, " How can we as in the '40's , as in the '40's physics can change the perception about Israel and change the answer, so it is my pleasure to introduce to you Ambassador Ido Aharoni, Consul General of the Israeli Consulate in New York and a twenty year veteran of Israel’s foreign service whose work on improving Israel's positioning in the U.S. is known and appreciated by many. Ambassador Aharoni will share his thoughts and experiences about country brand management. And before you start, I really recommend start going to work with a t-shirt, so here's one for you. Welcome. [applause] >>Ambassador Aharoni: Thank you so much. It's a wonderful gift and thank you for doing this for us. Before I begin I'd like to--oh, the t-shirt yes--as you can imagine, my kids will take it right away--I won't get a chance to-- thank you. Thank you so much and before I begin I'd like to acknowledge the presence of some of my esteemed colleagues here, Gil Lainer the person who’s in charge of public diplomacy--we'll talk about public diplomacy in a second-- and I also have here with us today, Shani Rozanes, who's producing two big events, one in Washington D.C. coming up this Sunday titled, "Broadening the Conversation about Israel" and the second here in New York City in mid-June, again titled, "Israel: Broadening the Conversation." We'll talk about why we think it's critically important for Israel to broaden the conversation about the country. And lastly but not least, we have here with us, [Hela Aroi], who is my own advisor. She's a Ph.D. candidate whose specialty is the history of the Zionist Movement and those of you interested in the history of the Zionist movement are more than welcome to ask her questions about that because this is not what I am going to talk about today. I was asked to talk about--less about the case of Israel but more about what countries do in order to improve their overall positioning. And the first thing I wanted to do was to ask you, how many of you have heard of the guy named Erving Goffman? How many? Okay, let me say a few words about Erving Goffman because I think Erving Goffman's work is extremely important in the context of countries and places trying to change or improve their overall positioning. Erving Goffman was a sociologist from Canada who wrote a book--published a book in the '50's titled The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life that really changed the way we understand social interaction. What Erving Goffman claimed is that human beings will always strive to achieve control over the other's perception of the social situation. So if you're in an interaction with another human being, the other will always try to control the way you perceive them, and how do we achieve this control? By using symbols, by using things that symbolize other things, for example--and by the way that's the reason why his theory was called Symbolic Interaction Theory--According to Erving Goffman, all human beings always try to maintain their back stage, their behind-the-curtain information inaccessible to the other while presenting using symbols, the kind of information that they'd like to--so for example, the way we dress; the symbols that we chose to--for example you gave me a wonderful example now-- this t-shirt symbolizes something. If I go to work and I walk into my office wearing this t-shirt, I'm sending a very powerful message to my employees and to my staff members, of the kind of manager I am, the kind of stuff that is important to me and so on and so forth. This is a perfect example of Erving Goffman. In our day to day life, marketers are using Erving Goffman's theory on a daily basis. If you remember the famous Bush-Kerry Campaign 2004, after Bush won the elections, his campaign manager gave a speech, I believe it was in the following January, January 2005 in which he said, "We were in a position to tell the way--if you're driving a BMW you're more likely to vote for George W. Bush, if you're driving a Volvo you're more likely to vote for John Kerry." And what they actually did, they decoded the symbols people use and understood the social, political, and economic meaning of those symbols and as a result were able to predict behavior. And it's all about, I’m sure you all know that, it's all about the ability of the marketer to predict the behavior of the consumer. So Erving Goffman's contribution, and his book that was published in the late '50's really changed a lot and I think gave rise to this whole notion of let's try to predict the behavior of the consumer based on the symbols the consumer chose to use in the process. Just a piece of trivia: I am sure you'll recognize this lady, the late actress Francis Bay, the marble rye lady from Seinfeld. That's Erving Goffman's sister. [laughter] The power of brand management: here you're looking at two products that essentially produce the same result. One is a Mont Blanc that goes for three hundred bucks I think, two hundred fifty, and the other, if you're staying at the Crowne Plaza you can take for free. And the question that marketers and brand managers ask themselves is "what makes a human being spend so much money on a product when he or she can essentially get the very same result for nothing? And the answer of course is the people who designed the product on the right created such an attractive persona for this product that the consumer is willing to pay that much money only to be associated with that personality. That's the power of brand management. And in country positioning, we say the same way human beings have personalities, the same way that human beings have DNA, the same way products have attractive personas, also places can be considered to be attractive or we can decode and understand their DNA or we can understand their personalities. We always use the word personification basically looking at places the same way you look at human beings is always useful in the field of country positioning. Now you're--Google is a big part of this revolution but we identified in the field of country positioning several changes that occurred as a result of the every changing technological environment. The first-- and each of every one of them is of really critical importance to every country, every city, every place that is trying to improve its over all positioning , that is trying to improve its performance. The most important thing that we now know for governments to do is to emphasize the need to engage in a meaningful interaction with the consumer. So it's not just about unilaterally transmitting a message--used to be in the old days we call it the move from a system of broadcasting to a system of narrowcasting, but it's also the understanding that it's about quality not about quantity; that it's about content rather than about creating an attractive platform and that people are more mentally attuned to listen to narrative rather than cold, clinical, historical, legal arguments. And governments have got to look at this revolution and understand that this is what is required today of them to do. Dialogue over monologue; quality over quantity; content over platform; and being attractive is more important than being right. And the person who really made a great contribution to this conversation is an American academic from Harvard University and is also an American diplomat whose name is Joseph Nye who came up--coined the term 'the power of attraction.' And places today have to be attractive if they want to be compete out there. And the competition between places is very tough, it's actually vicious and this the arena we entered shortly after 9/11 here in New York. And we decided to look at Israel the same way you look at any other brand. and this is the definition that we adopted: a brand is a promise, a strong brand is a promise delivered. Now in the field of branding, especially--for many many years there was a misconception that branding is in the first place about the ability to create an attractive visual language. And we say branding is way more than just visual language, in fact, branding is--the real branding has to adopt the tools used in place positioning. I always like to tell this story of Israel's number one bus company called Egged, that several years ago decided to send a very strong message to the Israeli consumer, "we care about the environment," so they hired a branding expert. He said, "No problem. You care about the environment, you want to send this message to the Israeli consumer, so let's paint the buses green." So they did. They painted the fifty thousand buses in green. They forgot to do one little thing and that is to change the technology. There's another example in Israel which is a--the story of my own hometown. I grew up place called Holon, which is a, if you may, suburb of Tel Aviv, some one hundred eighty thousand people and Holon for many years suffered from a very bad image. It was plagued with crime, it was -- had this boring grey image of an industrial suburb of Tel Aviv, south of Tel Aviv. But about some fifteen-sixteen years ago, a new mayor was elected. His name was Moti Sasson. And Moti Sasson to do, instinctively, something very very smart. He said, "I'm not going to spend money on advertising telling people that Holon is a great place. What I'm going to do is actually turn Holon into a great place." He identified that there's a niche in the Israeli market, there's no places that's catering especially for children, and he said "I'm going to turn Holon into the center for children." And he invested, for the next five years, every penny that the city had in infrastructure that supported his claim to be Israel's "city of children." So for example, he built the children's museum, and a media center for children. He came up with this ground breaking concept of theme playgrounds for toddlers, in Hebrew called "Gan Sipur". He bought over twenty of them, and he built--imagine a toddler is walking to a playground that is entirely designed based on a classic children's book, like "The Giving Tree" or in our case [Chenan a'chahama] for example it's a great children's book. So five years into the process, Moti Sasson had to spend very little money on advertising because it became well known that Holon is indeed Israel’s city of children because he was smart enough to create infrastructure, facts on the ground that supported the overall strategy that he chose as a mayor. Now there are many many aspects to what countries and places need to do in order to improve their overall positioning. But I would like to mention one of the key factors is the ability to build partnerships. It's never about governments or managements dictating to the public what needs to be done. This requires a long, sometimes very tiring process--never ending process of partnership building. And I'll show you in a minute the elements, the components of this partnership building process. Now, country positioning, there are two approaches to country positioning. The country positioning that many of you are exposed to on television and even online is usually meant to promote tourism. We call it destination branding. More and more countries today move to the other approach, which we call holistic country positioning model, which means places, it can be a city or it can be a country that are interested in improving their overall performance across the board. So it's about attracting tourists; it's about attracting investors. It's about improving the level of exposure of your country's culture to the world. It's about the ability to celebrate your leading export brands so for example if you're Finland, you have Nokia in the '70s; Sweden had ABBA, and Volvo; and countries that actually are identified by their leading celebrated sub-brands and of course it's about the people. The culture and the heritage, I've noticed that there are several Israelis here in this room. So the people, the Israelis that work and spend time abroad, they also serve as a channel for Israel to communicate its identity, its brand to the world. So today countries see themselves as brands too and they are--and they can be managed the same way you manage a brand. Now we started by saying that places have DNA's, that places have personality. Let's take the case of Brazil. What's the first thing that comes to mind when we think of Brazil? I'm asking you? [several voices, intelligible words] Soccer, beaches, bikini, Carnival. If we--when we think of Brazil, we think of Brazil in the context of only one thing: fun. That is the DNA of Brazil. Now those of you who've been to Brazil know that indeed there's a lot of fun in Brazil, but Brazil is not entirely about fun, right? If you live in a favela outside of San Paolo--life is not so much fun, yet this is the context we all perceive Brazil. In place positioning terminology, Brazil is in a wonderful position. Brand Brazil is way up here. Brazil the product is a little inferior to the brand, and the gap between the two is worth billions to Brazil's economy. As you will see in a few minutes, in Israel's case, it is exactly the opposite. Israel the place, is extremely attractive, powerful. Israel's image is so bad that it becomes a liability and the gap between the two represents a huge economic deficit. Paris. Paris was branded actually by you, the American people. By Hollywood as the world capital of romance. You guys are good, either that or you've seen this presentation before. [laughter] Paris is about romance and Hollywood did more to brand Paris than any other branding agent in the world. By the way, Hollywood is so powerful that Hollywood is branding other nations. We will talk about the most interesting case study of them all in a few minutes. New York. I want you to know that New York served, and still serves as our inspiration in Israel in terms of place positioning. What was done here in New York, beginning in the early '70's, is amazing. And of course it started in the early '70's culminated with the great work that was done during the Giuliani and Bloomberg administrations. But what New York was able to do in less than thirty years is remarkable. I want you to think about it. In the early '70's, there was a mysterious campaign in American media. Someone started to publish ads in American newspapers that on a certain day in November of 1972, New York is going to disappear. And you know, no one knew who was behind this bizarre and twisted sense of humor. And then the next ad, they said that the Statue of Liberty was going to go under into the water of the Hudson and you could see the ad with the sinking Statue of Liberty. And the mystery was resolved when finally the company behind this bizarre campaign came out. It was Alitalia. It was their twisted way of announcing to the world that they were launching a direct line that would take you from Rome to Boston and from Rome to Washington, D.C. so you don't have to go through New York. The mayor of New York at that time, Mayor Lindsey was alarmed by it. He said, "Wait a second. This is the perception of New York? This is our image? This is terrible, we have to do something about it." In addition to an official complaint that was sent to Alitalia, a bunch of New York business people, most notably the Rudin family, the Tisch family and others got together with some PR experts and formed what is still active until this very day, an organization called The Association for A Better New York. What the Association for A Better New York tried to do is something very simple. They said "We cannot be defined only by our deficiencies." And you have to remember, in the early '70s, again Hollywood played a major role here, New York was defined by its deficiencies. New York was branded by Hollywood as the world's capitol of crime and the world's capitol of police corruption. And they did it through series of movies that started with Serpico, which is all about police corruption, continued with Taxi Driver, Mean Streets, and movies that celebrated New York as a relentless producer of crime and violence. And as a result people were afraid to come to New York, add to that the fact that New York was on the verge of economic bankruptcy. Everybody remembers when the City of New York turned to the federal government asking for financial aid and President Ford at the time, 1975, said, "I'm not going to give it to you." The next day New York Post headline was "Ford to New York: Drop Dead." That was really the lowest point in that process and since then, since "Ford to New York: Drop Dead"--New York is slowly and gradually improving its overall positioning by doing exactly what needs to be done. New York identified its own competitive edge which has two elements, the first is the size. Everything in New York is big: the number of people is huge, the buildings are huge and also the temptation is huge to come to New York. New York is about the totality of your experience as a consumer. It is the plus and the minus, it's the good and the bad. That is why they wisely chose the apple. The apple is a religious symbol. It says something about temptation. It comes from the Bible, it's talking to Americans who care about the Bible. The Big Apple communicates very effectively with people of faith, telling them New York is about the good and the bad. It's about the totality of the New York experience. And then after the Big Apple came a brilliant campaign that says "I love New York" because that's the next level. After you spark the interest and the curiosity of the consumer, then comes the love affair. And I can tell you at least we're concerned, Israelis, the New York strategy is working in a very big way. Israelis truly love New York. When you talk to Israelis about New York, that's their favorite subject. Israelis will tell you, "Oh, I love New York. There's a one restaurant..." They have their favorite restaurant, of course, in New York. They have their favorite stores in New York. They have everything you need to know about New York, you have to ask the Israelis. They know more about New York than New Yorkers themselves. I'm serious. I'm not kidding. And the reason is because New York was successful establishing real, genuine relationship between Israel and the city of New York. And I can tell you that New York is being celebrated by Israelis on a daily basis. You can find evidence to that in the Israeli media every day. The most amazing story is the story of Las Vegas. Why? Because the strategy is so bold, it's so gutsy, it's so unbelievable. What Las Vegas did, they said "Okay let's look at all of our qualities, advantages and deficiencies? And let's choose the biggest problem that we have." What's the biggest problem they have? Las Vegas is about what? It's about gambling, right? There's an industry. There's a consensus in Western civilization, especially among people of faith, that gambling is immoral, it's problematic. So they said, "Okay, let's take that one deficiency that we have--that one problem that is really the biggest problem that we have--and let's instead of hiding it, instead of shying away from it, let's" --do what?--"celebrate it." Las Vegas is about sin. What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas. Hmm. Interesting. I'm asking you, what is it that happened in Vegas that has to stay in Vegas? [laughter] What, did we go there to celebrate my son's Bar Mitzvah? [laughter] No. It was something probably more serious than that. I probably lost my house, maybe lost my wife, who knows what happened to me in Vegas? But it's okay, it will stay in Vegas. Again, Hollywood is branding Vegas as the ultimate Sin City. It's a very bold move on the part of the strategists of the branding of Las Vegas. The equivalent would be, imagining Israel appealing to you, the American consumer, "Come to Israel for an Explosive vacation." [laughter] Can you imagine that? That's what Las Vegas did. [laughter] Pretty amazing. So we said, "Okay, if Brazil is about fun, and Paris is about romance, then Israel is about what?" Well, we'll talk about that. But the guy who is teaching us the most important lesson is Sacha Baron Cohen. [laughter] Sacha Baron Cohen is teaching us country positioning today is a necessity. It is not a luxury for countries. Sacha Baron Cohen woke up one day, I think it was maybe eight-nine years ago when he had still The Ali G Show--this was before the movie and he said to himself, “I’m going to take one nation-- a serious nation with a history of thousands of years, with rich culture, with lots of natural resources, with great potential, with real heritage, with real political leadership, with real history and I'm going to singlehandedly redefine their entire identity and I'm going to do something to them that they're not expecting. I'm going to turn them into a joke." That's what he did, singlehandedly. This is before Hollywood. This is when he had a T.V. show and he created that character called Borat. It's an amazing thing, if you think about it, an amazing thing. When the real president of Kazakhstan was here, I believe in 2005, he held a press conference at the White House with President Bush. Sacha Baron Cohen held his own press conference if you remember. He had more cameras in his room than the real one. Think about it. Sacha Baron Cohen is the world's famous Kazakhi. [Laughter] Yet he never set foot in his life in Kazakhstan. And I'm asking you why was he able to do that? Why was he able to singlehandedly the identity of an entire nation? And the answer is because, at that point, up until that point they did very little to define their own identity to us, the consumers, in a proactive fashion. In other words they allowed someone else, and this is why Sacha Baron Cohen is teaching us a very very important lesson. If you will not take the proactive approach of defining your own identity, be assured your competition will do it for you. And that's exactly what Kazakhstan learned from the experience of Sacha Baron Cohen. He taught them that brand capital today is an integral part of countries’ national security. It's not just about military strength, it's not just about your ability to execute military operations, it is also about the strength of your economy and about your ability to highlight and communicate your attractive facets. We talked about the dramatic change, Google is part of that dramatic change obviously. The two things that we need to do in place positioning, the first thing is we need to identify our own relative advantages of place. So I said New York identified their size, and the diversity of the temptation, the city of New York as their main competitive edge. In the case of Paris and Venice, it's all about romance. In the case of Brazil, it's all about the fun and so on and so forth. We'll get to Israel's competitive edge in a second. But once you've identified your competitive edge as a place, the second thing that you need to do is to find a way to effectively communicate that relative advantage To relevant audiences because what you don't want to do is communicate your competitive edge to audiences that are not interested in what you're selling and not interested in what you have to say. And I think this is where Google can be extremely effective and influential. Here's an example of a work plan that we developed to celebrate several niche markets in Israel. I don't know how many people in the room have been to Israel and what is the image Israel-- that you have of Israel, but if you will look at the niche markets on the screen, each and every one of them can be celebrated in a big way by the international community and this is exactly what we're trying to do as part of the program that I created called Brand Israel. This is what countries need and I think that many of the people in the room have the answers to the questions that are posed by nations. The first thing that we need is someone who will tell us, and I'm speaking on behalf of all the nations, and I think of all the cities in the world interested in improving their position. The first thing that we need is to identify relevant hubs, those relevant Internet intersections that we need to go through if we want to influence a conversation about something. Let me give you an example. We have in Israel three marathons-- very distinguished marathons. We have the Tel Aviv Marathon, we have the Tiberias Marathon, and we have the Jerusalem Marathon, in addition to the Iron Man and all the triathlons, but we have three very distinguished marathons. We'd like to promote those marathons all over the world. We know that there are tens of millions of people around the world that care passionately about long distance running. Many of them run the marathons in New York, in Paris, elsewhere. We'd like them to consider Israel as a destination for long distance running and if they can't afford to coming to Israel, we'd like them to be interested, develop curiosity about the three marathons we have in Israel. So for example, what we would do with a company like Google is ask you can you identify, if I would like to be part of that conversation about marathons, can you identify for me the most important Internet hubs all over the world that I need to go through if I were to want to be part of those conversations. That's the first step. A city or country like Israel would do. The second thing is once we've identified those Internet hubs, what we need to do is find a way that is not self- congratulatory, that is not Israel approaching the consumer while saying, "Look at me. I have such a great marathon." This is not how it works. But we need to find a way to engage in a meaningful conversation with those hubs, that is being conducted by surrogates, by people that don't even know that they are my ambassadors. I have millions of people out there that are big friends of the state of Israel and they are passionate about running long distance marathons and they're willing to speak on my behalf, they are willing to celebrate the three marathons we have in Israel and they don't even know us. I'd like to find them, I'd like to know where they are. I'd like them to initiate that conversation. And then step three of course, it's the one million dollar question, how do we measure results? Can we measure them effectively? Can we provide the city or the country with information that sheds some more light about the effectiveness of what we did? So, here we have a platform. If we can come up with a solution that is not just technological, a solution to all three steps, we really did something we really did something major to advance the conversation about country positioning. Another way to do it we're talking about online conversations, but I can tell you again, based on my own experience--and I've been doing it for ten years on and off --targeted exposure events is the most effective way to get the word out. What is a targeted exposure event, you take a small group of members of the elite, it can be here in New York, it can be in Israel. This event--I consider this event to be a targeted exposure event. You bring people that are clearly part of the creative class and you share with them your work in order, again, to engage ourselves in a meaningful two-way conversation about the subject matter. There's nothing more important that that because then you can actually hear some ideas from professionals and practitioners and improve your strategy and your performance. The most important thing that places have to know about country positioning, it's not about what we say, it's about what they hear. You know I always tell this point--there's a reason for the slide with the penguin-- there's a guy walking down the street who runs into an old friend. He sees the old friend, much to his surprise, has a penguin marching behind him. He says to him, "Hey have you noticed there's a penguin behind you?" And the friend says, "Of course I know there's a penguin behind me." "So, well, what you going to do about the penguin? I suggest you take this penguin right away to the nearest zoo. " The friend says, "That's a great idea." The next day he sees the same friend again, marching with the same penguin. He says, "Hey didn't I tell you to take him to the zoo?" "Yeah, yesterday we went to the zoo. Today we're going to the movies." [laughter] It's not about what we hear, it's about what they say. And in order for us to know what they say, we need to conduct research and we'll talk about that in a second. Countries and organizations sometimes are convinced that the task at hand is to win a debate. It's not about winning a debate. As I said before it's about engaging in a real meaningful conversation. Research is a key for places, they have a tendency to rely heavily on quantitative research. I think that the biggest mistake that places do is that they're not investing enough in qualitative research. They're not investing enough in actually talking to people, . interviewing them, trying to understand what's going on when it comes to the quality of the emotional tie that is created between a place and a consumer. We talked about the need to form partnerships. This is the model that was developed by Placebrands. Oh, I'm sorry. This is the model that shows you--these are the elements that have to form the partnership. So obviously you have to have the government represented; you have to have the business sector; you have to have the third sector-- we described the non-profit sector; the masses--the people--the public; you have to have the cultural establishment; and of course in our case, in the case of Israel, you have to have world Jewry that we call the Diaspora. This is really the model for Israel's partnership in order to change the way Israel is communicating itself to the world. This is the personality that we came up with and these are the relative advantages that Israel possesses that we would like to communicate using narrow marketing--narrowcasting and micro-marketing systems. We talked about "what is Israel's relative advantage?" We, again through massive research, we came to the conclusion that Israel's unique advantage is the amazing creative spirit that exists in Israel. That is manifested in almost every realm of life, it's manifested in all six areas here from Lifestyle and Leisure to the Environment to Hi-tech and Science to the Diversity of the people of Israel to the Culture, the Art, and of course Israel's unbelievable comprehensive and vast International aid program that most Israeli's never heard of, let alone Americans. This is something that we need to change and every pillar, every lens you see here Israel possesses a clear relative advantage and our job is to make sure that you--the American people-- are aware of that. And that's we are titling this effort "Broadening the conversation" but Israel, because the current conversation is all about Israel's problems with its neighbors and we believe that there's very little benefit for us in the sense of promoting tourism, promoting investment, promoting culture, continuing with this celebration. When you ask Israelis--and I will end with that--when you ask Israelis, "What is your own self impression? What is your own self-perception?" This is what you're getting usually. And these are actually---these are results from a qualitative study conducted in Israel in 2007-2008. So you can see Israelis see themselves first of all as Western, modern, creative. They see themselves as a world hi-tech leader. They are--you know, they mention the Palestine--the Israeli-Palestinian conflict--they mention anti-Semitism and other problems that they are aware of, but by--by and large Israelis think they're very cool. [laughter] Bottom line, Israelis think they're very cool. But what is it that the world sees? What is it that Israel as a collective communicates to the world? This is what the world sees, this is what you see on the news. You see Israel with the military might and you see the Palestinians depicted by the media clearly as the underdog. And we believe it is possible for us to create attraction using this conversation. And our research shows that no matter where you're coming from, no matter whether you support the tank or you support the boy, the entire context is not attractive to most people. In America, in Asia, in Europe. So what is it that we can do because this conversation is very powerful. I'm not interested in trying to hide it by the way. I'm not interested in trying to minimize it. I certainly would like you to believe that the tank is right and that the tank is actually being victimized by our neighbors and so on. But I realize that most of you are not interested in that conversation. So our job, in the case of Israel's country positioning, is to make sure that we open other channels of communications through which Israel can be communicated to you that are relevant to you. And those channels of communication, without hiding the conflict, those channels are extremely attractive. And Israel is possessing a clear relative advantage in each and every one of them. So it can be music and the arts, it can be fashion, it can be energy and the environment, it can be lifestyle, wine and food, and it can be international aid programs and great sightseeing, and great advancements in the field of technology and hi-tech--you see here the Pill cam and so on and architecture and the conflict too. The conflict is even at the very center of this mosaic of pictures but the conflict cannot be the only thing defining Israel to the world. Because Israel is way more than it's troubles. Israel is way more that it's issues with its neighbors. And I always give the example of the context of two people arguing constantly no matter who's right and who's wrong, at one point the consumer is tired of the discussion. The consumer becomes fatigued by the debate, and both sides stand to lose from it, so we say our job is to take back the conflict and put it in the right proportion. There's a whole world out there that we can approach, that we can be appealing to and we're not because we're stuck on the question of who's right and who's wrong, and this is what we would like to change. Let me just end with an amusing story and open the floor for your questions. They tell the story about Golda Meir, our Prime Minister in the years between 1969 and 1974, then in 1972 was asked to host the German Chancellor at the time, his name was Willy Brandt, in Tel Aviv. And someone wisely advised Golda,"If you want to impress Willy Brandt, take him on a tour of German architecture in Tel Aviv. He will like it."--we have thousands of Bauhaus buildings in Tel Aviv-- so she did and they concluded the tour at the HaBima Square--those of you who've been to Tel Aviv know it's our national theater--and she told him, "This is our National Theater. Right next to it," she said, " is the Mann Auditorium, our Performing Arts Center." And Willy Brandt said, "Oh my God, I can't believe you the Israelis made the decision to name your own performing arts center after the famous German author Thomas Mann!" And Golda looked at him and said, "No, no, no. We named it after Freddie Mann from Philadelphia." He said, "Freddie Mann from Philadelphia, what did he write?" She said, "He wrote a check." [laughter] There's a tough competition out there, between cities and countries, if Israel, or any other country, will not be able to communicate effectively its attractive dimensions to the world, it will impair its own ability to be competitive. It becomes an impediment. And the realization that we realized shortly after 9/11, that we have a lot to offer you, the American people. And I think that the success of the book, Start Up Nation, proves that point. There's a book, it's not about the conflict, that became a best seller. And the reason why the book became a best seller--and if you haven't read the book, I urge all of you to read that book-- the reason why Start Up Nation became such a best seller is because it's relevant. It's relevant to the American people struggling with economic crises. Here's a story of a tiny nation, surrounded by enemies, that did it the other way. Let's try to learn from them. Israel can be a source of inspiration for many Americans, and our job is to make sure that you are aware of it. Your questions please. [Applause] One at a time please. Yeah? >>Male #2: Hey there. One question is have you heard of the U.S. Brand U.S.A. program, are you familiar with it at all? >>Ambassador Aharoni: I was just--it was just brought to my attention and I know that some of them are online right now listening to this presentation so I would love to meet with them and have a conversation with them with pleasure. >>Male #2: Okay, if you want to talk afterwards. We're people who work that team here-- >>Ambassador Aharoni: Oh wonderful! >>Male #2: They'd love to hear something like this. >>Ambassador Aharoni: By the way, I think that Brand U.S.A., not your program, but U.S.A. as a brand is the strongest brand in the world. And we can have a whole conversation about why the United States is such a strong brand, but I can tell you in country positioning you have the United States, and then the rest of the world. >>Male speaker#2: Sort of on that note, so you mention using the Israeli Diaspora to recruit people for various-- >>Ambassador Aharoni: Jewish Diaspora also. >>Male #2: Jewish Diaspora--okay. So I feel like the Jewish Diaspora, at least in America, is a little more strongly affiliated with Israel because of the stigma of leaving for example. The American Diaspora, I think, has less of that element I feel like there are Americans who live abroad who sort of want nothing to do with America, and I'm kind of curious what your views are about recruiting that diaspora to actually enlist their support. >>Ambassador Aharoni: Two advices. The first is, leave politics out of the game, out of the conversation. And the second thing is, try to identify what is it that makes America such a great brand. Think about it. We said, "Brand is a promise. A strong brand is a promise delivered." What is the DNA of the United States? America is about what? What's the one word that defines-- >>Unknown speaker: Freedom. >>Ambassador Aharoni: Freedom, exactly. The United States is about freedom and the fact that freedom is being supported in almost every of dimension of life in America, whether you look at the political system, even the physic-- the, you know, physical experience of traveling in America is about freedom. The outdoors, the highways. You go to California, you go to Texas, you take the--you know-- you go on the road on a road trip, you see all--you can smell the freedom in America. It's so powerful, it's so sensual. And so this is your main asset. To what extent, does an American who made a decision to live in Paris for political, ideological reasons, or for business reasons cares about the fact that America celebrates freedom? That's the question that you have to ask. To what extent these people, that American diaspora overseas, deeply cares about the DNA of the United States? And I think once you'll be able to answer that question, it will be easier to come up with a program that is relevant to them. My feeling, and again, my gut feeling--I'm married to an American who moved to Israel--in fact, I'm the only non- American in my family. I'm the only person in my immediate family that doesn't have an American passport. And I can tell you that in the case of Americans who move out of America, you know, something else motivates them. It's not the celebration of American freedom. Something else, they found purpose elsewhere, and you need to understand what's that thing that they discovered. >>Male speaker#2: Thank you. >>Male #3: Hi, you talked a little bit about how Hollywood had promoted the image that New York City was a dangerous place full of crime up through the '70s. Hollywood is still making those films it seems, so what actually changed? It seems almost like the films we watch are a romantic version of that but it doesn't seem like that's actually what changed and got people to see New York differently. >>Ambassador Aharoni: Well, many--you know in the case of New York, what changed is an effort that was made mostly by the private sector at first, and then was embraced by official agencies in the city of New York to highlight the other facets of New York, yeah, without ignoring, yes, there's still pockets of violence and there's still dangerous places in New York, and obviously the ultimate thing that happened was in the end, when the city cleaned the streets and doubled the number of police officers. That was a huge decision that really was of strategic importance. It's never just about Hollywood, but Hollywood is a big part of it. And again, if you will not take the proactive approach, Hollywood will redefine you. And that's exactly what happened in the '70's, New York didn't do enough creating attractions, and you know it's a--if you're really interested in the case of New York, I urge all of you to read the book, Branding of New York, it was published in 2008 by a sociologist from Columbia University whose name is Miriam Greenberg. It's a fascinating book, it's a history book actually about the process. It talks about how they made a decision, for example, those families to invest in NYU in the '70s. To turn NYU--to create NYU as a counterbalance to the economic and academic strength of Columbia. So there was a need to create another academic magnet in Manhattan, and they made a decision it's going to be NYU. And it was such an elaborate program, brilliant program, I urge all of you to read that book. Read that book. >>Male #3: Would you say that New York is a promise delivered in this case? >>Ambassador Aharoni: Absolutely! Absolutely! New York, to my mind, is the most amazing case study in place positioning. Amazing, in thirty years, they totally overhauled the positioning of New York. I think that second would probably be the case of Spain, post-Franco. And a remarkable effort on the part of the Spanish government. >>Male #3: Thanks. >>Male #4: I'd say in most cases where a city or a country is trying to brand itself it doesn't face an organized opposition where the opposition is resisting that branding, you know, so if France wants to be the city of romance, no one's going to say "NO. no, France-- not romantic." But in the case of Israel, obviously there is an organized opposition, you know, you can imagine in the old days, if South Africa had tried to brand itself as the place to come for business and safaris, there would have been significant push back, saying, "You know what South Africa is." So how do you deal with the fact that you can't just brand yourself and send the message out unopposed? >>Ambassador Aharoni: Right. First, that's an excellence question. It means only one thing for us. We have to work harder. We have to work harder. It's true that no one will tell France, "No, you're not romance." But don't forget that Paris is facing some tough competition in Europe itself. In the case of romance, the competition comes from Venice. But it's true, it's not a negative branding. But the good news is that people really don't care. Here--I put a slide here of a study that we conducted as Israel was going into Gaza, so you can't say this study was not conducted when Israel was not in the news. Israel was in the news, and in a very negative context. Okay, Israel was going into Gaza in early 2009. We went to fourteen countries to look at their perception of Israel's personality. This was not about Israeli policies, it was about Israel's personality, but we did start the study with the baseline question, "On the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, where do you stand?" In blue or purple, whatever the color is, is the level of support for Israel. In pink or red, is the level of support for Palestinians. I want you to pay attention to the results in France. This is France. You see, in France, and by the way, we asked only the elite in those societies. The elite--the people who earn above average and at least have one college degree, okay? So you look at the case of France, sixteen percent of the French elite to your point sir, support the Palestinians. Only nine percent of the French elite support the Israelis, right? So traditionally what we try to do was to change the inner balance between the two groups and move people from the group of sixteen to the group of nine. And we tried to do that using historical and legal arguments. Like, you know, "we are right and they are wrong" and all that. Marketing experts looked at this and said, "Wait a second, put sixteen and nine together, what do you get? Twenty- five percent. Seventy-five percent of the French elite couldn't care less about the conflict what is it that you bring to them?" And we checked ourselves, and we looked at what we actually brought to them over the years, and we discovered that what we brought to them was exactly the same argumentation that produced the nine percent. In other words, we were turning them off. On a daily basis. And when we changed the message, when we changed the content of the communication, when we started communicating to them things that they care about, for example, lifestyle and leisure. Israel is a great culinary experience. Israel is a great--we have great wine, we have an emerging olive oil industry. The best olive oil in the whole world comes from Israel. We have great fashion designers in Israel. Great filmmakers in Israel. So it's true, when you have to deal with a political crises like the flotilla, you don't talk about fashion. It's not a crises management tool. But when you need to build an overarching persona, overarching strategy you have to talk about those things because that's exactly the kind of human experience that creates the emotional tie. And I can tell you, for example the gay community in Europe, Israel's been extremely successful in engaging them in a conversation that is meaningful. Why? Because in the case of the gay community, Israel delivers on the promise in a big way. There is no country in our hemisphere, in our region, that is more gay friendly than Israel, and that's a fact. And this fact is being celebrated by gay people all over the world. No more questions, I'm sorry, the big brother said no more questions. >>Unknown speaker: No more time. >>Ambassador Aharoni: No more time. Thank you so much, I'll be accessible here if you have questions. 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