Still, as this is a blog focused on how Israel tends to do things a little differently, I figured it might be fun to give the Israel perspective on each of the “Things.”  So here goes:

1. “Your company may be better off spending a limited budget on another form of communication, such as direct marketing or online advertising, instead of hiring a PR firm. PR is not always the best solution.”

We start off with a bang, because this one is absolutely irrelevant for Israel.  Israelis are gamblers by nature.  We like taking risks and are willing to try something against the percentages, if there is a potential jackpot pay-off at the end.  So putting those few dollars into PR makes all the sense to Israeli CEOs.  In fact, I have many times suggested to CEOs that they save their money, rather than trying to maintain a PR campaign with a too-small budget.  They tell me that they appreciate the suggestion, but then they just ask me if I can perhaps introduce them to a lower-priced PR firm or person who might be able to deal with their slim budget.

2. “The firm doesn’t have media contacts in your area. Chances are high that half the journalists a PR person worked with in the recent past are no longer with the same media outlet, and/or may not be covering the same area.”

This is really true, and I liked the message – that it’s the quality of the pitch/story that counts, and not the contacts.  At the same time, in Israel, everyone knows everyone else, so contacts are not only important, they are expected!  Of course, I don’t necessarily agree with this blogger that contacts don’t remain contacts from client campaign to client campaign.  Also, the business/top-tier media contacts don’t change as often, and those are the outlets that really move the needle for clients who want to introduce themselves to the world.  And in the land of innovation that is Israel, there is a great deal of benefit to such an introduction-focus.

3. “What you want the PR firm to do is not what you really need. Clients should look for PR companies that will consult with them and develop strategies, not just do as they’re told. After all, aren’t you paying for expertise?”

This is super-duper true here in Israel.  Clients know they want PR, and they know that articles about the company will help them, but they don’t have the sophisticated PR infrastructures in place to actually have someone thinking about strategy day-to-day.  Truth be told, they outsource the strategic thinking to us – the PR firm.  So in addition to getting results, we are also in charge of asking the question: “How is this PR activity or campaign helping your business?”

4. “Your expectations and goals for PR are too high. Of course you think your company and products are media- and buzz-worthy, but it’s hard for you to be objective. It’s not unusual to hear a prospective client say, “We want to be in The Wall Street Journal or on ‘The Today Show,’ or create record-breaking buzz about our product on Facebook.”

Well, the high expectations of Israelis are legendary at this point, right?  But hey, in a country where they have somehow been able to invent the cell phone, instant messaging, the swallow-able camera and the standard for firewall software, while fighting wars for survival every few years, why shouldn’t a company think that the impossible IS possible?  So I’m okay with this one, and we actually find it galvanizing to have such high expectations.  We don’t always meet them, but when we do, it’s an amazing feeling.

5. “You don’t have a big enough budget to “move the needle.” In every situation there’s a minimum amount of money that’s necessary to get good PR results. Rather than say your budget is inadequate, some PR companies will take what they can as long as you can pay until you realize they’re not giving you the results you need.”

I don’t think I will address this one.  The others above are fair critiques of the industry.  This one just points to a dishonesty that seems to be in place, and that’s bad enough.  Let’s move on …

6. “Your company has to spend time and effort working with the PR firm to make the plan a success. For starters, you need to thoroughly brief the PR team regularly. It isn’t possible for an agency to do great PR for your company if your executives won’t make themselves available for interviews, or don’t get back to the agency in a timely way to answer media questions.”

True, and a real problem here in Israel where marketing teams are often comprised of just one or two people.  Still, when the client DOES brief us regularly, it works so well.  And we actually speak with those clients who don’t, and give them examples of the great results we achieve for those clients who do keep us up to speed.

So that’s the Israeli take on the “6 things,” but as you can see, sometimes it may be necessary to not say certain things, if they will only fall on deaf ears …

It’s a word everyone uses, because everyone wants to be known as a team player.  At the same time, we in the PR industry need to make sure that we are each thought of as indispensible to our clients, so sometimes, perhaps there’s a bit of jockeying for position among those who are supposed to be working together.

And I suppose competition is always good.  I mean, show me a town with only one pizza place and I’ll show you a town with expensive, bad-tasting pizza.  Show me a town with two pizza places, and I’ll show you two successful business owners and thousands of satisfied customers.

But in this business, where our sole focus must be on client delight, there is no room for competition that impacts on our ability to collaborate.

I’ll give an example:

Ruder Finn Israel’s focus is international media relations.  That means that whenever we have an opportunity to work on a project that has both domestic and international elements to it, we work with partners.  That’s fine with us, especially considering the rather small universe of domestic Israeli media.

For the most part, we work quite nicely with domestic-focused firms, but we did have one ocassion recently where we began to work with a client and were surprised to see a competitor (domestic-focused) in the room during our kick-off meeting with this client.  I’ll call him ”Joe,” for the purpose of the story, although that is not his real name.

Anyway, he walked into the room and I said, “Hey, Joe, what are you doing here?”

He said, “I’m your new boss.  I work with this organization and they wanted me to be here to make sure you guys are doing things right.”

Now, to make a long story short, we have not seen any sign of Joe since that meeting, and from the sounds of things, this particular client only works with him because he’s cheap and because they don’t really depend on him for the high-level strategic stuff, but his referring to himself as our ”boss” did not make for a collaborative working atmosphere.

And that is an important point as well.  One’s expectations, in terms of collaboration, shouldn’t be too lofty.  Collaboration doesn’t mean that the all agencies want to go out of their way to make the other guy look good.  It means that all realize success will only come if the client is happy.

But …

When a company is considering some kind of outsourced PR representation, and comes down to a decision between:

1. Hiring a PR firm; and
2. Hiring a freelancer to write releases and distribute them on Businesswire/PR Newswire,

I try to explain that there is a world of difference between the two approaches, and that we see the wire services as partners, not competitors.  Those who understand the difference select us.  Those who don’t understand the difference do not select us.  It’s really that simple.

So what is the difference?

Simply put, it’s the difference between telemarketing and an in-house seasoned sales team.  A telemarketing firm can plow through a tremendous number of contacts, offering the product to each and hoping for the best.  But a sales team brings all sorts of tools to the table, including research, relationships, industry knowledge and, perhaps most importantly, the ability to think and react.

A wire service is able to distribute an announcement to literally thousands and thousands of contacts, but that is where the value ends.  There is no active “selling” of the story as deserving of coverage.  There is no feedback from the reporter. There is no qualitative result.  It’s all quantitative.  But it’s worse than that.  Take a look at this.  Okay, now first, I have to explain that I have absolutely nothing against this ProPay company, based in Utah.  So it seems impressive that this company was covered by Forbes.com, right?  After all, Forbes.com is a pretty popular site.

Now, go to www.forbes.com and, without using the search window, see if you can find this “article” about ProPay.

You can’t.

Because it’s not real coverage.  It’s a newsfeed, based on a partnership between Forbes.com and Businesswire.  And it will look impressive to those within ProPay who are fairly ignorant about PR, but it will have literally no value to their business.

When you hire a PR firm, real conversations are taking place between the firm and the media, and those conversations will lead to real interviews which, as you can probably guess, will lead to real coverage of your company.

Here’s an example of something we did recently for a client, SysAid.  Now, if you tried to find it starting at www.baselinemag.com, you would find it.  It’s in the Business Intelligence section, on the second page.

It’s real coverage.  And not only will people be able to find it, but when they do, they will believe what it says, because it’s not simply a reprint of a company news release.

And at the end of the day, that’s really what PR is all about.  You want people to hear about you, and you want what they hear to be believable.

Don’t you?

So given that professional experience, it should be relatively simple to diagnose the PR problems Israel is having and prescribe a certain program to improve the situation.

And it is simple, but not in the way you might think.

Much has been written over the past few weeks – ever since “The Flotilla Affair” – about the overall weakness of Israel’s PR, both when crises hit and in general.  In fact, journalist Yair Lapid wrote a column about it on June 4.  And the Jerusalem Post wrote an extensive article this past weekend about the branding of Jerusalem, in the context of “The Affair” and the regional conflict as a whole.  And they all brought wonderful examples of how and why Israel’s PR has missed the mark.

But I’m afraid they’ve missed the mark as well.

Lapid laments Information Minister Yuli Edelstein’s frustrating cell phone contact system.  And he’s right.  Edelstein’s system of screening and passwords stinks.  But he’s also wrong, because a better contacting system for Edelstein wouldn’t help Israel’s image one bit, due to a much larger problem, which I will mention soon enough.  Fixing his voicemail wouldn’t help fight the incredible PR machine our enemies have built.

And the J. Post article misses the point as well.  Here’s a short excerpt:

As the dust begins to settle around the flotilla events, Jerusalem is in the midst of starting its new public relations campaign, “Something Good Is Happening in Jerusalem.” The municipality is pushing aggressively to recast the city as a cultural destination, whose international importance in the world of art and music is just as celebrated as the city’s historical and religious significance.

This being Jerusalem, a few problems have cropped up.

“Jerusalem’s brand is undermined by troubles and how the media portrays it,” says Foster George, a tourist from London in Jerusalem for a week as he strolls through Jaffa Gate for the first time.

“The image of Jerusalem is so tied to Israel abroad which, unfortunately, especially now, is not so positive,” adds another tourist, Kate Engberg from Gothenburg, Sweden.

The problem, this article suggests, is that as long as Israel is not able to separate the politics from the tourism, Jerusalem’s tourism industry is going to suffer.  But again, the J. Post is incorrect.  Jerusalem is the center of the religious universe, and as such is going to be the hottest point on Earth for conflict.  That is the deal and we must all understand and even embrace that.  But this is irrelevant as well, in terms of the larger question about Israel’s PR, although we are getting closer to the point.

Another PR complaint over the years has been the lack of Israel spokespeople who are able to speak strong English.  Well, we now have Mark Regev at the wheel, one of the best I’ve ever seen, as well as Michael Oren in the U.S., who is also fantastic.

And yet, Israel has had one of its worst PR runs over the last 12 months that it has had in decades.  Doesn’t this seem strange to you?

How can it be that we did better PR during the post-9/11 phase, when Ariel Sharon was prime minister, than we are doing now, when U.S.-educated Binyamin Netanyahu is at the helm?

When you consider the overall futility of the three above arguments of 1. Logistical ineptitude (the Edelstein example), 2. Brushing aside the negative, in favor of the positive (the Jerusalem tourism example) and 3. Native-English-speaking spokespeople (The Regev-Oren-Bibi example), there is only one conclusion that should be drawn.

It’s not about any of these things.

To understand why we are failing, we must first look at why the other side is succeeding.  And the answer to that question is simple: A Unified Message.

It wouldn’t matter if Edelstein drank Red Bull 24 hours a day and was 100% available for all requested interviews.  Because an hour later, someone from the government opposition will submit to an interview and completely contradict what Edelstein has said.

It doesn’t matter that Jerusalem has wonderful views, great restaurants and almost-perfect weather, especially this time of year.  Because the world is being told – by Jewish-Israelis – on a regular basis that Jerusalem is a place of conflict, and that it is all the fault of the Jews.

And it doesn’t matter that we have our strongest international spokespeople since the days of Golda Meir and Abba Eban.

Because we do not have that item that can often be the difference between success and failure for any PR campaign.  In fact, it should be the cornerstone of any campaign.

It is the unified message.

After 9/11, Israel was unified, not only in its condemnation of the attack, but in its message to the world of “You see!  This is what we’ve been going through!  Now, do you understand us?”

But time has “healed,” and we have once again descended to our previous disagreements and ideologies.  We are not united.

And sadly, if Israel itself is not unified – as our enemies are, for the purpose of destroying Israel – then there will be no unified message, and we will continue to lose the PR battle, even if we are right.

So, please do not waste your time analyzing the PR strategy – or even lack thereof – or tactical approach of the Israeli government.  It’s not about that.  It’s the same problem that has plagued the Jewish people for centuries. We can’t unify.  Even about a message.  Even when our future is at stake.

]]> http://www.ruderfinn.co.il/communicating-promise/2010/06/why-israel-cannot-solve-its-pr-challenge-or-its-the-message-stupid.html/feed 3