Gilad Shalit
Photo: AP
Shalit: A brand name?
Photo: MCT
Adi Weinstein
Israel ruled by PR
Op-ed: Shalit prisoner swap proved that most powerful players in Israel are ‘salespeople’
Gilad Shalit
left to Gaza as a soldier and returned to Israel
as the country’s most beloved and media-covered brand. At this time, Shalit is not only a cherished brand name associated with the state, but rather, he is the state itself. Many parties played a role in turning Shalit into a loved consumer good. Prisoner swap critics like to blame the media for the “Shalit Festival”
of recent weeks, yet in this case media outlets were no more than a relay station.
In recent years, extensive parts of Israel’s public discourse – ranging from well-known artists to anonymous Facebook status lines – partook in a calculated strategic move with one aim: Keeping Gilad in the headlines, at any price. After bringing him to the headlines, his way home was already paved.
Sign of Weakness
Yoel Meltzer
Op-ed: Alarmingly, over time Israeli leaders have withdrawn from most of our red lines
As opposed to what swap critics think, the “Giladization” was not born in newsrooms, but rather, on the initiative of several copywriters and strategic planners from one of Israel’s largest, most prominent advertising agencies. In the world they created, an IDF soldier became a child shared by all Israeli citizens.
The campaign revolved around two simple, memorable values that every Israeli is expected to identify with – the IDF and the family. So on the one hand, people were enlisting for Shalit’s “Friends Army”, while also celebrating the “kid’s” fifth birthday in captivity." And the campaign worked, not only for the whole of Israel, which was glued to the television screen, but mostly for the media, which were caught off guard.
Newsrooms and newscasts are always hungry for features about the bad guys versus the good guys, with victims who have a name, a look that stirs empathy, and preferably a personal military ID number. Within Israel’s multifaceted reality, the campaign created a uniform reality where there is only one way to address the question of releasing the kid - sorry, the abducted solider. And so, not only was the soldier abducted, but the discourse too was abducted to the world of advertising.
Taking no prisoners
When it comes to Israel’s media, being right is not enough – one also needs a touching story and a PR expert. The Shalit coverage was just one example of a mega-story that receives infinite airtime, while issues that are no less significant and meaningful fail to make it into the news.
Have you recently heard about construction mishaps in the media? After all, a laborer is killed every two weeks. And what about car accidents where “only” one or two people die? Or the violence of West Bank residents against IDF soldiers? The quality of education in peripheral communities? Animal abuse in the food industry? Cancerous pollution?
Nobody talks about our quiet dead, the ones who are not backed by a well-oiled public relations arsenal that constantly tells the media what to air and which tone to use.
Shalit’s release day was also a holiday for members of the ad agency that ran the campaign to return him (notably this was done voluntarily and in coordination with Shalit’s parents). And this is what they wrote to their employees in the office blog: “With your great and simultaneously modest help, you saved the life of one person, and no less importantly, you stirred new hope in all the country’s citizens.”
The above should serve as a warning sign to Israeli society in respect to what lies ahead. The ad agency’s people took full credit for Shalit’s release, and it indeed appears that they deserve most of the credit. Their effort was felt throughout Israel’s media world and resonated in the Knesset corridors as well.
It would not be far-fetched to claim that in our state-of-all-its-soldiers, the catchy slogan hit the soft underbelly of our top decision-makers. Precisely for this reason, we should treat the authentic glee of these PR experts seriously.
Although it’s hard to predict what lies in store, the Gilad Shalit case proved to us that in the fight for the Israeli psyche, the most powerful players are the “salespeople,” and they take no prisoners.
Adi Weinstein is a copywriter and a Master’s students in culture studies. She supports the Shalit deal.
- Follow Ynetnews on Facebook
