I love guerilla and viral advertising. I love it because it is surprising in both content and medium. I love it because it is risky and challenging. It goes for the balls under the presumption that the hearts and minds will follow. When done well, it is remarkable and can become a cultural touchstone.

Viral advertising is proving to be remarkably effective. The drumming gorilla for Cadbury has done the impossible-gotten people to sit through a Phil Collins song. It’s also one of the most viewed advertisements, not on television, but rather emailed to friends and colleagues around the world with subject headers that this video must be seen.

All good advertising has some controversy in it, and the viral form allows more creative freedoms and will generate more hand wringing and accusations of tastelessness.

Israel is mounting a new campaign to increase tourism that shifts the focus from bombs to bombshells. Israel is getting a sexy makeover encouraging us to travel there not for the culture and landmarks, but for the hip factor. Female soldiers in the IDF are in the current issue of Maxim, a magazine not noted for its foreign affairs section, stripping their rifles and their uniforms. This wasn’t dreamed up in the lads mag’s cafeteria, but rather in the Israeli Ministry of Tourism.

There is an official advert that has been circulating for a while that can be viewed on YouTube.

Now there is a new advert, that was done by an Israeli agency without official sanction, but which is generating a lot of buzz. It has had over 15 million hits in 3 months. It is also generating a fair bit of controversy. It’s not as clever as the official commercial, but it’s following the same branding: Israel is cool. Israel is hot. Israel is sexy.

Will all of this advertising and rebranding of Israel work? I think it will. Not because it is particularly brilliant, but because it is simply effective. Controversy swirls over whether this is in poor taste, demeaning to women or to Israel itself and yadda yadda yadda.  The important thing for Israel is no one is talking about suicide bombers, Gaza Strip or Hezbollah attacks.

viral advertising advertising israel

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This entry was posted on Monday, September 24th, 2007 at 8:44 pm and is filed under advertising. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.