10 Innovative Stunts from Israel’s Last Elections
Israel was once known as the start-up nation and as an exporter of television shows. Yet, in recent years we seem to have become famous for having elections. For those of you who have not been following — over the past two years, Israel’s political system has been in total gridlock, resulting in four election campaigns. Campaigning in such an environment is a challenge in many aspects, but it is incredibly challenging creative-wise - what can you say that is new the fourth time around?
As COVID-19 started and flights stopped, yet another election in Israel was announced. This was a sign from above to chase my childhood dream — and run the creative for a political campaign.
I had an opportunity to bring my skills to the political realm, taking on the role of creative director for one of the political parties in the election campaign. After many years working in the television industry worldwide in various genres ranging from reality shows in Europe to dating shows in China — I have spent the last few years mostly with Indian game shows and tech industry.
I knew I had the experience, knowledge, and burning narcissistic passion to save my country, and spoiler alert, it kinda worked! The party doubled in size.
Like all creative efforts, this is a group achievement. But I want to share some of the incredible stunts we created for the campaign.
Campaigning is intense and from the moment I signed on until election night, seven days a week, 24 hours a day, I was on a crazy roller coaster. Although my title was “creative director,” I did everything — resolving strategic crises, dubbing commercials, hanging ads in the middle of the night, and volunteering my house and children for the videos we put out.
The party leader, MK Nitzan Horowitz, has gone through many election campaigns over the last few years. When he asked me, at our first meeting, what I am proposing to renew this time, I wondered aloud if it was worth doing a new campaign. Maybe, I smiled, we should just run a greatest hits compilation. After all, this party has existed for 30 years, with roots going back over 100. Its supporters, though not many, are devoted.
The struggle for us this time was challenging. To get into the Knesset (the Israeli parliament). The required threshold was dramatically raised to make it difficult for small parties like us. As the secretary-general and the party’s chief of staff explained to me — we have very few resources and a lot of background noise. We have to be smart to stand out. The goal is to remind our audience why it is important to vote for us and to motivate them to do so.
Campaigning has changed a lot over the recent decade. It used to center on being able to tell, with a few variations, the same narrative over and over again using just a couple of big media outlets. These days there are an infinite number of small media you need to address, and you need to have more than one narrative, sometimes even conflicting ones.
Since Trump’s campaign in 2016, the public demands much more excitement from politics. The goal of a campaign today is to capture the attention of the audience in unexpected ways, To strengthen its identity-tribal connection to the political brand, and to motivate it to action. Due to the nature of Israel’s publicly-funded campaigns, a small party like ours has minimal financial resources, forcing us to rely on a creative approach to earn free media coverage.
The night before the first meeting at headquarters, I couldn’t sleep. I sat in front of my computer and wrote a long list of technologies that we can use for the campaign, including popular apps, engaging platforms, or trends on social media. I sat awake thinking of ways to leverage each one to convey the party message.
Here are a few examples…
1. Tinder Campaign
We wanted to emphasize that the party is young and naughty on the one hand, but stable on the other. So we launched a campaign on Tinder in which a hundred volunteer users (supporters of our party) temporarily changed their profile image to party slogans such as “With us, it’s not a one-night stand” or “Remember you swiped right and regretted it.” We got a lot of exposure from influencers for it.
2. Waze Campaign
To emphasize the fact we are a left-wing party — we did a stunt on the navigation app Waze. We recorded two versions of the voice directions, so the users could get 2 kinds of directions. One, the Left Wing one, had our party leader give directions, ending with “You’ve reached your destination. Hope to get your vote on March 22nd”. The other was politicians always saying “Right.” No matter what the actual direction is.
3. Online Shopping Packages Campaign
One of the party’s strong points is our reliability. Even those who hate us won’t deny it. This is not a common trait in politicians. To remind people of this, we paid the delivery guys to put a sticker with our ads on it on packages from Ali Express, Amazon, Asus, eBay, etc. Our sticker read “You know what you are getting with us”. It pissed off a couple of recipients, but that outrage worked for us too.
4. Meretz Vintage on Facebook and Spotify
Because the party has been around for decades and has a reputation for producing creative TV ads — we decided to launch the Meretz Vintage channel, which included nostalgic video ads of the party, and upload our old jingles to Spotify — the best way to jog.
5. Fake Merchandise on Instagram
We opened an Instagram account for a merchandise store with fake products of our party. Things like socks that have “left” on one foot and “not left” on the other. An umbrella with the slogan “this is not rain,” a condom with the slogan “You can feel safe with us,” and a scarf with the words “we will keep your voice,” etc.
6. An Extra Provocative Billboard Campaign
We had a limited budget for billboards, so each one had to count. When it was revealed that the Ministry of Education had no plans for getting back to school after lockdown, we used one of the billboards to publish the ministers’ personal phone number so angry parents can call to say what they think of him. This act created a shit-storm, and we got plenty of free publicity.
7. Zoom Calls & Cats
To promote the unsexy topic of parlor meetings with our candidates, we looked for an unusual gimmick that would go viral. Because zoom invaded every meeting and cats are the liberal’s sweetheart, we wrote a fictional zoom parlor meeting for a fictional Meretz’s cat headquarters. The video was funny, with a lot of in-jokes at the expense of our voters. Meretz voters are confident in their identity. They enjoyed the humor and spread the video. But part of the beauty of virality is that our right-wing competitors spread it too, failing to take the joke for what it was — creating an unprecedented amount of subscribers and media exposure.
8. A 15-Minute Ad
During the elections, Israel was in the middle of its vaccination operation. After you get the shot, you need to wait for 15 minutes in order to control allergic reactions. So we created a unique 15-minute long clip for people right after the vaccine. Under a 15-minute counter, a presenter is reading the party’s political platform with the viewers.
9. A video platform to get a personalized video from our candidates.
Like Cameo but instead of B-list celebrities for money, we used our candidates and did it for free. Anyone could send an undecided friend a personalized message from one of our candidates, explaining why they should vote for the party. It was a big success, and we’ve sent hundreds of clips. It worked on three levels. First, the receiver enjoyed it, and then the sender, and most importantly, they all uploaded it to social media.
10. Argue With A Bot
Our surveys indicated that the Friday night family dinner (an Israeli institute) before an election is a key time for persuasion. We created a unique, advanced chatbot that prepared our supporters for that dinner with arguments, counter-arguments stats, and data. After all, there is nothing Israelis love more than having the last word.
In an election, there are many factors beyond your control — the other parties, the country’s political situation, candidates running their mouth, and many more. Towards the end of the campaign, it was decided by all of us to change strategy and focus on what is known in Israel as a Gevalt! campaign, which is the Yiddish word for “save us.” The whole campaign was focused on getting people to do the strategic calculation and vote to save the party from extinction. It worked, but this is the subject of another article.
Every campaign is based on teamwork, and this campaign was no different. I have been blessed with a collaboration with a dream team of creative partners. Gil Dickman was a fantastic partner, and Hila Shimoni, Shai Atar, Neomi Tirosh, Itay Zimmer, Itamar Azulay, Nadav Wachs, May Ater, Omer Bracha and Itamar Roi were fantastic. On the other side was the campaign manager Hillel Fertuk, the party secretary Tomer Reznik and the party chief of staff Daniel Zarfati. Altogether they were the best team ever. Now it is up to politicians to do the work. Let’s do this again, hopefully not too soon.
