← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · Kurt
Thread ID: 13652 | Posts: 2 | Started: 2004-05-11
2004-05-11 06:48 | User Profile
**[url=http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/424754.html]Israeli businesses eye the growing U.S. evangelical market[/url] **
By Sarah Bronson
A Ramat Gan-based marketing company, which previously specialized in advertising to the Haredi market in Israel, has announced its plans to invest up to $ 3 million over the next four years in marketing Israeli products to evangelical Christians in America.
The Bolton marketing and advertising company, headed by Rachel Bolton - who was recently named the 24th most powerful woman in Israeli business by the Hebrew daily Yedioth Ahronoth - has developed an international division which is building partnerships with marketing agencies in the U.S. to publicize Israeli products on Christian Web sites and at Church bazarres. The aggressive campaign, a Bolton spokesperson said, will eventually reach so deeply into the evangelical market that Israeli products will be advertised in individual Church's newsletters.
"There are 70 million evangelical Christians in the United States, and they are very supportive of Israel" says Shlomo Loshinsky, a spokesman for Bolton. "You would not believe how many people in America would buy an Israeli product even though it's more expensive, because it was made in Israel." Bolton represents, among other clients, Elite, Strauss, Wissotzky, Efrat Wineries and Hazorfim silversmiths.
Israeli exports to North America topped $ 87 million in 2003 from food products alone, but "it's a pittance compared to the potential," according to Menachem Lubinsky, President and CEO of Lubicom, a major marketing firm for kosher markets. "It should be several times that. To my knowledge, no one has penetrated the Christian market other than the tourism industry. To date [evangelical Christians] have not been a major marketing focus."
Until now, almost all marketing campaigns for Israeli products in America have centered on the Jewish community. Only one Israeli consumer product - Osem's couscous - sells well outside the kosher market.
"We are taking our clients out of the box," states Loshinsky. "Right now the distributors are stuck in the mindset of considering only the northeast American Orthodox Jew. If we can get to a church fair in Alabama and the people can hold Hazorfim products in their hands and sample Elite products, there will be so many [more] Americans the distributors can get to."
A co-owner of Hazorfim says that his company has proven, through respectable sales in Italy, that almost any product can be sold to non-Jews if packaged correctly. "The etrog [citron] boxes are sold as jewelry boxes," Doron Merdinger explains. "The candelabras are used as centerpieces. The kiddush cups are simply called goblets. Sometimes they are used for baptizing; because it is made in the Holy Land, it has a high spiritual value." Merdinger says that currently, 45 percent of his business is in exports to the U.S., but 99 percent of his customers there are Jews, a fact he hopes Bolton will help change.
Although Bolton would not be the first Israeli company to try to penetrate the Evangelical market, their new campaign marks the first long-term, multi-million dollar attempt outside of the tourism industry to capitalize on Evangelicals' support for Israel.
Previous attempts were marked by an "Israeli mentality that wanted a quick, easy fix," says Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein, founder and president of the International Federation of Christians and Jews. "They think they can come to the U.S. and show their olive wood from Bethlehem or their holy water from the Jordan, and don't necessarily have a marketing savvy or the financial pocket. They come with a myopic and unrealistic view. There have been very few long-term, serious, sophisticated approaches, and those have been for just one product."
Experts in Israeli exports caution that Bolton will face several challenges which so far their smaller predecessors have been unable to surmount. Bolton representatives say they plan to overcome these challenges with patience and sophisticated marketing: Getting the message right, making the products available, and making the products visible.
"The fact that something is from Israel alone is not a guaranteed seller unless there is a connection to a Bible theme," Lubinsky notes. "It doesn't necessarily follow that they should buy a chocolate bar from Israel faster than they'd buy an American chocolate." But Bolton's campaign could work, Lubinsky predicts, "if there is an effort to make people understand that buying Israeli products, irrespective of what that product is, will create new jobs and help Israelis."
Eckstein and Loshinsky both add, however, that the quality of the products must be stressed. "Telling Christians to buy blue-and-white to support Israel is not a long-term solution if the product isn't good," Loshinsky says. "I don't want people in Atlanta to buy Elite just once. I want it to be a long-term choice, because the quality is good."
Even if millions of Americans seek Israeli products, however, the Bolton campaign cannot work if Israeli companies cannot supply the markets in, say, Mississippi, says Chana Kaminyunsky, the consumer market director for the Israel Economic Mission to North America. "[When] you advertise, will these products be readily available?" she asks. "If you tell them about these great products, are they in the stores? You have to work hand in hand with the retailers and the local publications. It will take time. It will not be simple."
Loshinsky emphasizes that in addition to working with large supermarket chains to make Israeli products widely available, Bolton is pushing hard to get Israeli products out of "kosher" or "ethnic" sections of the stores and integrated with standard American items. "The evangelical Christians don't go to the kosher section," Loshinsky explains.
"Breaking out of the kosher section" might be Bolton's biggest obstacle, agrees Izzet Ozdogan, president of Osem U.S.A. "[All the Israeli companies] have tried to break out and it has failed every time."
é Copyright 2004 Haaretz. All rights reserved
2004-05-11 06:55 | User Profile
I'm just glad my grocery store finally began carrying U.S.A.-made falafel mix. I hated having to buy the Israeli stuff....