Three senior marketing executives from the Israeli technology community, whose companies have a recognized international presence, gathered at the global business conference Globes Israel to discuss the landscape of marketing in Israel, the global challenges it faces, and what makes the country a global leader. Mati Rahav, Chief Marketing Officer at Fiverr, Laura Kerin, Vice President of Global Marketing at Playtika, and Ran Geshree, Vice President of Self-Service Business at Taboola, participated in a panel discussion moderated by Globes media correspondent Nevo Traboulsi. The session was held on the conference’s Game Changers track and was sponsored by Playtika.
Laura Kerin talked about the difference between marketing in Israel and marketing to a global audience. “When you work in Israel, you know what is right for you, and you have an intuition about what the Israeli audience likes. In global marketing, you lose your intuition, and you benefit a lot from local agency research, to get information.
“For someone who works in marketing, one of the hardest things is losing your intuition. We are also a really small market in Israel, from a media and audience point of view. In the United States and Germany, for example, the media is very decentralized, and the ability to reach A wide audience requires very large investments, which is a big challenge and it is a mentality that I do not have.
$200 billion trading volume
During the panel discussion, Keren presented a campaign about one of the company’s games starring Drew Barrymore. She said the gaming industry (in which Playtika, AU competes) “is $200 billion in revenue, more than streaming, more than movies. We’re facing a lot of competition. In fact, we’re competing for consumers’ time and we want people to have fun. One of the challenges that Our challenge is to create an emotional connection with our brands. There are millions of games in the app stores, and because we are a content platform, it is important for us to attract great talent.
“It is important to know that in digital media, the budget is determined according to the ability to repay the investment,” Kirin added. “The better the product is, the more you can increase its marketing budget. But we are always looking for the breakthrough. Good creative design still generates the highest conversion rate. The second most important thing is building communities: the more people talk about the product among themselves, the more it becomes Our marketing budget is cheaper.”
According to Fiverr’s Yahav, the challenges faced by companies seeking to break through and stand out on the international stage, even in the online and digital arenas, are now greater than ever. “Competition has become more intense in recent years, there are a lot of platforms, a lot of content trying to break through, and now there is also the use of artificial intelligence to make everything more efficient.
“But the way to break through,” he says, “is basically to be fearless. I see a lot of people who do marketing who want to do it right, who don’t want to be annoying, who are afraid to make mistakes. I think that’s the surest way to not stand out.” The way to stand out is actually to be assertive, tell a story, arouse interest, and touch the viewers’ emotions.
As an example, Yahav cited a recent campaign distributed by Fiverr, a platform that mediates between consumers and freelancers for various short-term gigs. The campaign is called “Nobody Cares,” and it takes aim at the overuse of words with the phrase “made with the help of AI” in marketing and creativity.
“At the company, they wanted to stop it. They were afraid we would get negative feedback, but it was an amazing success. There were maybe three negative articles, and there was 15% negative feedback, but the majority were positive. Go with your own opinion and your truth, that’s What we believe. The biggest enemy of marketing is that people don’t care. We had a message here that we believed in, and the truth is that that vision affected a lot of people.
That campaign, which calls on people to hire Fiverr experts whether they use AI professionally or not, has won tens of millions of views and significant positive coverage, Yahav said.
Marketing has seen a fundamental change, Ran Jayshree of Tboola said on the panel. “We have many new tools, huge amounts of data. There is a lot of talent, and it is no longer necessary to hire American marketing people from my personal experience. I like to move forward and come up with new ideas. Always, when I come up with an idea, Americans say: ‘Good idea, but “The Europeans want to build a process, and the Israelis alone are wondering how we can begin to achieve this, and this is a very important difference for the benefit of Israeli society.”
According to Keren, one of the Israeli advantages is that “we live in a highly emotional environment. People in Israel want to be enthusiastic and create. Teams will not take no for an answer. They are always trying to find some things.” “The alternative solution, this is often to our advantage.”
“What strikes me when I work with Israelis is that we know how to deal with a high degree of uncertainty,” Yahav says. “We are results-oriented, very adaptable, and with the ability to deal with the unknown, it gives us an advantage.”
The Globes Business Conference in Israel is held in cooperation with Bank Hapoalim and Phoenix Holdings, and is sponsored by El Al, Bezeq, Nespresso, Walt, Dell, the Israel Medical Association, Energean, the Jewish National Fund, BlackRock, Playtica, Meta, Strauss Group, Bazin Group, Inc. MSCI, with the participation of Mekorot, the Port of Ashdod, and the Israel Innovation Authority.
Published by Globes, Israel Business News – en.globes.co.il – on December 8, 2024.
© Copyright Globes Publisher Itonut (1983) Ltd., 2024.