Market Wise

Optimil presenter Yael Bar Zohar is preparing a series of short films on motherhood and meeting needs of babies.

By GREER FAY CASHMAN
Yael Bar Zohar 88 248 (photo credit: Courtesy)
Yael Bar Zohar 88 248
(photo credit: Courtesy)
IT'S GOING to be a busy three months for political strategists as would-be Members of Knesset strive to make themselves appealing to members of their respective parties for the Knesset primaries and party leaders do the same with regard to the general elections in February 2009. Some parties have become top-heavy with marketable personalities, making life difficult for the guys who hung in there through thick and thin. The situation has encouraged some people to pool their talents so that they can offer their services to individual politicians and to different parties for strategy planning and vote getting. Three people who have joined forces for the political marketing game are Ben Zion Citrin, Haim Assa and Meir Palesvsky. Assa was a strategic and national security adviser to Yitzhak Rabin and later advised Shlomo Ben Ami when he was Foreign Minister and MK Yuval Steinitz in a security related think tank. Palevsky is a private investigator whose areas of expertise are economics and business related. Citrin is the proprietor of a communications company whose main focus is strategic planning. He was previously a television and print media journalist. MANY CELEBRITIES who are paid handsomely for product endorsement never actually try the products, and the general public might be less gullible about spending on certain goods and services if it was known that familiarity of the popular entertainer or athlete with the product in question went no further than the photo shoot. One of the exceptions to the rule is Yael Bar Zohar who has been feeding Optimil, a milk substitute to her baby, since the infant was born. It was several months later that she was asked to be a presenter for Optimil, and she knew all about the product without having to be told. When she turned up at the Optimil stand at a baby oriented fair at the Tel Aviv Fairgrounds, she was literally swamped by young mothers and a few new fathers who wanted to compare notes with her. They also wanted to know to what extent her husband Guy Zuaretz helps to take care of the baby, and why exactly she preferred to use a milk substitute instead of nourishing her baby on the real thing. Bar Zohar was fairly forthcoming, but told the other mothers that they could find out much more if they waited for the series of short films she is preparing about motherhood and meeting a baby's needs. COMPARED TO what a marketing campaign usually costs, Bank Hapoalim which has adopted the Israel National Chess Team is getting off cheap with an outlay of NIS 60,000. Attorney Yigal Lotan who is the director general of INCT says that the cash infusion by Bank Hapoalim will enable the team to train in conditions for the Chess Olympics that will be held in Dresden, Germany in the second half of November. Bank Hapoalim general manager Zvi Ziv says that the money is intended to enable the INCT to maintain its high standards and to attain even more impressive achievements than it has to date so that it can continue to bring honor and pride to Israel. In the 2006 chess Olympics in which players from 180 countries participated, Israeli players took third and fourth places. This year both the male and female teams with five players each are being sent to Germany. BY CONTRAST, H&O is spending NIS 5 million on its winter campaign, which seems somewhat of a waste considering that winter is hardly here, and season-wise will be over before it's cold enough or wet enough to wear the winter gear in the stores. In fact some stores are already advertising winter sales long before the traditional sales period. H&O is basing its campaign on fantasy, especially in its wedding outfits. Campaign presenters are Galit Gutman who seems to be the H&O good luck charm and Liron Levo. REPRESENTING A philosophy based on fitness and wellness, Curves, one of the world's largest women-only circuit training franchises with 13 branches throughout Israel, will participate in the November breast awareness month and will contribute to the fight against breast cancer by donating nine percent of total revenue of new memberships contracted during the month of November to the "Achat M'Tesha" (One in Nine) breast cancer foundation. There are some 22,000 Israeli women with breast cancer, with more than 4,000 new cases diagnosed each year. The "Achat M'Tesha" foundation strives to increase public awareness of breast cancer, to promote breast health in Israel and to provide support services and information to affected women and their loved ones. Curves has for some years been closely identified with the fight against breast cancer and has worked to raise funds as well as encourage women to go for mammograms. In April 2008, Curves partnered with actress and singer Olivia Newton-John for a 142-mile journey along the Great Wall of China in a campaign that raised more than $2 million to help women with breast cancer. Newton-John, best known for her role in the musical "Grease", battled breast cancer 15 years ago and has been dedicated to combating cancer ever since. IT'S NOT a pie in the sky, but it may well be a candelabrum or a kiddush cup or some other pure silver item associated with Jewish ritual. For air travelers who forgot or didn't have time to buy that special wedding or Bar Mitzva gift, Hatzorfim has reached an agreement with El Al to sell some of its products on flights. So even if you had screwed up on your plans to buy that silver item in a duty free store at the airport, but got side tracked by long lines at the security point or the check in counter, there's salvation on cloud nine.