Trying to cash in on Obama’s cachet, a new print ad for the Israeli branch of Berlitz was just released – and it is litigiously similar to the ad I designed back in July 2008. Let’s compare:
Copywriter: Shahar Golan
Advertising Agency: Grey, Tel-Aviv, Israel
Executive Creative Director: Yonatan Stirin
Creative Director: Moti Rubinstein
Copywriter: Uri Shoham
Art Director: Karin Gross
Account Manager: Dani Brande
Account Supervisor: Noa Heinemann
Account Executive: Mor Gluska
apparently all you need to be an absolutely brilliant copywriter is to use google…
uri said on January 22, 2009 @ 2:28 pm:
Dear ahoovi,
As the copywriter of this ad, I can assure you that I thought about the idea by myself. I didn’t use Google, as you did. Further more, the creative was to use the phrase in the right context.
The question is that- can we believe that two human minds might think about the same idea?
Yes we… you know what? its not important if you believe me or not.
Keep on the Google work.
There is a new leader of the free world, and new additions to my Sightings-of-the-Hebrew-Obama-Posters-I-Designed scrapbook. This is today’s front page of ynet.co.il, the online edition of Israel’s leading newspaper:
You can check out the short video (in Hebrew) here.
Following is an Associated Press photo, as it appeared in the Los Angeles Times website:
Democrats Abroad-Israel posted loads of photos from the inaugural event in Jerusalem – in many of them my poster is lurking, like so:
And last, this is my Hebrew Obama poster as it briefly appeared on one of my favorite shows, The Colbert Report, on its Un-American News segment – President Obama Edition:
The yellow circle was added by me.
Avid readers of my blog know that during the 2008 US elections I was inspired by will.i.am’s Yes We Can video, so much so that I decided to do my part and create a few pro-Obama designs in Hebrew and make them available for download for free. Well, after Obama won, the Black Eyed Peas’ frontman released a new song called It’s A New Day, which features loads of still shots from the night Obama won -- and guess whose banner is shown (for less than a second) within these photos?
That’s right, the Associated Press photo that was featured on HuffPo’s front page has made its way into this video. It seems my ‘electing Obama’ adventures started with will.i.am and ended with will.i.am:
Now, I knew everyone gets to be famous for 15 minutes, I just did not realize in the 21st century it means you get a million people’s attention for half a second. Here’s the video, make sure not to blink at 38 seconds:
It is quite remarkable how something as trivial as a person’s middle name can be used as a source of shame one day, and as a source of pride the next day. Many people much smarter than me will write about the day in history when the citizens of the US grew up, and for the first time in a long time chose the most qualified person for the highest office in the land.
As someone who is not a US citizen and could not vote in the elections, I can still say I have done my part, however small, and proudly announce that I helped elect Barack Obama. Like millions of others, I, too, was inspired by the man and the campaign he ran. The Hebrew graphics I designed were viewed thousands of times and the files I made available were downloaded hundreds and hundreds of times.
Back in February 2008, my original post was first called “We Need a Mentch in the White House”. One year later, in January 2009, I would be able to proudly proclaim: We Have a Mentch in the White House!
Thanks to Tony Jassen, an Obama supporter from Jerusalem, who brought the photo to my attention:
Shahar -
Once again I can’t say thank you enough for the graphic and letting us use it.
As you can see, we have made a difference. [...]
[The photo] was taken at Mike’s Place Jerusalem at an election watch party sponsored by Democrats Abroad – Israel and attended by us, Israelis for Obama, among others. There were about 50 or so people there all night, mostly college students, watching the results. The picture was taken, if I am not mistaken, among celebrations of the first moments when the final results came in.
