Sunday, July 27, 2014

Sexy Selfies: Standing with IDF campaign of modern day pin-up girls

Hello readers,
I am going to talk about the fast growing trend of sexy selfies supporting the IDF soldiers.
The facebook page "Standing with IDF" started that buzz and I got in touch with the man behind it and asked him to tell about his campaign.

Gavriel Beyo is a 27 years old owns a small advertising company and an investments company.
He is experienced in marketing online and offline, in Israel and abroad, and also expertise in branding.

Gavriel told me about the campaign: I started it. I reached few of my amazing friends for the first photos and thats how it started. I got the idea after I received a photo of someone I dated in the past. I then remembered the old "pin-up girls" photos soldiers used to look at before they were sent to battle.
The page and the campaign have goals to help in Hasbara and also raise the morale of the soldiers. This were the main goals. I wanted to show that Israel is not just about rockets and terror and I wanted to romanticize the IDF. It worked, we got alot of support from abroad even by non-Jewish, all over the world. We wanted the soldiers in the front lines to know we support them and also to give them a little distraction from the battlefield. It also worked, we got tens of thousands of likes, and thousands of "thank you" messages.  We also decided to use the campaign for more objective like fundraising and getting help for different needs of the soldiers. We got over 30,000 likes in 3 days and we have been covered in global media, so yeah, we reached our goals. I hope that we have more goals and reach even larger audiences soon.
The reason so many women keep taking explicit pictures of themselves for this campaign is patriotism, supporting the soldiers and also taking part in the effort of IDF.
I think the page and the campaign became so popular in such short time because we market both the most moral army in the world with the most beautiful women in the world.
As for reporters claiming that people feel less intersted in sex and have less sex activity because of the escalation, I can understand. Personally, I felt down, and my campaign is a way I try to help in some way. Did it work? from the responses its seems that yes. Personally, I am in relationships so I don't deal with the photos. I have volunteers to manage to content. The Main editor is the amazing Yafit Duer. They are amazing and invested alot of time from their own free time for this project. They also have conversations with soldiers, and Yafit also decided to show her face.  




I then asked Gavriel if the campaign have influence on people opinions and he answered:
Wow!!! Yes! For example a pakistani who had a cover photo "Stand with Gaza" with hands covered in blood he changed it to a cover photo of "I Stand with Israel", and countless more around the world.

I later asked him why in the last few hours the page is down and Gavriel said: We keept it a secret for now, prepare for a surprise :)

Gavriel, I want to thank you so much for sharing and wish you good luck with the campaign! 

Dov Trachtman - The Man in Fort

No comments:

Post a Comment