CMO’s Spotlight: Every month we will celebrate a prominent and influential figure in the field of marketing. The first guest in the section is a serial interview evader: Dani Levy, owner of PR firm Dani Levy Communications, who is considered one of the strongest names in the field with clients such as Bank Hapoalim, Coca-Cola, Samsung, Adidas and dozens of others.
Levy is an unusual type and is considered a mysterious and interesting figure in the media market, mainly as one who does not give interviews but communicates with the world through his Instagram page, where he does not follow anyone but only broadcasts, allowing only 800 followers to follow him, while his followers include the most journalists and senior managers in Israel, alongside the biggest celebrities such as Gal Gadot, Lior Raz and Rotem Sela.
Levy, welcome to the section; what happened that you decided to be interviewed?
I don’t know. You approached me, and I really like and appreciate your website. And knowing it will annoy Miran Pachman, is worth it.
How is this period? Is there a change in business?
In 2021, we took a strong position on Tech, and those were the only customers we agreed to bring in. 2023 is looking a little less good for Tech, so we’re back to working with traditional industries and brands, and honestly, it’s a lot of fun. I’ve already forgotten where I came from and how much fun it is lol.
So tech actually took a hit, and now you’re in low tech?
The tech market is undergoing a necessary correction, and it will take several months for it to return. However, I am convinced that less than a year from now, we will look back and laugh at everything.
What do you foresee for the PR market going forward and for the marketing world in general?
The day after Dali 2 came out, I posted that Binami (AI) would have to be regulated. They laughed at me and didn’t understand what I wanted. Last week, OpenAI CTOMira Moretti said it herself.
There is going to be a huge shockwave, and people have to start finding their place. I go to companies and see entire wings there that can be easily replaced with artificial intelligence. Two weeks before the launch of chatGPT, a startup that raised $10 million came to us for a meeting to do something that makes life very easy in the field of travel. Two weeks later, GPT came out, which can do everything this company has been working on for three years with one click. So people need to prepare for this streamlining and identify what added value they can provide in the labor market, which even a machine cannot give. This is very relevant to PR and, in general, the entire marketing field, which relies a lot on content.
So what do you say? That the machine will make us all redundant?
We had a strategic discussion about this at a board meeting a few weeks ago and came to the conclusion that there will always be the top 10% of strategy and execution, where a human hand and brain will be needed. But there is no doubt that many processes along the way will be greatly simplified, and accordingly, businesses will disappear. For example, if in a normal month, we paid NIS 30,000 for translations and press releases, this month, we wouldn’t pay it. And to the same supplier that I didn’t pay, at some point, my colleagues won’t pay either, and he’ll run out of work. Therefore, everyone needs to make adjustments and nicely one quarter earlier.
So how do you, as a PR firm, prepare?
The first question I asked the ai we work with (we have more up-to-date tools than chatGPT at work) is what PR firm owners should do in an era of such change. She politely answered what I had answered in the previous section and implied that the only thing you can and should do to survive is embrace technology and not fight it. And that’s what we do. By the way, For the past three years, we have been a very technological organization, and in 2022 we went strong on metaverse and NFT applications and experienced great success, also financially.
Oh yes, NFTs. You made the Rozalach NFT. Where did this story go?
First of all, the industry is still working. This area is also undergoing a correction like all markets. But those who live it will tell you it is boiling more than ever. I bought some NFTs recently, and I believe they will be worth many times more. In fact, what they said would happen from the beginning is happening in the field – strong brands, established content brands, and utility will survive and work great.
As for Rozalach, it was a clear marketing project, which we did for several reasons; among them, thousands of cafes in Israel have Roslach on the menu, even though it is a registered trademark of the Landwer chain. So it was important for me to establish it as Landwer’s product and make it as absolute as possible – blockchain registration. This project was very successful and yielded a thousand times more earned media than it cost. To this day, he is taught in media circles. Or as Dafna, Landwer’s marketing manager, says: This is a project that never stops giving and giving.
So after NFTs, you switched to ai marketing gimmicks?
We do everything. We have an internal creative technology department that works on projects for many clients, and we have established activity with Rotem Sela’s Pickcherry company, Assi Azer and Smadar and Ido Regev, who are our favorite suppliers in the field of innovation. With them, we work on “invited” projects for huge organizations looking for innovation values and futuristic creativity. There is a lot of demand for it. Of course, it is important to note that for us, as a PR firm, the sale of such projects is relatively easy, For I know what can be produced from such an activity, and accordingly know how to assure the customer that if he flows with the crazy idea, he will get a lot of articles. We almost always sell the project only after I get a reply from an editor who tells me, “If you make it happen, I’d love to have it without me.” Getting started is very easy.
Bring an example besides Rozalach NFTs that really made a lot of noise:
For example, in 2022, Dani Levy Communications handled the “Main Jackpot” campaign for Bezeq. We were looking for an innovative gimmick. So Shiran Butbul from our Consumer Brands Dept. proposed filming an entire episode of a “Main Jackpot” in the metaverse. Since there is no metaverse yet, we built it in Minecraft, together with Adler Chomsky, Shai Mr. Shibolet and members of the Parliamentum YouTube group, who physically entered the system and built a set there. Bezeq knew it would make a buzz, But we only expected tens of thousands of views because, in the end, it’s an advertisement. But it worked really (!!) well, and we surpassed a million views in just one day. Since then, this move has won the most significant advertising competitions here. So in what category do you put it? I do not know. Call it a tech marketing gimmick. In the end, we measure only the term Earned Media in our work. That is, you receive large media in return for a small investment against the background of virality.
Sure. So what’s the biggest earned media move you’ve made?
Uh… There is full. Every week really. I liked the launch of Coca-Cola Zero Mango the most. All we did was launch a product on the company’s Facebook page instead of a press release; from there, it became the story of the day. I knew that Coca-Cola was the brand that brought the most engagement on social media because I saw its power in the naming campaign, so I took the Rezika, went to the company’s content managers (Natalie Ziv, Roy Medley, and Amotz Harari), and we launched the product in a crazy Facebook post. The product was bizarre and interesting enough that from there, it would become the story of the day.
The Omar Babi project we did with the Debra advertising agency was also really charming, cheap, and the biggest.
So you like what you do?
I especially like running a business and having employees. I am a special manager, to say the least. Do you know that boss who fools around too much? So I’m much more than him. We’re constantly joking and laughing about everything, and the company atmosphere is great. We have a majority of strong women of all ages and a lot of cooperation between everyone. By the way, shortly after the coronavirus, after I saw how fragile everything was and could be erased in a second, I opened up to hear about job offers as an employee and even met with several entities. I received amazing offers, one of which was with a lot more money than I earned, crazy conditions, and endless prestige. But I asked myself what now will I have bosses, procedures, and all this? I’m not a corporate type. But mostly, I didn’t see myself without an office behind me, which is a small army with people I raise and enjoy developing with. So I politely declined. But to this day, there are plenty of offers. If I ever think about a change or an exit, it will only be if we are sold to a leading technology company and become its internal marketing department like Wix did with Eran Geffen at the time.
The full interview is available in Hebrew at “Tweet Marketing Managers”.