American Girl - A marketing case study

I recently visited New York City (The Big Apple) with my grandchildren and their mother. One of the “adventures” on the schedule was a visit to American Girl Place, a Mecca for young girls ages 5 to 12. To me this store on Park Avenue is the epitome of great marketing. In the best Harvard Business School tradition, American Girl has identified the “decision making unit”, young girls, their mothers and grandmothers, ( It is not clear to me who the decision maker is) and has tailored a product and marketing message to each of them. For the girls are the dolls with matching clothes for the girls; for the mothers and grandmothers are the educational books and multicultural components. The fact that there is no sports bar for bored old grandfathers probably says something about our role in the process. This program certainly seems to be a marketing success. As our eight year old grand daughter said “Grandma, I think every girl in NYC will own an American Girl doll”. This may be a bit of a stretch as the dolls are $100 and it’s hard to get out without $100 of accessories. She may, nonetheless, be correct as it seemed as though every other girl on the street was carrying an American Girl doll. As I thought about the success of this marketing program, I was motivated to compare it to the effort of the US government to market our foreign policy in other parts of the world. We have budgeted $600 mm per year and assigned Karen Hughes, one of President Bush’s most trusted advisors to implement a public diplomacy initiative. Our government seems to have realized that encouraging democracy in countries where a large majority of the population does not like US policies is likely to result in the election of a government that is opposed to the US. We have seen the beginnings of this in the election of Hamas in the Palestinian Territories and the strong showing by the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. The US government, however, seems to have missed the most important part of an effective marketing program: developing a product that meets the needs and desires of the targeted customers. I don’t think that we can sell unconditional support for Israel and their policies and actions to the “Arab street”. Palestinians who have lived under occupation for 40 years will probably not buy an invasion and occupation of Iraq. Emerging democracies will not like a country who says that it supports democracy, but then tries to overthrow elected governments that it does not like (Consider Palestine and Venezuela). As a recent panel at the Princeton University Woodrow Wilson School on U.S. Public Public Diplomacy toward The Arab-Muslim World concluded - "It's the policy stupid". I am not sure this $600mm is well spent. If you build a product that nobody wants, the best marketing program in the world will not sell it. As an Israeli blogger said in discussing the destruction by the Israeli army of toilets built by American Christian groups for Palestinians whose homes had been demolished: “Isn’t there a better way to waste taxpayer money?”.


Current Affairs

A place of hope

Marcia recently wrote a piece for a book of essays on the lives of everyday Palestinians being compiled by a writer in the US to tell their story. I thought I would share her thoughts with you.

My husband and I have recently returned from the Middle East, more specifically the West Bank, the Galilee and Jordan. Although we have been to Jordan several times, this was our first experience in Israel and Palestine. To say that we were shocked and bewildered by what we saw is an understatement. The wall defies description and the military presence everywhere was disconcerting.

We were part of a small group of Christians from Colorado and Idaho. We spent four days on the West Bank as guests of the Wi’am Center, a Palestinian center for conflict resolution. We toured Hebron and Jericho, Bethlehem and Jerusalem. We heard stories from our Palestinian hosts, a spokesperson for the Jewish settlement in Hebron, drivers, shopkeepers, Franciscans tending the holy sites and many, many others.

The person and place that for me exemplifies the dignity, love, resistance, perseverance and hope of the Palestinians is Pastor Mitri Raheb and Christmas Lutheran Church in Bethlehem. We met with him late in the afternoon after what was clearly a busy day for him. I have never heard anyone speak with more focus about mission. He is inspirational. He is a third generation Lutheran Palestinian trained in Germany, but totally committed to his people. He grew up in this church and it is glorious. He is clearly a successful fund-raiser. There is an art center, a school which serves Muslims and Christians, an art and music program, a health clinic, a guest house, a convention center and so much more. There are also bullet holes from the 2002 siege when Israeli tanks shelled the compound.

Bethlehem was under siege and then under curfew for four months in 2002. Curfews are still imposed at times today. “The Israelis intend to make this the largest outdoor prison in the world”, he says and “we intend to make it the best prison in the world…It is a place of hope in a hopeless situation.”

To do this, they are bringing beauty through the arts and music, economic skills and voicing a new, relevant theology to the Palestinians who are living in Bethlehem. He believes in proclaiming the power of the risen Lord, not crying or whining. “In Bethlehem where the word was made flesh, we need to put faith into action.” I purchased stained glass angels “resurrected” from windows that were shot out in 2002. A class recently graduated after two years of training to be tour guides in the holy land. They had remarkable by success taking the tour guide exam and now will be able to lead an “alternative tour” of the Holy Land, telling the Palestinian as well as the Israeli story. A nature park for picnics is being planned to encourage family outings. We saw art created by children. The most memorable for me was a picture of Santa not being able to get through a check point to bring Christmas presents to the children of Bethlehem. Their wellness center reached 10,000 people last year in a place devastated by high blood pressure, diabetes and depression caused by living under military occupation. Senior citizens are being cared for. Many are alone in Bethlehem because their children have emigrated to other places. Only 1.7 % of the population is Christian today in the land where Jesus walked and preached.

The school curriculum emphasizes the 5 “C’s”. Christian values, Critical thinking, Creativity, Communication, and Commitment to this community. They don’t teach a clash of civilizations. The idea of salvation by grace alone is important in a place where people think that how they dress, and what they eat and don’t drink will bring salvation. 58% of the pupils in the school are Muslims whose families also embrace these values.

In all of the conversations with Palestinians, I heard only a wish for peace- a desire to live just as normal teenagers, newly weds, parents, and grandparents live in unoccupied countries. I was in awe of their courage to begin new marriages and to raise children in the midst of the current situation. I did not hear a desire for retribution, or anger – only sadness, a wish to be treated as full citizens and a desire for change and a belief that things will, have to, get better.

Mitri quotes Martin Luther. “Even if I knew the world was ending tomorrow, I would go plant an apple tree today.” He said, “We plant olive trees. We need to take each day as a gift and plan as if the brightest future is yet to come”. In his book Bethlehem Besieged, he writes, “But if we plant an olive tree today, there will be shade for the children to play in, there will be oil to heal the wounds, and there will be branches to wave when peace arrives.”

He asked for our prayers and thanked us for coming. He told us that 98% of tourists who come to Israel do not come to the West Bank. Before the second intifada, a group or two a day would visit Christmas Lutheran Church. They are now fortunate if they have one group a month. As we walked back to Casa Nova on Manger Square from his church, an Apache helicopter flew overhead and reminded us what a tentative hold the Palestinians have on the land, their country, even their lives, on the West Bank. Apache helicopters are used for targeted killings of suspected enemies of Israel.

Because of Pastor Raheb, we left the West Bank with a mustard seed of hope after being depressed by all we saw and experienced there.



Israel
Palestine
Current Affairs

A completely absurd idea - Part 3 What now?

In January Father (now Bishop) Elias Chacour, an Israeli, Palestinian, Melkite Catholic priest spoke at St Thomas Episcopal church in Sun Valley. Because the local Jewish community was upset over this presentation and therefore there was controversy surrounding it, the place was packed. The rabbi asked Father Chacour if he supported the “two state” solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Father Chacour answered, “I used to think that the two state solution was the best solution, now I am not so sure”. Reluctantly, this is the conclusion that I have also reached. I have grown to realize that 1.The Oslo peace process is dead (if it were ever alive), 2. Any “two state solution” that has borders acceptable to Palestinians is not politically feasible for the Israelis and 3. The “Quartet Road Map” lays out a road to nowhere. If this is the case, why are all western and some Arab governments insisting that Hamas accept the “two state solution”? I have no idea. A different “completely absurd” idea is beginning to surface among intellectuals, such as Edward Said, concerned with this issue. It is not a new idea, but rather a reinvigoration of an old idea originally supported by the PLO before the Oslo Accords and before the US and Israel helped to create Hamas to counter the PLO. (If you think that this is ridiculous, click here) The absurd idea is that the solution requires a single secular state in Palestine where Jews, Christians and Muslims live alongside one another as they have for centuries. A number of people have weighed in on this. The best and most thoughtful of these that I have found is “Alternative Palestinian Agenda” created by a University of Wisconsin graduate student. The idea may make sense to intellectuals in their ivory towers, but is it possible in the real world? I don’t know. I have given up making predictions in this part of the world. They never seem to survive the next news cycle. A number of different factions will oppose the idea. Many Jews will oppose it because it will require abandoning the Zionist concept of a Jewish state. Hamas and other Islamist groups will oppose it because they will have to give up the idea of an Islamic state. (Itzak Rabin once said “If the conflict is ever theologized, there never will be peace. For, to theological conflict, there are no compromises and therefore no solutions”.) Some will say that, after 40 years of occupation, the animosities are so deep that people of this land cannot live peacefully along side each other. (While traveling on the West Bank Zoughbi, our Palestinian leader, did, however, point out a great example of Palestinian-Israeli cooperation. It was a Palestinian automobile “chop shop”. The Israeli Russian Mafia steals the cars in Israel and brings them to the West Bank where the Palestinians cut them up. The completion of the wall will probably be bad for business.) The Palestinian “militants” will probably oppose it as it will require them to lay down their arms and seek a peaceful solution. This might be possible if the arms were surrendered to a UN peace keeping force, but it is unlikely that the Israelis would allow this. But to paraphrase Karl Marx: “Palestinians of the world unite; you have nothing to lose but your chains”. Even if it is possible, how do we get there? As one who believes in the power of prayer, I would suggest that we need to pray that our Jewish/Israeli and Palestinian brothers and sisters come to their senses before they destroy themselves.


Israel
Palestine
Current Affairs

A completely absurd idea –Part 2 Reality on the ground

As we noted the last time, Israel in the last 20 years has succeeded in establishing in the territories that it occupied in 1967 facts on the ground which will be very difficult if not impossible to reverse. The current estimate of the cost to evacuate and relocate 40,000 settlers as required to begin the Kadima convergence/disengagement plan is $10b. This bill will be paid by the American taxpayer. By extension the cost to evacuate the 400,000 settlers currently on the West Bank will be $100b. (A low estimate as the other settlements are more elaborate and established – See picture) This is probably a number that, even if there were the political will in Israel to accomplish this evacuation, the American taxpayers would not swallow. Another reality for Israel is that, although it is militarily very strong and is supported by the strongest country in the world, it is strategically in a precarious position. It exists in an unstable area and is surrounded by neighbors who are hostile either to its existence or to its behavior. As Tony Judt, professor of history at NYU, points out: “Israel is utterly dependent on the United State for money, arms and diplomatic support. One or two states share common enemies with Israel; a handful of countries buy its weapons; a few others are defacto accomplices in ignoring international treaties and secretly manufacturing nuclear weapons. But outside Washington it has no friends – at the United Nations it cannot even count on the support of America’s staunchest allies.” International law is pretty clear that the Palestinians have a legal right to resist the occupation of their land. We have seen numerous examples of resistance, even violent resistance, to occupation in recent history – the French resistance to Nazi occupation, Chinese and Korean resistance to Japanese occupation. The issue, therefore, is not do the Palestinians have the right to resist, but what form should it take. There is much truth to the statement that the Palestinians have never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity. Despite the fact that they are militarily weak, but diplomatically strong relative to their enemies, they have heretofore always opted for violent military resistance. Even though Palestinian leaders can claim that their violent resistance has forced Israel out of Lebanon and Gaza and forced Israel to abandon its strategic vision of a “greater Israel”, it has not succeeded in improving the lives of average Palestinians. Zionists will claim that there was a lot of vacant land in Palestine when Israel was founded. (A land with no people for a people with no land.), but a trip through this part of the world will make it clear that there is not a lot of unpopulated land. (Except maybe some pretty forbidding desert) There is one piece of land that seems to me to be completely unpopulated and that is the moral high ground. NY Times columnist Tom Friedman pointed out in his book From Beirut to Jerusalem that because of its brutal reaction to the first Palestinian intifada (uprising), Israel has forfeited the moral high ground. The question, therefore, is “Will the Palestinians seize this vacant piece of land, the moral high ground, and if so how?”. Some thoughts next time.


Israel
Palestine
Current Affairs