Monday, June 28, 2010

HOW'S THAT #ISH GOING?

Not well as it turns out...


Another interested party visited the #ish site just a few days ago and here is what he found:

"Have you checked the website lately? If so you are among the few and far between. Launched on May 9 with a goal of 200,000 tags (votes) to generate $50,000 for some worthy charity by all those Jews starving for social networking -- what exactly are the results? http://whatsyourish.com/voting.php

To date 1935 people have submitted their ish and exactly 175 have cast their vote for their favorite...The charity so far will benefit by the whopping amount of $483.75. So in 50 days they have reached less than 1% of their goal. At this rate (38.7 per day) it should take exactly 5,167.06 days or slightly over 14 years to reach the total."
How much was the marketing cost for this initiative? How much is that per vote..? I bet its even more than the per capita cost of a typical Chicago election."

If you visit the website, you will also find that more than one "vote" has been cast for some obscure comic ("Kindler") and similar.

This is the result of a breakdown in the lay/professional partnership, of a lack of adult supervision. It is what happens when "leadership" is off on vendettas and other distractions.

What a waste...of time and money that might have been invested in something other than this. That's my ish.

Rwexler






4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ouch. Maybe Jerry's not the marketing genius his fans claim him to be.

Perhaps JFNA should just purchase Daroff's twitter/FB domain.

Anonymous said...

and maybe the remedy is about substance not sound bites (and yes I appreciate the irony of my comment)

paul jeser said...

...and maybe y'all should come to the realization that as the FED's become more irrelevant the JFNA will become even more irrelevant

LisaB said...

I never understood the point of the hash sign. Every time I see the slogan I think to myself "why are they asking what my numberish is?"

I don't see it as a sign of he disfunctionality between lay people and professionals. I see it as a sign of the disconnect between more insular Jews brought up within "the system" and the larger, more assimilated portion of the community they are trying to reach.

You have an older community with tighter bonds and their offshoot, the Schecter/Jewish camp/ Brandeis kids, the bright young things who are viewed as the holy grail of outreach. The bright young things are so spoiled and feted and young, they don't even realize they are actually expected to give, they are still used to receiving. The people they are expected to reach, the middle aged and the semi-assimilated and those with weak ties to organized Judaism, have nothing in common with them and no interest in "#ish" or any other cutsie nonsense.

If the Federation system really wants to reach that mass of potential donors, it has to start speaking their language. And that isn't talk of communal responsibility, because they aren't part of the community, and it isn't fluffy cutsy slogans made up by some sheltered 24 year old who's had $100,000 worth of "Leadership Development". What's really sad is that there ARE people willing to step up but they just aren't accepted.