ISH -- OH MY -- WHAT A "SUCCESS!!"

Jerry Levin is a great business success story and has been a dedicated Leader of the New York UJA-Federation, and JFNA for many years. I have the greatest respect for his dedicated, passionate leadership. He serves today as c Chair of the JFNA Marketing Committee. Just a few days ago, Jerry sent a What's Your Ish Update to his Committee; I will reprint the conclusions he reported with a few Comments. With regard to What's Your Ish?:

" Increased Brand Awareness

• Achieved PR/media coverage totaling 53,000,0000 unique visits, with an equivalency of $1.3 million (on investment of $250K) (if someone knows what this entire sentence [or any part of it] means, please explain)


• Generated over 200,000,000 impressions of our banner ads, generating over 230,000 clicks on our online ads


• Generated over 263,000 total YouTube video views


• Total of 2,212 followers and fans on Facebook and Twitter


• Tweet reach of 57,265 from our followers retweeting @ jfederation"

I could print more but why bother.

According to some JFNA professional who wrote this Memo that Levin then signed "unique visits" (which means all visitors to a site -- repeat and new) totals almost 10 times the Jewish population of the United States; the number of impressions of "banner ads" equaled 40 times the Jewish population of the United States. There's more, of course, but could anyone possibly believe this stuff? I figure if every employee in the JFNA Marketing and Communications area had been ordered to hit on the ish site 5 times an hour, day and night (and, perhaps, they were), it would take them until the Mashiach arrives to hit these numbers. (I know, Jerry is here; but, really.) I checked with some friends in the industry who write software that it is fairly easy to generate "hits" electronically to drive up numbers -- not that I am suggesting that was done here, of course.

In their world of unreality the authors want you to believe that ish "[G]enerated 38% increase in Federation Finder traffic to websites of local Federations" How about your federation? How about at the federations represented on the Marketing Committee?

The only reality in this JFNA Memo appears to be the cost -- something we asked about since day one of the ish era. For the first time we learn it was $250,000 - a...quarter...of...a...million...dollars. Unbelievable but clearly an investment that requires a return. So, with all of the ish numbers, Jerry Levin had to ask "...the most critical question -- what happened at the local Federation level as a result of the increased web traffic?" (A question based upon a debatable premise.) Wouldn't you think that with "53,000,000 unique visits" federation would have lined up for months before this question was asked, singing the praises of ish? No...because intuition says that with a claimed 53,000,000 unique visits and 200,000,000 "impressions of banner ads," we received...a bill for $250,000 and little if anything more.

As a companion piece, #ish has been buried in the Heroes effort, in a JFNA "subsidiary." The connection between federations and #ish is thereby further obscured, if one can find it at all. You visit not www.jfna.org but www.heroes.org to make a "unique visit." It takes a very bright and intuitive person to connect these invisible dots. And it makes the numbers claimed all the more unlikely, don't you think?

For those of you interested, visit the UrbanDictionary for the urban slang definition of ish; then put a "bull" in front of it.

Rwexler