President's public relations aides awarded Roaring Lion Awards for their 'Be My Friend for Peace' social media campaign.
By GREER FAY CASHMANPresident Shimon Peres and Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg370(photo credit: Facebook)
It’s not often that Ayelet Frish, the spokeswoman for President Shimon Peres, arouses more attention than her boss. But Monday night was one of those rare exceptions.Frish together with Ron Shelly, CEO of Debby and Ron Communications, collected prizes from the Israel Public Relations Association for the Campaign of the Year 2012 and the best digital campaign at the annual Roaring Lion Awards.The campaign, which received the highest score out of all those in Israel last year, was featured on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram; in them, the president invited surfers to “Be My Friend for Peace.”Peres’ Facebook page was launched in March last year, with the participation of the social network’s co-founder Mark Zuckerberg, who suggested to Peres during the latter’s visit to Silicon Valley that he should have his own page.To get the campaign going, Peres entered into cooperation with music remix expert Noy Alooshe and urged the world to join him as a friend for peace and thus promote the concept of peace around the globe.Frish managed the campaign, while Debby Communications handled the marketing.According to Frish, Peres, despite his age, is one of the most modern of world leaders. He entered into social media with ease and perfectly understood the purpose of the campaign.Shelly says the fact that the campaign was judged the best campaign of the year proves that creativity plus the various digital platforms is a recipe for success.ISPRA chairman Itzhak Kagan announced that of the 47 submissions competing in 10 categories, the campaign featuring Peres was creatively the best, and without a PR budget, achieved the broadest exposure of any campaign in the country.
