#ProudStrikers
The Aguda – Israel’s LGBT Task Force
Issue 48 | September 2018
Agency
BBR Saatchi & Saatchi
Creative Team
Digital Creative Director: Idan Kligerman Art Director: Noa Navot Copywriter: Kobi Lavi, Avner Ressel, Omri Zidon
Production Team
Producer: Alon Shmoelof Traffic Director: Ronit Doanis Studio Director: Yaron Keinan Studio: ATL Post Production & Editing: Leehou Porat
Other Credits
CEO: Yossi Lubaton VP Client Services: Ben Muskal Account Executive: Hila Kirma VP Content / Production: Dorit Gvili
Date
July 2018
Background
The Tel-Aviv Gay Pride Parade is a world-renowned extravaganza. But colorful as it may be, it does little to further the rights of the LGBT community who cannot marry, adopt or be a parent. Basic rights denied by Israel’s increasingly conservative government.
That’s why when another law affecting and effectively discriminating the LGBT community was brought to vote on July 18th, there was a need to get ready to fight.
Idea
The idea was a one-day nationwide strike urging the LGBT community to stay away from work and show the entire country that they are not second rate citizens and that this law affects people from all walks of life. People they know and work with. Doctors, lawyers, pilots, hi-tech workers and many more productive people employed everywhere.
While they were unsure how the country would respond, even they were surprised by the extent of the public endorsement of their cause. Within hours of the announcement, leading companies and people all over the country joined the struggle:
While international companies like IBM and Apple made public global announcements denouncing the law, other companies freed their staff and promised not to charge them for the day off – some going even further than that and promising their employees to fund such complicated affairs as surrogacy procedures which cost up of half a million shekels.
Surprisingly, FMCG companies usually scared of religious boycotts of their goods (the religious orthodox have great spending power and often use it to curb companies to their will) joined the cause too as did hospitals, workers unions, celebrities, politicians, government ministries and even police officers who are traditionally banned from striking!
Notwithstanding this, gay talk show hosts canceled their show while news & entertainment websites blackened their screens.
Last but not least, people all around social networks changed their profile pics to mark their support, and while over 1 million people were exposed to the rally event on Facebook, 100.000 took to the streets to demonstrate and express their outrage.
But the greatest achievement of all is by far the fact that although the Israeli parliament is now officially in recess – they succeeded in making them call an emergency meeting to re-examine the law.