Streit's matzo + Heeb: Too cool for their own good?

Posted

Matzo misfire

By Michael Orbach

Issue of March 21, 2010/ 11 Nissan 5770

What happens when a witty, hip, usually offensive magazine suddenly becomes an advertising agency? Its ads come off as, well, offensive. That’s the story behind an advertisement for Streit’s Matzo that ran several weeks ago in The Jewish Star and a number of other Jewish periodicals.

It featured a black-and-white photograph of Rav Yosef Ber Soloveitchik as he toured the Streit’s matzo factory half a century ago. A thought bubble drawn over his head read, “With this, who needs hand Matzo?”

Judging by the complaints, some people were highly offended.

“It is hard to believe that a company with the proud legacy of Aaron Streit would not instinctively recognize the impropriety of making a leading rabbi of the past generation an involuntary shill for its products,” wrote Shlomo Wilamowsky in a letter to the editor that ran last week in the Jewish Star.

Wilamowski is probably right. It would have. But Heeb Media? Not so much. Heeb Media produces the quarterly Heeb Magazine, itself no stranger to controversy. It was dubbed “the favorite rag of Holocaust-mocking hipster Jews everywhere” by online gossip and news site Gawker. In what was arguably the magazine’s most infamous photo, Roseanne Barr, dressed in a Nazi uniform with a fake Hitler mustache, baked Jewish gingerbread men. The magazine publishes quarterly with an average print run of 35,000.

Alan Adler, who owns and operates Streit’s with two cousins, said he did not see the matzo advertisement before it ran, and stressed that there was no intent to offend.

“I used to walk in the matzo factory with Rabbi Aaron Soloveitchik. I used to spend time in his study. His brother, [Rabbi] Joseph [Soloveitchik] who was at the factory, I remember seeing his books in our gift shop. I love Moshe [Soloveitchik]; I’ve known him for years. Streit’s has the utmost respect and we meant absolutely no offense,” he explained.

Streit’s relationship with Heeb Media began in 2003 when the magazine’s third issue featured a mock advertisement for Streit’s. In it, an African-American man held up a matzo and exclaimed that it was “one big cracker,” a play on the racial term for Caucasians.

Adler hadn’t heard of the magazine and was surprised when his inbox was flooded by emails praising the advertisement.

“I said, ‘This isn’t a Streit’s ad, this is a spoof. It’s like Saturday Night Live.’ Because of the overwhelming support we started advertising in Heeb and we let them rerun their satirical advertisement,” Adler said.

When he received complaints about the current advertisement he had it pulled immediately, Adler said. (It was only booked to run once in the Star).

Part of the problem is the difficulty of using a one-ad-fits-all approach while trying to appeal to the wide customer-base that uses Streit’s matzo.

“We do sell to very religious and non-religious and non-Jews,” he said.

David Kelsey, associate director of business for Heeb, and the person who designed the advertisement, said, in retrospect, he wouldn’t have used the thought bubble.

“I certainly apologize, no disrespect was intended. We were excited to have a picture of Rav Soloveitchik,” said Kelsey, who is a Yeshiva University graduate.

He said that the advertising campaign was a little different than previous campaigns that the company worked on.

“We were targeting a more religious market with the Soloveitchiks. We were using a completely retro look; we wanted to underscore the continuity of the generations of people who have been using Streit’s on Passover,” he explained.

The advertising division of Heeb is probably the most successful part of the company, Kelsey said. After the fake advertisements ran in the early issues, the company began to receive inquiries about creating real advertising.

“A whole group started coming to us, ‘Why don’t you do our humorous advertisements for us? We want to reach young secular Jews.’ [The] bulk of young American Jews, most of them are not religious and are not affiliated and you can’t reach them doing the same thing in the New York Jewish Week. It isn’t going to work for a younger, secular Jewry,” he explained.

Other advertisements by Heeb Media have included the Israeli-owned Udi’s Granola, which featured the tagline “So delicious, no one can say no,” over photos of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Mel Gibson eating the cereal. Ads for a Jewish educational program riffed on Jewish versions of A Clockwork Orange and Star Trek. Others, especially for local vendor Guss’ Pickles, are too risqué to show or even describe in this newspaper.

Kelsey says that Streit’s was a natural fit for his company, given Streit’s long history and location on the Lower East Side.

“We’re rooted in the Jewish world,” Kelsey said. “It’s just a different Jewish world than most of your readers live in.”