Rebranding Proposal

Rebranding Project 18*

The image an organization develops is not tangible, but may be the most crucial factor to its success. An organization’s brand is best defined as the descriptive term which people most closely associate with the organization. The most effective organizations have a brand that is both short and definitive. To use a corporate example, Microsoft’s brand could be described as "cutting edge computer software."

One knows what to expect from an organization with a popular easily identifiable brand name. If someone mentioned that Microsoft was now selling sofas, the expected response from the public would either be disbelief or an inquiry as to what a computer sofa was. We know what Microsoft does, and we know what Microsoft does not do.

Because brands are really public perception, they can not be bought or sold like a commodity. They can, however, be shaped by marketing campaigns and organizational performance.
The brand identity of competitors in the same market can make a difference in the outcomes of an organization. While the brand for the Major League Baseball’s New York Yankees would be "championship baseball," the brand for the Chicago Cubs is "baseball’s lovable losers." True to form, the Yankees are forced by the market to produce championship teams in rapid succession, while the Cubs are expected to disappoint year after year. The New York Yankees have won 26 championships since the last Cubs championship in 1908. The Yankees are upset that they have only won 4 of the last 10 championships, while the Cubs are happy that they made the playoffs twice in the last 16 years.

Proposal

To create and market the Project 18 brand across the United States and Israel. Although Project 18 is a multifaceted educational organization that works for the betterment of Jewish education in general, we are most widely known for the vital work we do with youth at-risk. The dangerous trend of disenfranchised Orthodox Jewish youth who have failed out of, or were failed by the mainstream Yeshiva system continues to escalated daily. Every time we check, we find more of our children engaged in the self destructive, counter -culture behavior that is the hallmark of youth at- risk. These behaviors cannot be dismissed as the indiscretions of disenfranchised youth. These behaviors have life altering and too often, life ending consequences for the youth engaged in them.

Project 18 has already been in the forefront of the response to the crises facing our children for more than ten years. From providing resources to parents and educators and presenting workshops to highlight the problems, to providing real life solutions such as its alternative high school program, Priority-1 has been a leader in attacking the problem head on and offering reality based, implementable solutions.

Utilizing its experience and drawing on its success of the past ten years will provide project 18 the structure it needs to formally establish the organization in the role it has occupied in a de facto manner for the last decade; the Jewish organization best equipped and most willing to effectively handle the crises of Orthodox youth at-risk.

The uniqueness of the Project 18 approach is in its acknowledgment that the youth-at risk crises requires a multifaceted solution. Providing appropriate support for youth-at -risk and their families as well as establishing educational programs to help equip parents, teachers and communities to prevent at -risk behaviors are important components of our communities response to these issues. Yet each is only a component. A true response to the at-risk crises facing our children is to attack the problem from every conceivable angle. We need to provide preventative measures, education, schooling, therapeutic intervention, family interventions, etc to truly begin to make inroads in dealing with the at-risk crises.

A common refrain at Project 18 is our fervent hope that the need for the services we provide cease to exist. We fully understand the gravity of the current situation and we know that before we can "go out of business", we need to provide the impetus for widespread positive change in the landscape of the Jewish community. Our success is predicated on the communal acknowledgment of the seriousness of the problems we face and the sincere desire to do what needs to be done to protect our children’s future.

Project 18 already has the components necessary for a communal response to the youth-at risk crises in place. Our alternative high school has been making a difference in the lives of at-risk youth for more than ten years. We have a wealth of articles, tapes, CDS, Dvds, and Mp3 files on topics critical to both positive parenting and positive teaching available for distribution. We are currently reworking our website to include a user-friendly searchable database on topics of importance to parents and teachers. We are currently organizing a moderated online support forum for teachers and for parents of teens at risk This summer, we will launch a series of parent, teacher and community workshops in cities across the country that will equip those closest to our children with the tools they need to not only recognize and intervene on behalf of children- at- risk, but to prevent children from even starting down the rocky roads that often lead to long term problems.

It is certainly much easier for a community to quarantine serious problems it faces by isolating the few it deems responsible and denying the existence of a community wide malady. An organization that strives to highlight the seriousness of a long festering problems in communities that believe that ignoring their problems will make them go away, will create many vocal critics.

*Organization name changed