Yoel's Lemonade Stand: Was the Shofar The Word’s First Ad? And If So, For What?

The legendary Hollywood publicist Harry Reichenbach had a simple theory about how to get the world’s attention. He called it the "ram's horn."

Before you could sell a movie, he argued, you had to jolt the public out of its slumber the same way our ancestors did, with a primitive, unignorable blast. For Reichenbach, this blast was a stunt so loud and strange it forced everyone to stop and listen. The message came second; the disruptive noise came first.

The sound of the shofar that echoes through synagogues during the High Holy Days is the original ram’s horn. It’s a raw, unsettling cry is designed to do one thing: make you pay attention.

But it isn’t calling you to buy a ticket to a new movie. Or the product of a particular brand. It’s calling you to audit the one brand that matters most: yourself.

I was reminded of Reichenbach and his analogy of the ram’s horn during a conversation I had last week with Yossi Wachtel (Monkey Wrench Plumbing).

Yossi reminded me that the Hebrew phrase (cheshbon hanefesh) is literally a business term. “Accounting of the soul.” An audit.

“So the High Holy Days,” I said, “are basically when Jews do their annual performance review?”

“Exactly,” he laughed. “Except most people are terrible at it.”

This got me thinking about something that’s been bothering me about the advertising business.

We’re obsessed with helping companies rebrand, pivot their strategies, audit their performance. But when do we ever apply that same rigor to ourselves?

Not our businesses. Ourselves.

Every smart company does an annual brand audit. What’s our reputation? What stories are people telling about us? What impression are we making versus what we think we’re making?

The trouble is, most of these audits are worthless because companies lie to themselves about the results. They hear what they want to hear, see what they want to see, and measure what makes them look good.

Most people approach the High Holy Days the same way bad companies approach brand audits.

They go through the motions, make vague promises about “doing better,” read from the siddur, and go through the motions and then wonder why nothing changes.

If you really wanted to audit your life like a business, you’d start with performance marketing metrics.

In business, performance marketing the bottom of the funnel but is also brutally honest. Click-through rates. Conversion percentages. Return on investment. Numbers don’t lie.

Your relationships have performance metrics too. When was the last meaningful conversation with your spouse? How often do you call your parents? What’s your response rate when friends need help?

Most people run their relationships like a failing ad campaign (lots of good intentions, terrible execution, and no measurement of actual results).

What can you improve to get those numbers up?  For example: Maybe you call your mom plenty but the conversation is dull. That means you need to improve your creativity. Maybe every conversation you have with your mother is awesome… But you only have it once a year.

In that case you have to spend more time calling your mother more.

Companies also obsess over their social media presence. What image are they projecting? How do people talk about them when they’re not in the room?

Your personal  “organic social strategy” is simpler: it’s how you show up when you think nobody’s watching.

Do you put your shopping cart back? Are you kind to service workers? Do you keep your word?

Every interaction is content creation for your reputation.

The difference is, unlike a company’s social media manager, you can’t delete the posts that make you look bad.

Teshuvah  (usually translated as repentance) literally means “turning around.” In business, we’d call it a pivot.

Smart companies pivot their marketing when their current strategy isn’t working. They don’t just try harder… they try differently.

Maybe your approach to parenting isn’t working. Maybe your relationship with money is toxic. Maybe your career has you performing a role that doesn’t fit who you’ve become.

My point is… the High Holy Days aren’t just about feeling guilty. They’re about strategic repositioning.

The question isn’t “just about What did I do wrong?” It’s “What story am I telling with my life, and is it the story I want to tell?”

Business rebranding doesn’t happen overnight. It’s not just about changing logos and messaging. Done right, it takes time. And for however long it takes for a brand to transform itself, personal transformation takes longer.

Every day after Yom Kippur, you’re running ads for the person you claimed you wanted to become. Every interaction is a sponsored post. Every choice is content marketing.

The difference is, this campaign actually matters. Because the only product you’re really selling is yourself. And the only audience that counts is everyone whose life you touch.

The shofar isn’t just calling you to prayer. It’s calling you to the most important strategy meeting of the year.

Not just with yourself. Or about yourself. But for everyone who will encounter the brand, you present to the world. What story will you tell? What story do you want them to tell?