Every four years, marketers compete for media space with presidential candidates. This year will be no different. Faced with a choice, reporters will often choose a timely election story over a product news story.
Fortunately, there are ways around this. Our publicists don’t just sit on their hands because there’s an election going on. We work extra hard during election years to make sure we have story angles in place that make our clients’ product stories even more interesting than the political news. In addition to that, there are many media outlets that don’t cover politics so we focus more heavily on those.
Where you will get yourself in trouble is not thinking of these things in advance.
We are so in tune with the way elections interfere with product media coverage because we charge per story that we arrange for our clients. If we don’t get our clients’ products coverage, we don’t get paid. That’s no fun. So we get pretty smart at figuring out how to get reporters and producers to cover our clients’ products.
I’ve mentioned before that in addition to owning and running a marketing company, as a hobby I have a website that finds work for artists. Last Sunday I had a nice article run in the St. Paul Pioneer Press. (Gee, I wonder how I was able to get that?)
As usual, when I take my own medicine and a news story runs, the increase in site traffic goes to the moon.
Nothing outperforms product publicity and if you want your products to dominate the media in 2012, you need to hire an aggressive company such as ours. When it comes to getting products in the news, nobody outdoes us.
Give us a call and tell the operator that Lonny said in his newsletter that you should speak directly to one of our publicists. They will get one of them on the line, and you can ask them personally how newsworthy they think your product will be and how much coverage they think they can get for it. You can also ask them how they would get your story chosen over 2012 political stories. You can expect an honest answer because the publicists’ pay is directly related to how many stories they arrange. If they think your product is a dog and that it will be tough to get reporters and producers interested in it, they will tell you. Publicists like nothing less than pitching a story to the media that they know the media has no interest in. It’s a double whammy for them: not only will they not get stories, it damages their credibility with their valuable media contacts.
Even if you decide not to do business with us, talking directly with one of our publicists about how they think the media will see your product should be enlightening for you.
