Turn Your Company into a Media Event

How many times have you watched the news and seen a small business being featured? Ever wonder how that company got the television cameras to show up at its event? And more to the point, ever wonder how you can be the next business to be featured on that very same news show?

In order to start the process, you need to put on your creative hat. What will the media find interesting about your business? When we propose a media event to a client, we typically look for a compelling angle. Here are the questions we ask our clients at the start:

Are you:
• introducing a new product?
• promoting a new cause relationship?
• bringing awareness to a new location or new company leadership?
• announcing a new business partner or venture?
• doing something charitable?

Unless you are announcing the newest breakthrough in medicine or a candidacy for president, you will need a creative idea to pique the media’s interest. To that end, it’s a good idea to watch the news to determine the types of events and venues that the media covers. Then take a good, hard look at your product or service: What are you doing that is truly new or perhaps even controversial? Will what are you doing, even in some small way, set you apart from the competition in a way that you can capitalize on in terms of a media event?

Examples: All the News That’s Fit to Race

 • A shopping cart race throughout a supermarket was created to benefit the Children’s Hunger Alliance. The event was created to position this retailer as a caring member of the community. The race produced an irresistible visual for the cameras — pictures of people racing their supermarket carts down the aisles.

 • Nice-Pak Products, Inc., makers of disinfecting wipes for hands and the home, joined together with a local elementary school and staged a “health fair” in the classroom to demonstrate proper hand hygiene during allergy season and, using a special blue light, showed how germs spread on kids’ hands.