Fan Fare


The 2002 Oscar awards were groundbreaking, everyone said, because Denzel Washington and Halle Berry swept the Best Actor and Best Actress awards, making it the first year African-Americans took those honors together. PR pros noticed another groundbreaking occurrence, Sandra Bullock’s singularly exceptional word-of-mouth campaign for Listerine’s tiny new PocketPaks (or “oral care strips”).

Before Sandra made it to her seat on the arm of Hugh Grant, she managed to mention her spanking-new, cool little Listerine tabs to Joan Rivers, Jules Asner, and every other camera-wielding social arbiter on the long, red carpet. The breath-mint technologists tapped into 20 million people around the world, all tuned in to see what they should be doing next to be “in.” If you flipped through the channels on your remote (for those who couldn’t get a ticket!), you could actually see Sandra do her shtick from channel to channel as she progressed down the red carpet.

The brilliance of it is that she didn’t obviously plug the product. Rather, Sandra simply worked it into every conversation, offering a tab to the interviewer or marveling at its small packaging. Again, it’s an example of using trendsetters to make conversation.

As a side note, we’d also like to also remind our readers that Listerine’s parent company, Warner-Lambert, did a fine job of getting the little PocketPaks breath strips into the hands of dentists for nearly ten months before its release. Dentists, like our brokers, are people we supposedly trust.

But sending out samples of a product in this way is often hit-or-miss and very expensive, to boot. Warner had the money to get a mouth-enriching product into dentists’ useful hands. You may not. But influencers in a town or city sure can help you get the word of mouth started.




Full Frontal PR[c] Getting People Talking About You, Your Business, or Your Product
Full Frontal PR[c] Getting People Talking About You, Your Business, or Your Product
ISBN: 1576600998
EAN: N/A
Year: 2005
Pages: 105

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