Look in the Couch Cushions

ONCE you’ve spent some time checking out your competition, take a hard look at your organization. What would make a great story for the media? Start by looking in the couch cushions of your business, because good stories sometimes hide in unlikely places. Think not only of the things that make your organization most proud of your business or product, but also maybe the feat you can’t believe you’ve actually pulled off. Most likely, there’s something challenging going on inside your organization that can be made into news, if you package it properly.

Quite possibly, that good story can come from what you would ordinarily consider your worst news. The media will always be more attracted to a story with a clear and obvious problem and how it was overcome. If you have such a setback, try to find the silver lining and make news with it.

Here’s an example of how you can spin a strategic misstep into a news hook, thus turning lemons into lemonade, so to speak. Draw The Line was a relatively new branding company in the late ’90s that discovered it had the same name as another, similar company. Not surprisingly, Draw The Line had a really tough time branding itself. The company needed to change its name, but without bringing attention to the problem and without losing any customers or revenue.

So what did Draw The Line do? The company went beyond merely filing for a name change and made that change newsworthy. Its first task was to become Underline (with what we dubbed “control U,” the underline key in Microsoft Word, as their trademark) and then to take its new message to the press. During a period that saw a spurt of great entrepreneurial zeal, the media loved the story that two companies had popped up with the same name, and so the marketing press began to follow Underline’s mission to control its own brand identity.

David and Goliath

Another common situation from which you can craft a news hook is the challenge to compete effectively against larger companies with much deeper pockets. For example, BigStar Entertainment, which hawks online videos and DVDs with plans eventually to sell downloadable entertainment, wanted to position itself in the press as an accessible alternative to stores like Blockbuster. This publicly traded e-commerce company was the first to market video movies, but later had to compete with the online divisions of established brick-and-mortar stores, such as Blockbuster Entertainment. BigStar’s market was easy to explain to the press. However, from the online movie-store angle, the challenge lay in differentiating BigStar from the bazillions of other dot-com movie retailers and other kinds of online retailers in general.

The Feeding Frenzy

The news media look too hard at what the news “could be,” often harder than at what the news “is.” For those of us practicing PR, that’s a plus like you wouldn’t believe, because when the news is slow you can have a field day by creating opportunities for reporters in need. (They might not ever admit this happens, but please ….)

Here’s a case in point. The summer of 2001 was the summer of the shark. Statistically, there were fewer attacks nationwide than there had been in previous years, but seemingly weekly episodes of underwater ravaging captured America’s fears as well as the headlines. So how did a relatively undeserving great white shark get on the cover of Time?

It was a combination of circumstances. One of the biggest angles the great white had going for him was that he was newsworthy by association. For the past three years or so, Floridians had been getting more and more up in arms about the tourist-aimed cottage industry of shark feeding boats, dumping chum and other shark delicacies closer and closer to the water of Boca Raton homes. The same thing had been going on in California, too. This was a steaming-hot local issue.

The coastal media associated the attacks with the feeding debate and gave a usually lightly covered story a ton of airtime and ink. Quite possibly, they surmised, it was a pure coincidence worth reporting. In the TV news biz, if it bleeds, it leads.

The unprecedented number of “shock attacks,” as the Bostonians call them, didn’t propel this story into the global news. Hardly. Those underfed sharks have been steadily decreasing in past years, and, as noted, there were no more attacks than usual in August 2001, some weeks or days away from the biggest news story of the new century. The reason the story was even reported nationwide had to do with the so-called Silly Season when media just can’t find a thing to cover.

All of this simply goes to show that what we consider news is highly subjective. Therefore, when the “news” is slow, rejoice, because it might be the best chance you ever get to crank up your buzz machine.

To stand out, the company needed to promote its conservative but effective marketing strategy, as well as its management’s many years of experience with the Internet, direct marketing, and entertainment industry. The other idea was to fit BigStar into current trend stories that related to its strengths in content, direct marketing, and, in a unique twist, on company culture.

How did BigStar do that? First, it carefully limited press-release distribution to one per week to heighten the impact of each story. Also, the company released only the news that would be relevant to reporters, such as “BigStar is in talks with X to create a new way to select favorite videos online” or “BigStar releases its third ad campaign of the year.” For news on promotions or consumer angles, targeted pitches to vertical markets and goody bags for key reporters fit the bill. The Academy Awards ceremony, for instance, made for a nice news hook and a “peg” for all entertainment-oriented journalists.

The year 2000 was the year when the Oscars (the statuettes themselves) had gone missing, as the saying goes. Ultimately, they turned up in a West Hollywood dumping ground. To play up the comical angle of all this, BigStar commissioned chocolate statuettes that looked like Oscars, put them in tiny garbage can-like creations, and messengered them to reporters. (A few got lost, of course, making it an even funnier story.)

Another approach played off the rent-versus-buy angle for videos and DVDs: Why rent when, for a few dollars more, you can own a movie forever? Tongue firmly in cheek, the company placed an ad in Times Square in New York that said, “Stop paying rent. www.bigstar.com!” It also parked a VW Beetle with the same slogan outside a major Blockbuster’s store and watched with glee (from a publicity perspective) as the employees called the police. Don’t try this at home, folks—we’re not suggesting you dream up stunts that could put you on the wrong side of the law. The point here is that the outlandishness of this act drew a lot of attention to BigStar.

The company also got a lot of attention for its IPO, for some unusual reasons that turned into a terrific news hook. Blockbuster missed a deadline to go public. By contrast, BigStar finished its IPO right on schedule. It used this David/Goliath angle to great advantage in the press.

The Story of the Season

In order to spotlight your company effectively, it’s important to grasp what is getting the media’s attention right now. What is it that you’re actually looking for? The most important part of this story is the seasonal aspect, something so big that it gets everyone’s attention.

At this very moment, in your local paper and buzzing through the atmosphere, bouncing off satellite dishes and wending its way through parties, is “the big story”: the thing the country can’t get enough of. It might have nothing to do with your business, idea, or service, but you can always find a way to hook into the big buzz. Whether it’s a “cultural phenomenon” or merely something everyone’s chatting on about, a little bit of creative meditating, and you can hook in.

The story of the season is a term for a breathing, growing, living thing. It’s feeding off the public, and the masses are feeding off it, encouraging it to grow, poking it for more of what it’s got. And it gets bigger and stronger with every inquiry. Like a virus in a petri dish, the season’s big story comes about only with careful cultivation and can only exist under certain conditions. The story of the season is thriving because it’s found a way to tap into the national sentiment.

Let’s take Michael Jackson, for instance. After six years, in 2002 he came out of hiding to put out another album. Although many fans considered it a disappointment and the real music critics panned it, celebrities from every genre ran to support Michael’s tour, and he dominated the mainstream press once again.

Why? On the pop music scene, “pop synth” bands such as New Order, Depeche Mode, and even Missy Elliott had taken over the airwaves in recent years. Boy bands were sparring in Virgin Mega Stores, and Britney and Christina were dueling on soda cans. America was scoffing at these young entertainers and starting to question when pop would be kaput. Just then, Michael reentered the picture. The country was sure that he would refuel the America’s pop-music tanks, and the concerts sold out in minutes. There was nothing new or fresh in the music, but it was perfect timing for the national mood and nostalgia.

It wasn’t that Michael’s album was good; it was more that at the time, America’s obsession with pop stars was at a fifty-two–week high, giving MJ easy entry into the market. The same goes for industries outside of entertainment. Every week there’s a news bit that wins the lion’s share of airtime and print space. If you, your business or product has anything to do with what the media is talking about, you have to capitalize on the buzz and grab on. The press will be more likely to listen to your story, and you’ll get the coverage.

If It’s Newsy and You Know It, Clap Your Hands

Got it? A news hook is the most compelling part of your story. You probably know that by now, but what you need to realize is that the hook doesn’t have to be real news. That doesn’t mean you should go out there with a non-news item; it means that you should be creative and make the news, as BigStar did in the examples given above. The bottom line: If it’s newsy, use it. And on top of that, an important thing to remember is that what you find the most compelling part of your story may be miles apart from the aspect that the media and opinion leaders are most interested in.

Take the idea of using holiday or seasonal tie-ins, for example. It may sound hackneyed, but there’s still plenty of life left in that angle if you can find a fresh way to tweak it, and this is particularly important for retailers and manufacturers that depend on a seasonal shot in the arm, revenue-wise. Consider eCandy, an online candy store for consumers, with products ranging from supermarket sweets to hard-to-find European chocolates. After launching in mid-January 2000, eCandy wanted to raise awareness among general consumers in an effort to drive traffic to the site before the all-important Easter and Mother’s Day holidays.

The challenge eCandy faced was competing with the hundreds of other online and brick-and-mortar companies targeting consumers for the same holidays. At the same time, the company was not ready to announce any new confectionery products or high-profile company developments. To raise eCandy above the holiday noise, and to garner quick results on the tail end of the seasonal Easter stories before the rapidly approaching Mother’s Day, the company decided to capitalize on the heavy media attention given to last-minute taxpayers on April 15.

The company’s slogan for this angle was “eCandy Gives Sweet Returns On-Line.” To play that up, it hired a man on stilts dressed as Uncle Sam to pass out eCandy chocolate coins to reward all the last-minute taxpayers at New York’s and Los Angeles’s main post offices.

To create additional hype for this event, eCandy sent out chocolate press releases requesting that reporters click on a special URL informing them about eCandy’s Tax Day promotion with Uncle Sam. This specialized (and easy to pull off) tax-day event resulted in tremendous broadcast and print coverage (including Associated Press, the New York Daily News, several television channels, and trade magazines) that carried the eCandy name to more than 6.5 million candy consumers, with the eCandy slogan mentioned almost every time. The tremendous spike in brand recognition and Web surfer curiosity drove site traffic, and ultimately sales, through the roof.

Freshen Up

All products can do with a news hook that makes people see them as brand-spanking new or, at the very least, a twist on an existing theme. This is particularly true for magazines and any sort of publication. Allow this unorthodox example: City Family was developed as a magazine geared to the needs of new immigrants to New York. At first, the news media refused to take it seriously. As one academic told National Public Radio the day City Family launched: “I don’t see how this can help. They can’t eat the darn thing!”

City Family magazine came about because its publisher, Arthur Schiff, was an early proponent of the food stamp program in New York. He knew that immigrants and “new New Yorkers” did not have a magazine meant for them—a publication that would address their problems, questions, and desires. Coming from a political background and knowing this group well, he started it himself, in English and Spanish. The immediate reaction was laughter. People (among them, purported urban “experts”) said, “Why bother? A magazine for the poorer population—who would advertise in it?” Especially since it was free.

City Family acted fast and furiously by sending out copies of the magazine and material to hundreds of immigrant, entrepreneur, city, and novelty features writers. (Novelty features writers are those dozen reporters in your hometown or city who write about whatever they fancy. You have to find angles that make them say “ah.”)

These were the first to see what a unique tale Schiff’s was. Once he learned how to deliver a consistent message to the press (see Chapter 6, “It’s YOUR Interview!”), he started to streamline responses so that people would see the good City Family was doing. Soon the magazine had a circulation of 250,000 and was a huge hit in the media circles. The first major story hit the Daily News’s City section, followed by the all-essential vertical advertiser and alternative weeklies (Adweek, Advertising Age, Village Voice, Baltimore City Paper, and West Side Spirit in Manhattan) and pieces in Crain’s, Newsweek, and national magazine media, such as Folio, the magazine for the magazine publishing industry.

CEOs and the Word

Gosh that’s a big desk! And are all these secretaries yours? It’s nice to be on top, buddy, but just because you’re running the show and (almost) everyone’s answering to you, it doesn’t mean you’ve gotten the art of PR down.

There are a few things to remember when it comes to managing a CEO who’s a press hog. The thing about CEOs is they all have friends in high places and continually meet reporters at one cocktail party or another. They think they can do it all themselves. Not only that, they think journalists are there to do them a “favor”—that’s the “F” word in this book.

Truth is, journalists who chat them up aren’t their friends at all. They cover the beat, and they’re waiting for any less-than-intelligent statement to fall from your boss’s loose lips.

It pays to force the issue before this happens: Make sure your CEO understands the needed boundaries when it comes to talking to the press.

Then there’s messaging. We’ve told you that the best stories always have a challenge in them. CEOs don’t ever like to say the company is struggling or performing less than phenomenally, so they fill interview time with windy messages ripped from the marketing material. Many love to send sleep-inducing PowerPoints to F-owing reporter pals. It’s all very salesy.

Hard as it may be, you must step in and set it right. You need to tell reporters the facts, ma’am, and you must create a CEO who can talk the straight poop. If you don’t, it all falls apart. The story won’t happen, the journalist covering your beat will have an eternal beef with you, not with your CEO, and you’ll never get in that pub again. It’s your gig; don’t let ’em push you around.

And who will be the angriest? The CEO! Those at the top are often tough to handle when it comes to egos. But if you’re the professional getting exposure for the firm, you were placed at your desk, albeit smaller, for a reason. It’s time for you to prove your place elegantly and powerfully.

Then, after a year in business, City Family was named one of the top start-ups of the prior twelve months by the Library Journal … and after that it was a short trip to the big leagues, press-wise: the Wall Street Journal and the Los Angeles Times—and then, a year later, the New York Times. City Family magazine subsequently expanded into four cities along with an international edition, as well as an online edition.

Beware the Cult of Personality

It was Arthur Schiff’s vision of how City Family could serve the immigrant population’s needs, combined with his ability to personify that vision, that elevated the magazine to the national radar screen. Often that’s exactly what small companies have going for them in the way of news hooks: a visionary (and sometimes plain quirky) entrepreneur at the helm. But for companies like these, the cult of personality is a double-edged sword.

How’s that, you say? Cult of what? That’s what happens to a company when its press revolves solely around its CEO or other top management, rather than the company’s real news hooks.

Our favorite cult-of-personality-gone-wrong story features Joseph Park of aforementioned Kozmo.com, a failed firm whose mission was to receive Internet orders and to deliver goods throughout New York City. One of the many Web start-ups to emerge out of New York’s digital cornucopia, it started off by deploying a handful of bike messengers onto the streets to deliver movies, books, CDs, magazines, food, electronics, and more—from the Internet to your door in less than an hour.

Like any company in its infancy, Kozmo knew it was mission-critical to catch the eye of potential consumers and investors alike. To fuel expansion and ensure survival, this unique organization needed to be taken seriously in the business press, not viewed as gimmicky.

The company launched a media campaign to position itself as something more than a local video store on the Web. Rather, it wanted to be seen as an innovative company poised to revolutionize the way corporations and consumers use the Web. At a 1999 luncheon to introduce the emerging industry of pervasive computing, Kozmo.com seized the day. When Kozmo’s Joseph Park started his presentation by asking the attendees their favorite type of ice cream, people seemed confused, but as he spoke, Big Joe punched in the order, and before he’d finished his address, a crowd of skeptics was transformed into a throng of ice cream- eating believers as Kozmo messengers delivered their favorites quickly and accurately.

The company capitalized on the momentum created at the event and didn’t let up. It basked in the accolades of Forbes, Red Herring, Newsweek, BusinessWeek, Kiplinger’s, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, The Economist, Financial Times, among others. New York magazine featured Joseph Park in its “New Yorkers of 1999” cover story, and Silicon Alley Reporter labeled him among the “Top CEOs of 1999.”

Six bicycles and a lot of determination grew to more than 1,000 pairs of wheels, delivering everything from the latest video releases to high-end electronics. Investors identified Kozmo.com as a sure bet, and consumers flocked to the site with a cultish zeal.

But where are Park and Kozmo now? After a three-year run, Kozmo ceased operations in 2001. In the end, the company learned that you can’t just rest on the repute of one person; the deals put together have to earn you cash in addition to headlines. That might sound obvious, but plenty of entrepreneurs get carried away with their early successes (and even their later ones). Ego is a by-product of intense press, but you can’t let it be your end game. Amen.

Testing Your Wings

Let’s move on to another example. What do you do when you’re a struggling new company looking to attract investors? Lewis Schiff, an entrepreneur who founded ArmchairMillionaire.com, coauthored The Armchair Millionaire (Pocket Star, 2001), and launched Worth Online, knew a good business model when he saw one. Investorama was the most complete directory of investing sites on the Web, with more than 11,000 links in 141 categories. With Schiff’s investment, it was poised to become one of the biggest personal finance affinity directories on the Web, but he needed an additional investment from a smart angel investor or venture capitalist. The question was how to rise above the clamor and convince investors that the enterprise was worth taking a closer look at.

The answer was to make Lewis Schiff a fixture in Silicon Valley for twenty days. He stated his wishes loud and clear—on a 14 x48 billboard on Highway 101! Schiff’s billboard debuted on April 15. The idea was a bold and brash one and drew attention not only to Lewis’s sassy New York roots, but also to his imagination for and confidence in the company. The choice of Highway 101 was an easy one: As a major highway running right through Silicon Valley, it’s the road most traveled by the type of person whom Lewis was trying to reach.

What happened was fun and not a little controversial. Controversy—unless it gets you thrown in jail—can be good for your press book. And how. The big Web portal Yahoo! was angry with Schiff for having the audacity to say on his billboard, “Help us become the Yahoo! of financial advice.” Well, after nineteen days, Schiff promised to take down the billboard after the Yahoo! lawyers got a little uppity. Schiff told his story to the press, neatly leaving out the fact that he’d planned to take the billboard down on the twentieth day anyway. The now-infamous billboard appeared on the front page of the New York Times and in the Wall Street Journal, San Francisco Chronicle, and San Jose Mercury News, not to mention in numerous broadcasts, too. Schiff’s arousing the ire of Yahoo! and his larger-than-life mug looming over 101 was too much fun for the media to pass up. Not only did several investors come through, but another story came out about his success.

Here’s another idea for a news hook: How about handing some fun to generally bored business reporters? That’s another great route to success. The British-born “More Balls Than Most” (we kid you not) was a very successful game maker looking to expand its market in the early 1990s. The company created stress-relieving juggling balls for high-level, high-anxiety-prone executives. These were sold everywhere from Harrod’s in the United Kingdom to Macy’s and Saks here in the United States.

MBTM also wanted badly to make juggling huge in the United States. More than that, it had the unorthodox notion of bringing it to America’s businesses as a way to reduce stress. But in 1993, juggling was hardly a trend in the United States. It was perceived as a difficult and specialized skill that was frivolous and, well, silly. Why would anyone take the time, especially in a corporate setting?

MBTM positioned itself as a company (“those funny, smart Brits”) that sells skills. As a consumer product, the firm offered an unusual, high-quality gift that increased confidence and aided relaxation. In the corporate sector, it portrayed juggling as an invaluable way to instill self-esteem and risk-taking abilities—two qualities that corporations want in their executives. Juggling is also an excellent metaphor for multi-task management— juggling priorities, if you will.

MBTM’s profile and profits rose steadily since its arrival in this country. The number of corporate jugglers was five times greater than predicted, and that’s because of positive press coverage. But to attract the press’s attention, the techniques had to be as unorthodox as the company. For example, in an interview on a public radio program, the company chairman taught the host to juggle transatlantically over the phone. In another event, MBTM staff presented themselves as juggling madmen, and after they held juggling fests on public streets, with corporate types leading the fray, they were on their way.

MBTM probably got the most attention, however, by simply showing people what it does. The company created opportunities for journalists to come to juggling sessions in executive boardrooms in every major city, where they could finally see CEOs learn how to juggle for real.

Never Mind the Dust Bunnies

You might be thinking that it’s easy enough to come up with creative angles when you have an offbeat product (although it isn’t always easy). But what happens when your product is a little less glamorous, perhaps even a bit dusty around the edges? The paper company Arjo Wiggins had no news to speak of, and its product, Polyart, was no longer the new kid on the block. Polyart is an environmentally friendly, waterproof, tear-resistant, nontoxic polyethylene paper. The company had been manufacturing it for almost eleven years, but had never done any sort of media relations.

Arjo Wiggins decided it was time to raise Polyart’s profile during the year of the first Earth Day. It would be a big day for ecology, but Arjo Wiggins’s sales were down, and the company wanted to generate some interest in its products. Operating under the “don’t ask, don’t tell” philosophy, the company ignored the age factor and targeted new product reporters at paper, label, graphic arts, and environmental publications. These reporters received a letter designed to make them sit up and take notice. The release was printed on a tough sheet of Polyart, and reporters were dared to rip the release in half, spill coffee on it, and even burn it. That was the news: “You’ve never seen this before, and now you must—must—try it.”

Reporters ate it up. And since it was the first time any of them had seen or heard of it, they naturally assumed it was fresh from the lab. During the course of a few months, hundreds of mentions in a variety of publications popped up, and Arjo Wiggins USA was flooded with phone calls from all over the globe. The state of Israel decided to use Polyart for its new driver’s licenses, while Greenpeace saw its value for event tickets. Ultimately, the company had to hire extra employees just to handle the new flood of inquiries. That’s a challenge most companies seem to enjoy.

Fixin’ To Stick Around

Let’s take the opposite tack. Suppose your idea is a bit ahead of its time. Now that the dot-com bubble has burst and the overall economic mood is more sober, you need to convince the media that two years from now, your idea will be not a fad but a fixture. You want to convey the notion that your Next Big Thing is big enough to stick around.

The NBT is something you have to believe in. That’s hard to do. So many people claim that what they’re bringing to the table is the NBT, and unfortunately, they prove to be wrong most of the time. That doesn’t mean you can’t generate some positive press in the meantime, however. In 1996, before the dot-com boom, FieldWorks, a company in Eden Prairie, Minnesota, was manufacturing rugged laptop computers, built to withstand just about anything. With nothing more than a few clips from trade publications, how could this company get reporters to sit up and take notice, when big-gun Panasonic was threatening to produce this type of machine itself? (In fact, Panasonic never did.) How could they prove they were the next big thing?

In order to prove the company’s NBT status, it was necessary to look no further than their customer list, which was mind-blowing: NASA; MIR; U.S. Army, Navy, and Air Force; Disney; AT&T; the New York Police Department; and others of similar stature. The strategy was clear: Name-drop left and right. If that didn’t excite reporters enough, the company invited them to throw one of the FieldWorks computers across the room, run a car over it, submerge it in ice, and stand on it and jump!

That did it. FieldWorks generated a considerable buzz, and Fortune, PC Computing, Wired, CNN, NBC, and dozens of others quickly ran glowing previews of the new FieldWorks machines. It also didn’t hurt that a FieldWorks computer turned on immediately, without any booting time. At that time, this was the big complaint of corporate consumer users. To highlight this aspect, the company posed this thought-provoking question to the press: “Would you wait two full minutes for your car to start?”

The media attention FieldWorks gained helped this tiny company grow and make a name. Their plant doubled in size in just a year, and before they were sold two years later to a huge local conglomerate, they struggled to keep up with the pace of customer inquiries.

Where Angels Fear to Tread

FieldWorks was a company firmly identified as devising a good and useful twist on an important product. But how do you handle media coverage if your product has a potential for consumer and media backlash? This can sometimes happen when a product is controversial or not quite all it’s made out to be. These are delicate situations, and you need to give a lot of thought to what the potential traps and criticisms are likely to be, and to play up your product’s strongest features to offset any impediments to market acceptance. For example, a website that teaches college students how to use credit cards responsibly (while selling them credit cards, of course) wanted to increase traffic to its website. The challenge was to position it as a valuable financial tool despite the fact that the site offers credit cards to students.

To that end, and to increase serious, college-age awareness of StudentCredit.com, the site held a “Debt Pay Off” promotion. The contest paid off the debts of ten college students and gave them the opportunity to start fresh at managing their credit cards, using the advice the site served up. In addition, the news hook focused on the site’s positive features, such as its free bill reminder service and its “ten steps to good credit,” while positioning the company’s CEO as a financial expert for college students.

In a few months, people stopped doubting the agenda of the owners, and in fact, stories about them appeared in the New York Post and in college newspapers everywhere. The chief of the company, a hard-edged businessman during the week and a young surfer dude on the weekends, was featured in Brand Week, the Boston Herald, Money, and the Oregonian and the Tower Light (two large-circulation, alternative weeklies). He also spoke on live radio in college towns everywhere. Somehow, the potential conflict never made the light of day, and the site has continued to grow from its exposure, reaching thousands of new students every year.

Along similar lines, how do you manage a news hook when you have news that no one in the company wants you to talk about yet, but you are, unfortunately, in the throes of a controversy you didn’t even start? Sesame Workshop, formerly known as the Children’s Television Workshop, is the venerable educational organization that created and produces the TV show Sesame Street. In 1996, Congress was working hard and fast to create privacy rules so that shows like Sesame would not take advantage of the younger set on the newish medium called the Internet.

At the time, Tina Sharkey was the president of the CTW interactive division, and she found herself thrust into a difficult position. As manager of the first-ever website for the Children’s Television Workshop (CTW.org), she had been handed a challenging mission. After all, CTW was famous for Sesame Street, but it didn’t have a publishing firm, a cable station, or even its own toy line (these businesses were all farmed out). This “Internet thing” was the thirty-year-old company’s way to make it into the big time as a media conglomerate!

But the site wouldn’t be ready for quite some time. Sharkey was told that launching in the fall was fine, but she was not permitted to discuss the content with the press. So the only thing CTW could do to publicize its new website, without attaching specifics to it, was to get the word out quickly about the network’s philosophy on website content for children. The company did get press coverage in a number of business and Internet publications, as well as daily newspapers.

The bad news: The privacy situation was heating up in Congress, and regulations for advertising or marketing via e-mail to kids was about to be turned into a bill. So instead of waiting for the results of the legislation, the CEO used Congress’s interest as a news hook and met with several Washington lobbyists to present the CTW “stance” to the media.

In this way, CTW became a leader in the Internet privacy arena, rather than a follower. And the best part was that CTW was among the first to remind Congress that some privacy rules were simply not doable. For example, asking a child to fax a signed-by-Mom permission letter to an online company negates the whole point of the Internet. (That rule was, mercifully, shot down.)

This excellent media coverage was due, in great part, to the fact that CTW spoke up and to the fact that it had established its credibility early by laying some good PR groundwork. Today, CTW has become a force to be reckoned with in the online world, side by side with bigger networks like Nickelodeon’s Nick.com and granddaddy Walt himself, Disney.com.

Grills Just Wanna Have Fun

Up to now everything we’ve told you in this chapter revolves around being inventive with your news hooks. But the fact is that sometimes there just isn’t much news, or at least none that you want to talk about. That doesn’t mean you can’t invent some of your own (but no fibbing, now). Let us explain. Back in the summer of 2001, with e-commerce in question and the market at an all-time low, bad feelings about our economy were all around us. Amazon.com wanted to create some positive news to deflect attention away from The Street and to prove that its CEO, Jeff Bezos, is indeed a visionary with a sense of humor.

At the same time, Amazon also wanted to shed a little light on its “Honor System,” a program that helps smaller sites collect money from users. We came up with the idea of a barbecue, hosted by Honor System devotees and comic geniuses from Modern Humorist (www.modern_humorist_.com), that featured the grilling skills of Bezos himself. Counter to what the PR handbook preaches, the summer, especially July, is the perfect time to grab media attention with such events. Expecting many to consider the barbecue a hoax or a prank, we got the buzz swirling about the barbecue a week beforehand with an item in USA Today. The barbecue was also mentioned in the New York Observer’s weekly guide, the AP Daybook, and the New York Times.

A good event needs to be a bit exclusive. The best and brightest financial, business, and cultural journalists were invited to the Bezos barbeque, and they all jumped at the opportunity. Syndicated network crews were among the attendees, ensuring that the coverage continued to spread well beyond New York (and the United States).

The barbecue was one of the most successful events Amazon.com had ever pulled off. More than 100 journalists attended from US News & World Report, Time, Newsweek, BusinessWeek, the Wall Street Journal, Red Herring, Money, Fortune, Forbes, MSNBC, CNN, Bloomberg TV, Associated Press, Reuters, and other publications. The barbecue, which was the first announcement-free press event in Amazon.com’s history, encouraged scores of left-of-center, feel-good articles.

In an article in media-relations trade magazine PR Week, a reporter noted: “The week following the barbecue, Amazon.com posted its quarterly earnings and conceded that the positive media hype around the event improved the atmosphere for its announcement.”

Chest Out, Shoulders High

On to the meat-ia of PR. Now that you’ve learned how to identify your competition and polish your news hook, the next steps are learning how to pitch your story to the media and becoming the confident spokesperson you must be to win over the press. Over and over again, we find that the major impediment to aggressive and effective PR is fear, even on the part of very accomplished people. But there’s nothing magical about dealing with the press: If you bring something of value to the media, with verve, gusto, and glamorous passion, they eat it up. It’s simple. Get out of here. Read Chapter 5.