Advertising: how to capture the attention of the media

If your company is the publicly traded market leader in your industry, you can stop reading this because even the most mundane press release about some boring event in your company will find its way into the mainstream media. For the rest of you, you will have to be more creative if you want the media to cover your news.

Advertising is just one aspect of an overall integrated marketing campaign and something that we at EMDCO.com take very seriously, and not so seriously, because it’s part art and part science. When we put together an advertising campaign for our clients, we strive to report on the aspects of their news population that will have the best chance of gaining media attention.

What do I mean by aspects of the population? They are twists on your simple news story that will help get media coverage – the story around the story that impacts the general public. Unless you incorporate one of the 5 twists that make a story compelling to a reporter, you’re in the deep end. Most companies aren’t big enough to command news coverage. What do I mean by big enough? Your news does not affect the majority of the population. That’s why your press release about hiring a new VP of sales will appear in the local paper at best, and that’s if it’s a slow news day and they have room to print it.

The fact is the media just don’t care about your news. You have to have a story that will affect most, if not all, of the publication’s readers. Just think how hard it is to get a date with your prospects. If they don’t care about your products or services, what makes you think the media will fall in love with your story?

We’ve discovered 5 twists to look for in your news angle if you want to get media coverage. The reporter is interested in pleasing the editor and the editor is interested in printing stories that will sell their magazine or newspaper. That is all. They don’t care about your company. And if you continue to create vanilla press releases and ad campaigns without incident, you are guaranteed not to get any media coverage for your company.

You have to give the media something to write about. Today, the media’s idea of ​​what is newsworthy is a little different than what you think is newsworthy about your company.

Year after year, these are the five most frequently written news stories:

o What is already fashionable in the media.

o The history of the controversy.

o The unusual or scandalous story.

o The history of the celebrity.

or The underdog or the story of David and Goliath.

If you can create a story with any of these story angles, you will grab media attention. Create a story that includes two, three, or four of these angles at the same time, and you’ve achieved major media success.

Creating a story that is already fashionable in the media.

For the past year and a half, gasoline prices have been a major topic in the news. The media reports gasoline prices at the pump along with commodity futures prices almost every day. You can’t read a newspaper or turn on the television without being bombarded with news about gas.

EMDCO.com tapped into this hot topic for a client that generated national news. We took advantage of National Bike Week and high gas prices by having company executives buy a new fleet of economy vehicles (yes, bikes). The headline: “In this gas-guzzling age, executives splurge on a new fleet of vehicles.” We invited both television and print media to cover the delivery of the new fleet and got great coverage for this Midwestern company. The company manufactures gears for industrial equipment. We created a story about employee health benefits, cost savings for the company, plus a beneficial impact on the environment, it’s a spin that’s so much better than a press release about how they’re now making gear with 451 teeth instead of the old ones. with 450 or they have been in business for 17 years!

Create the history of the controversy

People in the entertainment business use this all the time. Stories as a female mega singer wants to help two up-and-coming female pop singers get more media, so she kisses them on stage: press coverage bingo. Girl-next-door actress needs a makeover to date attractive bad boy: bingo press coverage. You see the real reason something is done is always there, it’s just not the part that makes the news. What’s so newsworthy about 3 women singing on stage?

One of our clients wanted to generate attention for their business. EMDCO.com crafted an advertising strategy that focused on the controversy. We decided on a bold move. They work in an industry that already has a tarnished image. We carefully crafted a campaign where they exposed the dirty little secrets within their industry. Risky? Yes. Effective? Incredibly They are now known as the honest guys in their industry.

Here’s one that was just reported the other day. ‘Man is arrested for stealing Internet in a cafe’. Well, what are the elements? Cafe offers free internet. And what, many others do these days. Not much has changed in coffee products, so not much to report there. But what happens when a customer walks into the cafe, uses the Internet but doesn’t buy coffee? Stop it! Without arrest there is no story, but now you can have debates about freedom and morality, etc. Was it a publicity stunt? You better believe it! Why would the story include a photo of the guy smiling as he sat in the same cafe that arrested him?

Create the unusual or scandalous story

Creating unusual or outrageous stories is not as difficult as you think. Yes, there are times when something so unusual happens in real life that it becomes news. Like the time I wrote a press release about a kid who found several thousand dollars outside a well-known department store. Within 5 minutes of faxing a one-page press release, calls started pouring in from all the different media outlets: TV, radio, and print. There was so much coverage that the story made its way to The Jay Leno Show and The Ellen Degeneres Show, where the boy appeared on national television to tell his story. It also generated great coverage for the department store.

The moment something unusual happens to one of your employees and you can relate it to your company, you should alert the press.

Here are some other publicity stunts I’m sure you’ve heard of:

“Found in New York Cab: Jewelry Salesman Forgets $275,000 Worth of Jewelry”

“$40 Dollar Burger” – Secret Kobe Beef (from Japanese cows getting massaged)

“Hotel’s $1,000 Martini” – Comes with real gold flakes and a diamond in it

“$500,000 honeymoon suite at Chicago hotel” included trip to Harrods and twin Mercedes cars

You guessed it: all the publicity stunts that got the media attention for the client.

Create celebrity story

Creating events that draw large crowds and media can help your business in many ways. Here’s the quick breakdown of an event that created quite a stir for a group of car dealers selling Acura, Mercedes, Infinity, Toyota, VW, etc. here in Chicago.

This group car dealer wants to sell fleets of cars to Chicagoland corporations. We decided to do a fundraiser for a leukemia charity. A well-known beauty salon has models highlighting the latest hairstyles along with dresses by local designers. Who is invited? Executives and their spouses, past and present clients of the salon, as well as local celebrities and the media are featured. It became such a hip event that even Chicago Social Magazine covered the story.

Creating the Under-Dog story

This angle is very effective if your business is up against a major competitor. I could go on and on about the ideas in this category, but instead I’ll just list a few to give you some ideas.

o Web-based sales force application company vs. giant sales force software company: Company pickets in front of a national sales expo with “Down with Software” signs

o We had a software company picket clients in front of their own building with signs saying, “We’ll pay more rent, but we need more.” Story talked about how the client was growing and they were unable to get the building management to make changes to accommodate the growth, which resulted in news about how quickly our client was growing.

o EMDCO.com created a contest for one of our technology customers. His goal was to attract the attention of new customers and possibly sell his company. They knew they had some of the best and brightest software developers. We went on the attack with a challenge from programmers from the biggest web development companies. The contest pitted our client against others in a challenge to create the best web application for a real client. Yes, we invited a larger competitor to work on a real client. Our smallest customer won the challenge and was subsequently purchased by the largest competitor.

The truth of the matter is that news is simply not news unless it has one of these twists. See how the national morning news is more like a variety show than an actual newscast. At first, the TV anchors only read the news to him, then the TV news had two types of anchors; the warm fuzzy talking heads that would then send it to their more serious people at the news desk and now both groups of anchors are getting cozy on the morning news couch.

You don’t want your company to create a hack just for the sake of it. But you do want to create a catalyst that has substance and relevance to what your company does and that will grab media attention. Creating a buzz about your company is what we do best.