Friday, October 31, 2008

Sometimes Gimicks Still Work to Generate Media Coverage

We've been working on a corporate social responsibility initiative for several weeks, and have generated some decent coverage. The client asked us to get morning show coverage, and we worked up a number of different approaches. But before we could pitch the angles to morning show producers, the client used a gimmick that communicated a simple key message during the talk-to-the-crowd segment on "The Today Show."

It was a far shorter message than we were looking to get by pitching a segment on this CSR initiative -- but the gimmick got the job done.

Sometimes we overthink things when trying develop killer story angles. The gimmick was not rocket science or ground breaking. It wouldn't be appropriate for every client, but it was basic, easy to manage (in other words, it did not involve significant cost or other complicating features), and it worked.

Congratulations to the client. And here's to a reminder that not every solution to a PR goal is complicated or needs to be Web 2.0ified.

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