This week, 10 Publicity Hounds have tips Andrew Ingram of Toronto, Canada. He and his wife own a high-end maternity boutique. A local magazine that has a Best of Toronto section and a fashion guide continues to ignore them. Andrew wants clever publicity ideas that will get the boutique into the magazine and elsewhere. From… Read More
Pitching
Pitch stories to Religion News Service
When I attended my niece’s high school football game in Ohio last fall, I couldn’t help but notice that some of the cheerleaders looked like (starts with the letters SL and rhymes with mutts). Apparently, it’s not just me feeling old again. A story in my local paper yesterday discussed the spirited debate over what’s… Read More
Why food bribes work with broadcast media
The Milwaukee Brewers are off to a good start this year–yet another reminder of how using food to entice reproters to cover your story works. While Harley-Davidson was welcoming several hundred thousand bikers at its giant 100th anniversary reunion in Milwaukee several years ago, popular afternoon drive-time talk show host Mark Belling opened his show… Read More
Getting the mainstream media’s attention for an ethical business campaign
Shel Horowitz of Frugal Fun in Massachusetts asks: “In June, I started a campaign to change the business paradigm–to create a climate where ethical business is the norm. I see this as a 10-year effort, and I have a background in both marketing and organizing. This is not the first time I’ve attempted to do… Read More
May sweeps month not a good time to pitch TV news
If you’re pitching your local TV stations and not having much luck this month, it might be because we’re in the middle of May sweeps. Newsrooms everywhere are broadcasting their big investigative stories designed to boost the all important Nielsen ratings. Unless your pitch is time-sensitive, hold off pitching for another few weeks. Use this… Read More
How an author/therapist piggybacked onto runaway bride
As I was writing last week’s tip about how to piggyback off the runaway bride story, my friend Barbara Bartlein was doing just that. Barbara, a professional speaker and author of the book “Why Did I Marry You Anyway? –12.5 Strategies for a Happy Marriage,” saw all the attention the Runaway Bride was getting and… Read More
Use Celebrities for Publicity
Celebrity chefs Emeril Lagasse, Curtis Aikens, Wolfgang Puck and Martha Stewart caught my attention when I saw their smiling faces looking back at me in the June 2003 issue of Cooking Light magazine. Those four–and six other celebrity chefs–accompanied a brief on how your personality reveals the type of cook you are. A recent study… Read More
People behind the events make great stories
She arrived in Milwaukee at age 24 with less than $40 in her purse, learned to speak English and took the streetcar to work. Today, at age 75, Magrit Heitmann still logs up to 1,500 hours a year doing what she loves best–organizing the hundreds of volunteers for Germanfest, one of the signature festivals in… Read More
These email faux pas show you’re clueless
Some time ago I wrote about nerdy websites. If you email anything to the media, make sure you aren’t guilty of these nerdy email blunders: –A subject line that says “News Release” with no clue what the release is about. –A generic greeting such as “Dear Editor.” Always use the editor’s name. If you don’t… Read More
12 worst mistakes PR people make
It was difficult to pare them down to a dozen, but we did. Of all the mistakes PR people make when working with the media, Jon Greer of Bulldog Reporter’s PR University and Liz Miklya of Weber Shandwick joined me in whittling down the list to 12. We presented them the Media Relations 2005 conference… Read More