I know you’ve seen photos just like this one\u00a0hundreds of times.<\/p>\n
It’s called a ribbon-cutting event, complete with the giant cardbaord scissors, and it’s one of the most-photographed, most boring\u00a0ways to try to generate publicity.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Equally repugnant are those giant cardboard checks that somebody “presents” to someone else, usually when a company or a group makes a donation. That’s called a check-passing.<\/p>\n
It’s a shame that so many uncreative\u00a0PR people rely on cardboard checks and scissors when they can’t think of a better\u00a0way to attract media attention for their business that’s opening, or when their organization is making a donation.<\/p>\n
Next time you’re tempted to stage an event like these, I hope you’ll consider some better\u00a0alternatives. Dan Collins,<\/a> director of media relations for Mercy Medical Center<\/a> in Baltimore,\u00a0uses a variety of offbeat\u00a0ideas that are far better than cardboard checks and scissors.\u00a0 He explained them all on the CD we recorded called “Fun Alternatives to Boring Ground-breakings, Ribbon-cuttings and Check-passings.”<\/a><\/p>\n —Donating money for new hospital equipment?\u00a0Work with the hospital’s PR department to line up a patient who would agree to be photographed using the equipment.<\/p>\n —Publicizing a bank branch that’s opening?\u00a0 Ask the local newspaper to photograph the first customer on opening day.<\/p>\n —Better yet, stage a fun event at the bank.\u00a0 How about hiring a magician who can do magic tricks with dollar bills?\u00a0 Alert the media.<\/p>\n —If your organization is donating money to buy food for the local food pantry, ask a reporter to help stock the pantry when the food arrives, then write about what it’s like to work at the food pantry for a day.\u00a0 Inviting reporters to become involved in your story often results in far more interesting stories.<\/p>\n What if your boss\u00a0insists that you stage one of these events? Then what do you do?<\/p>\n I suggest you take the photo yourself and submit it to a low-level newspaper like one of those free qeekly shoppers that\u00a0often print those kinds of photos.\u00a0You’ll save face with larger newspapers that view\u00a0those photos are unimaginative and trite.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I know you’ve seen photos just like this one\u00a0hundreds of times. It’s called a ribbon-cutting event, complete with the giant cardbaord scissors, and it’s one of the most-photographed, most boring\u00a0ways to try to generate publicity.\u00a0 Equally repugnant are those giant cardboard checks that somebody “presents” to someone else, usually when a company or a group\u2026 Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","iawp_total_views":4,"wds_primary_category":609,"footnotes":""},"categories":[609],"tags":[629,623,203,616,605,607,614,621],"class_list":{"0":"post-913","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-tv-radio","7":"tag-advertising","8":"tag-brick-mortar","9":"tag-contests","10":"tag-events","11":"tag-news-events","12":"tag-promotions","13":"tag-publicity-stunt","14":"tag-retail-marketing","15":"entry"},"featured_image_src":null,"featured_image_src_square":null,"author_info":{"display_name":"Joan Stewart","author_link":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/author\/jstewart\/"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/913","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=913"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/913\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41241,"href":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/913\/revisions\/41241"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=913"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=913"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=913"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}