Monthly Archives: October 2013

How To Get TV News Coverage

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PR Clients always want the best visible coverage from the media. So how do you get this coverage?

Getting Television and Print Coverage

Getting Television and Print Coverage

First you need to plan your publicity campaign. That means you need to establish what is newsworthy, set a target date to make this announcement (press release), be prepared to follow up to all the news media the release was submitted, and have a spokesperson(s) be ready to meet the press. Sounds simple, but this is not an easy task. Knowing the reporters and the media is very critical in getting a story published or aired on broadcast television. PR Clients must rely on their pr agency to direct how and when such a story will be presented. It is the agency’s expertise that will make this happen. Many times pr clients feel that their point of view about their product or service is superior to the competition and cannot understand why “they” are not getting the media or reporters to take notice. For this reason alone, it is important for pr clients to trust the direction, recommendations of the pr agency, if not, it is possible the pr client could create a negative impression to the media and nothing will happen.

We recently had two pr clients that wanted major media coverage. One was for the California RV Show that recently happened at the Fairplex in Pomona on Oct. 11 through 20. The other was Grande Bakery whose 50+ years in business was forced to close due to the city of Santa Ana using eminent domain to take their property for road expansion. We established a strong pr campaign that highlighted the objectives we developed for each pr client. The results were excellent.

The California RV Show had a full week of coverage from KTLA’s Gayle Anderson, plus CBS chief meteorologist Josh Rubenstein, Telemundo TV, various print media and several bloggers writing about the event. You can read more about this publicity campaign in my blog dated October 22.

Grande Bakery required a different type of approach. Knowing this decision by the city was going to impact the lives of the Gallegos family who owned the bakery for over 50 years, and the employees (many who worked there for over 30+ years) and how it was going to have an effect on the community who supported and relied on their goods for over three generations, was our focus. Our timeline was short. We only had three weeks before the city was to take possession of the property so we had to move fast and smart. Our first article appeared in the OC Register with interviews by Tony Gallegos and Ralph Gallegos. This was followed up a few days later with NBC and Telemundo doing interviews. Less than a week later a follow up story with OC Register, NBC TV, plus Telemundo and Excélsior Newspaper created more media attention that generated many calls to the office of Loretta Sanchez. Everyday another media will pickup the article and do their story angle as did OC Weekly’s Gustavo Arellano in today’s online news.

Having a solid campaign that gets your message to your audience is how to get the attention of the media. Knowing when, how and what to do is the pr agency’s responsibility. Give your pr agency the freedom to create the campaign you need and trust their decisions will help you gain the awareness you desire. If your company, event or product needs more visibility, consider a solid publicity campaign. If you need help developing the campaign then give George Carson a call at 949-477-9400. We know how to “make things happen!”

APPS to help you organize your daily business activity

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It is almost impossible in today’s competitive environment to keep our daily activities organized in one place.Calendars are good to know what to do that day, but you probably have other “reminder” systems in place to coordinate all your daily activities. If your business is large enough, your secretary or assistant might be that organizer for you. But not always is that person at your fingertips.

Time Management System

Organizing Business Activities

I came across a few APPS that could help you organize your activities all in one place, making life just a little simpler. I am sure there are other apps being developed during this writing, maybe even something completely different will become available making all these apps obsolete. So for now, lets look at these 5 apps.

Recently Google launched an app called Google Keep. Like many of Google’s products, the “Keep” will sync your notes with Siri (iPhone users) and Google Drive. It will color-code them for easy retrieval, construct to-do lists, compile photos, and archive notes for later viewing. If you have used Evernote, then you will most likely want to try Keep. Google is constantly improving this app to become the choice for people on the go.

Jumpchart is slightly different. For example if you are redesigning your website, Jumpchart helps you plan your website layout, view the most recent content revisions, and a lot more, all in real time. Although this app is free, the more advanced features are at a cost up to $50, but worth it if that’s what you need to help keep things organized.

For those who are concerned about accounting and billing might want to look at Harvest app. This is a time tracking app program that will help you see where your staff is spending their hours, based on time spent on each task. If you use QuickBooks, you can export these reports into that program to keep real-time reports for billable hours. Another feature of Harvest, you can create invoices with your company logo and offer clients to pay invoices online.

Here is something that many active social media people will find useful. Hootsuite. This app helps you manage all your social networks, such as Linkedin, Twitter, Google+, Foursquare, MySpace, WordPress, Facebook and Mixi accounts. It’s a great way to track your brand mentions and analyze your social traffic.

What's next?

What to do next?

If you are truly a busy entrepreneur who just cannot remember to take your iPhone charger with you, or pick up your cleaning, or need to locate a restaurant for a client lunch meeting, then look no further than WunWun. This is not free. It’s a concierge service to make sure all your needs are met and on-time. WunWun is a 24/7 service that cost $2.50 for every 5 minutes of service, or you can choose $20 flat fee for deliveries.

I am still trying to find an app that just lets me be alone for a while. Seems our lives are so packed with things to do we just cannot tear ourselves away from not knowing what is happening in the world, or what our competitors are doing next. If I find an app that lets our devices all fall asleep at the same time, I’ll pass that along to you. For now, keep organizing.

If you want to learn how to make your business more productive, then call George Carson at Carson Marketing, Inc. 949-477-9400

 

Creating a Successful Event

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Our company was appointed as the publicity agency for the recent 61st California RV Show in Pomona at the Fairplex. The goal was to increase attendance from previous years, which was about 20,000 people. We analyzed what the show had done in the past and made recommendations. This was a challenge because the show runs 10 days.

One of the first items on our list for this PR Client was to generate a lot of news media attention, which was not done in previous RV shows. Another element was to establish a partnership with a charity, we choose the American Diabetes Association (ADA) Orange County. I now wanted the event to have a personality who is an RVer and is a diabetic. This lead me to contact Bret Michaels. Bret is a Type 1 diabetic, and last summer had a successful show called “Rock My RV”. What a perfect match! After contacting Bret Michaels and telling him of our goal to help raise money for the ADA, he immediately wanted to participate.

George Carson and Bret Michaels

The California RV Show, our PR Client still needed other “attractions” to keep people coming all 10 days of the show. Having unique RVs on display would give the consumers something to see while shopping for their favorite RV to purchase. I contacted three of the Rock My RV owners from the show whose RVs were completely re-built. The three RVs included Tapout, Gypsy RV and the Luxury RV. Now we had a foundation for the publicity.

We first focused on the new RVs having Gayle Anderson from KTLA do interviews with various manufacturers reps from Fleetwood, Winnebago, Airstream, Diablo Toy Haulers to describe their products. We also had interviews arranged with the owners of the Rock My RVs and did an entire segment on Glamping. That’s a new term used to describe “Glamours Camping.” Other media coverage include CBS chief meteorologist Josh Rubenstein who did interviews while reporting the weather during his morning segments. ABC did an interview with the director, Tom Gaither, and we had the Hispanic news media, Que Buena radio and Telemundo TV do an interview with the first Hispanic owned manufacturer of RVs, Pablo Carmona of Genesis Supreme in Perris, California.

Bret and Punkass from Tapout throwing T-Shirts

TV news media coverage began 5 days before the show opened. Other news coverage in print and radio also began early and continued throughout the week of the show. Our publicity enhanced all the ad placement resulting in a 39% attendance increase over last year. Having a plan and knowing how and when to implement that plan is critical to getting maximum news media coverage.

If your business or event needs a boost, contact George Carson at 949-477-9400 before your competition does!