Exploring the Art & Science of Marketing
Media relations skill training tip: … Give free tips.
Here’s a quick thought about building a great relationship with the media.
Give them news tips even when it doesn’t pertain to you or your business.
Case in point. A good friend of mine knows Olympic Gold Medal wrestler Rulon Gardner, and this friend knows that I like to send news to members of the media any chance I get. My friend called me yesterday afternoon to say that Rulon Gardner had been in a plane crash at Lake Powell. (He was safe, and so were the other people in the plane). Since I had told him about how I like to send tips to the media, he made the suggestion that I call them about the plane crash, which I did.
The Outcome?
I contaced KSL, and they were first to run the news, which is one of the top stories in the state today. The news has since traveled to SportsIllustrated, Forbes, and most important, the Associated Press. All I did was tip them off to it, and they did the research to find out it was true.
We got a tip from a viewer this afternoon that Rulon Gardner, the Olympic wrestler from Wyoming, was in a small plane that crashed into Lake Powell. …

| Print article | This entry was posted by Russ on February 26, 2007 at 3:45 pm, and is filed under Branding, Business, Business Writing, Consultant, Consulting, Leadership, Marketing, Media Relations, Media Training, PR, Public Relations, Strategic Marketing. Follow any responses to this post through RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site. |

about 4 years ago
Russ — congrats on being in the middle of the news pipeline.
about 4 years ago
P.S. The images in your posts get stretched all weird in Safari. I think having both height=99% and width=99% in the tag is messing it up. Probably use one or the other alone.
about 4 years ago
Props to you for feeding the world the news… Read about it on ESPN.com today. You know you’re big time when you’re material hits the sporting eyes of ESPN.