If not–you should have. With PR, it’s always important to be timely. How does your business leverage the timely events that are happening in your world right now?
Before and through the elections many organizations benefited by participating in some way in their community or nation by targeting some promotion or some part of their messaging and business to the elections.
What did your business do?
If the answer is nothing–all I ask is that you brainstorm a bit and ask yourself how your organization could have participated. The cool thing about the elections this year is that is provided several opportunities.
Promotions are a great way to get involved. Whether you give away free stuff for voting or give out amazing discounts on Black Friday or the day your taxes are due, there are hundreds of opportunities to be timely. The key is to do something worth talking about.
Examples:
Ben and Jerry’s gave out free scoops for voting
Starbucks gave away coffee
Krispy Kreme gave donuts
and
TodaysMama.com teamed up with SitterCity.com to offer free and discounted babysitting to help moms make it to the polls all over the country through our MamaVote Project.
Organizations could have been a sounding board for what people in their demographic thought or felt about the elections (think surveys, demographic studies, etc.). Just think–the Plumbers Association of America (is there one?) could have done a survey of its members to see how they felt about the economy and Obama’s tax policies, and they would have had a screamin’ press release. If your business targets a certain demographic you can identify, you have the room to be the expert on your demographic both in your local community and nationally.
TodaysMama.com does surveys all of the time regarding the different issues affecting mothers and families . . . and then we send a press release about it.
From major magazines and websites down to grassroots community organizations, businesses found a way to get involved. Whether they were targeting content, partnering with other organizations to sponsor events or helping to promote voter registration with a simple button on their site, there were endless ways to get involved.
The Results
Check out a bit of the press we drummed up promoting The MamaVote Project and our Free Sitting Promotion with SitterCity.com:
Over the past year or so and especially close to election day, we got hits from CNN, NewsDay, Parenting Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, MSNBC, the Huffington Post and lots of local media outlets. Check out our press page for more links and details. We also got lots of great local coverage in the various cities we are in across the country.
In addition to great coverage through traditional media outlets, we also talked to bloggers and had some amazing coverage from them (Thank you) :
Startup Princess: Need Someone to Watch Your Kids So You Can Vote?
Bargain Hunting Moms: Free Babysitting on Election Day!
Strollerderby (Babble): Free Babysitting on Election Day!
What are some of the ways you can get involved with other current issues? Think about the economy, Christmas, change–and especially think about what’s going on in your own backyard. I always think the best place to start is in your local community. Is there something going on that has everybody talking? If so–you know what direction you should be headed.
This entry was posted on Thursday, November 20th, 2008 at 7:11 am and is filed under PR Basics, Trends, Blogs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.One Response to “Did You Get Any Free Press From Obama and McCain This Fall?”
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November 20th, 2008 at 10:30 am
Tying into a current trend or event is vitally important these days. Media outlets are scaling back and laying off, so the reporters who are left often only have time to cover the most relevant and timely topics.
The economy is obviously a big one, and companies can think outside the box to fit in. I have one client who is in the engineering software business. But their software licensing model saves clients money, and prevents them from having to make a large initial investment to use their software. This ended up being a good pitch for Computerworld, for a story about how companies are saving money in tight economic times.