jackhardy Journalism, News, Promotion, Public relations

Measuring Success in PR

Actions that get results is one way to measure a successful PR campaign. Since media outreach is a foundational principle of any campaign, consider the actions and results of a recent news announcement. The American Humane Association takes advantage of the collective public interest in the annual Academy Awards by issuing its own news release of pet Oscar(r) winners who win “Pawscars.” The creative news release, complete with video links appeared yesterday, distributed via PRNewswire.

The result? A news article and link in today’s issue of USAToday.

Pawscars

And that is just the beginning of the media coverage. It will likely be featured on numerous TV outlets and news media websites across the globe.

The power of PR to influence the media is real!

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jackhardy Advertising, Communication, Marketing, Promotion, Public relations

Crowdstorming

An essential element of PR planning involves research. Primary and secondary sources of information are helpful in setting benchmarks for PR plans in order to effectively evaluate the success of your PR efforts. When evaluating products or services or even new ideas, a new business trend dubbed “crowdsourcing” has appeared. A cross between brainstorming and croudsourcing, it is a new method of quickly testing ideas with a large number of people. Consider this article about crowdsourcing. The authors claim that this new method is the future of innovation, ideas and problem solving. In their recent book, Crowdstorm, they lay out a compelling case for getting advice from the smartest people in the crowd. It’s worth a look.

Crowdstorm

jackhardy Communication, Journalism, News, Promotion, Public relations, Publicity Stunt

Rats in Manhattan: “Peoples nightmares are a good day for us.”

Hurricane Sandy brought out the rats. According to this CNN story, the floodwaters in New York subways drove these underground residents out of their homes and into the city: http://www.cnn.com/video/?hpt=hp_t2#/video/us/2013/02/20/tsr-rats-invade-ny-post-sandy.cnn

The county health department, city officials, residents, local business owners and pest departments all have something different to say. For pest control companies, one owner put it this way: “Peoples nightmares are a good day for us.”

This was a PR opportunity for entrepreneurial companies who want to get featured in the news. Business is booming and one way to take advantage of the news cycle is to promote your services when the opportunity presents itself.

Rodents in Manhattan
Rodents in Manhattan

Another example is when the maker of Oreo cookies tweeted a response to the temporary power blackout at the recent Superbowl, “you can still dunk in the dark,” and almost immediately tens of thousands of followers retweeted the message earning instant media attention.

Oreo

Can you think of any other recent examples of businesses taking advantage of current events?

jackhardy Promotion, Public relations, Uncategorized

Google Glass for a Tweet

Product promotions have risen to a new level with the pending launch of the new video streaming and Internet enabled glasses from Google. According to the company, a limited number of customers will be selected to later purchase the $2500 glasses (for a discounted price of $1,500) when they Tweet about how they would use them or make a post to their Google+ account. A NY Times blog piece describes it here.

Google Glasses
Google Glasses

The “select” few who are chosen to receive glasses before the public launch will certainly have bragging rights. I suppose if you’re one of those people who constantly shares every aspect of your life on Facebook, you can do it now with video and stay connected with a pair of glasses that documents what you see! Hurry, the deadline is February 27th and in your Tweet you should use the hashtag: #ifihadglass

More ideas are found on the Google video here: http://www.google.com/glass/start/how-it-feels/