<rhymes with perogy> This next item is part rant, part rave and part media relations lesson. We recently were in Los Angeles for the annual FIATA congress and while visiting the exhibition area stopped an IT exhibitor’s booth – who shall remain unnamed (simply because my advertising colleague doesn’t want them to be too badly offended…tsche!) although we can say their name rhymes with that delicious Ukrainian specialty, perogy. Ohhhh yes we know…we’re so subtle. And so, we decided to try our luck at winning one of the iPads they were giving away.
You see we don’t actually get paid enough (boss if you’re reading this…hint, hint, wink, wink) doing Belly Aches to go out and buy ourselves an iPad so our only hope is to win one. The idea – commonly employed at air cargo events – is to drop your name card in the bowl, chuck some plastic tipped darts at an electronic dart board and if you make it past a minimum score your card goes into the lucky draw at the end of the day. Simple enough. So, the Belly Achers march up to the very attractive young lady looking after the darts – we’re quite sure that’s part of the strategy, distract them so they won’t make it into the draw! – and pass her our card only to be asked: “Are you a freight forwarder?” “Well, no actually… we’re air cargo media,” we reply. “Oh, then you can’t participate. You must be a freight forwarder,” she sternly insisted, rebuffing all further attempts to explain how we are actually pretty connected to the freight forwarding industry since we write about it and for it as our audience, bla, bla, bla. At this point we were half way up the scale between gob smacked incredulity and outright indignantly offended.
“Right” we thought, go to a higher power, which was easy enough since the ‘big cheese’ was standing near us. Unfortunately it didn’t quite go as planned though. Not only did the boss back up his pit bull of game assistant, but even lauded her initiative for keeping us miscreant journos from participating! You would think that would be the end of the story…but actually it gets worse. Later that night a certain executive director of a certain regional air freight forwarding association from south of the equator came bounding up like a gleeful child to announce he had won an iPad from the same darn booth we were rebuffed at! So that got us thinking…this gentleman doesn’t actually work for a freight forwarding company.
He works for an organisation representing freight forwarders and as close as he comes to forwarding is hitting the ‘send’ button on his email! Hence, applying the irrefutable logic of <rhymes with perogy> he should NOT have been eligible to participate.
Tell us now, are we not correct? Now this is where we will give a simple Media Relations 101 lesson – are you paying attention <rhymes with perogy>? The following lesson is based on the fundamental idea that as a corporate entity you wish to have coverage – preferably favourable – of your business and its activities, successes, plans and strategic goals, etc. 10. Be open, transparent and communicative about your business. 9. Entertain requests for questions and interviews. 8. Be friendly and kind to the media. 7. Pretend they are your best friends. 6. Feed them. 5. Take them for a beer. 4. Repeat steps 6 & 5 – especially 5. 3. Give them freebies. 2. Repeat steps 6, 5 & 3. 1. And most importantly – DO NOT EVER willfully piss off the media by being all stingy-ass over lucky draws for shiny toys like iPads, especially when it’s simply for a chance, along with everybody else, in the lucky draw! But don’t worry <rhymes with perogy> we won’t file your next press release in the circular file under our desk, oh no, we are far more professional than that…. we’ll take a good long hard look at it for ‘news value’ before we decide to print any of it or not …wink, wink, nudge, nudge! And since you all know how much we love to give the ‘moral of the story’ for our Belly Aches…drum roll please… Remember: Advertising is expensive, but editorial is priceless!
