The Publicity Hound’s Blog  

Now is the time to start pitching if you’re hoping to convince journalists to feature your consumer product or service in holiday gift coverage.

Gift guides appear in many forms:

—As special sections in newspapers, like holiday gift guides printed by USA Today and the Wall Street Journal.

—As special holiday features in magazines like Redbook, Allure, Wired, Stereophile, Fast Company, Organic Gardening, Cooking Light, Shape, Atlanta Magazine, Cottage Living and Elite Traveler. Because many of these magazines have early deadlines, you must start pitching now.

—As special segments on TV such as Oprah’s “Favorite Things” show each year in which she lists her favorite holiday gifts.

—As special radio promotions.

—As columns, reviews or special holiday features in online magazines.

—Even bloggers feature their favorite things to give as holiday gifts.

If your consumer product or service would make the perfect gift, getting a placement in some of these media is easy—but only if you know where to look, whom to pitch, when to contact them, and if they want photos.

The Gift List can make your job easy.  Its staff contacts the top 250 daily newspapers, all the major wire services, and television shows like “Filter,” “The Look for Less,” and, of course, MTV, “Ellen,” “The View,” and hundreds more.

It doesn’t bother with media outlets that won’t mention products by name or those with circulations under 25,000.  Broadcast outlets must reach a national or significant regional audience.

Already, The Gift List has compiled a whopping 400 leads for this year’s features.  You can buy a subscription to either the Gift List for Holiday 2008 Print & Broadcast, or The Gift List for Holiday 2008 Web & Blog, or both.

What if “Oprah” or USA Today changes its feature focus the week before a deadline?  Not to worry.  The Gift List will notify subscribers who sign up for their ezine and email alerts.  You won’t miss a beat.  And you’ll be miles ahead of the competition.

Take a free test drive.

Posted In: Advertising, Blogs, Business Promotion, Holidays, Magazine Publicity, Media Leads, Newspaper Publicity, Pitching the Media, Radio Publicity, TV Publicity
posted On: 6/24/2008: 10:00 am: By Joan
Comments: No Comments

If you’re a member of your local chamber of commerce and the only thing you have to show for it is the receipt for your annual dues, don’t even think about dropping out.

Because you’re a smart Publicity Hound, you have an opportunity right at your fingertips to be a star in the organization and generate so much publicity for yourself that all the other members will be scratching their heads, wondering how in the world you’ve done it. Nonprofits, this applies to you, too.

Here’s what to do.

The next time the chamber has an event that the local media won’t cover, act like a reporter and cover it yourself. Buy an inexpensive Flip video camera and interview people at the event. (The camera shown in the photo above isn’t a Flip.)

If it’s a routine chamber breakfast meeting with a speaker, interview the speaker after the presentation for a segment of two to three minutes. At the same breakfast, create another short video. Ask the chamber president to provide a brief infomercial of upcoming chamber events like the annual golf outing or street festival.

At bigger events, like the annual awards banquet, interview the Business Person of the Year. If you really want to create a stir, choose a controversial topic that chamber members are buzzing about, like a proposed sales tax increase in your state. Interview one person on each side of the issue. You’ve just created two more videos.

Import the videos into your computer, which takes a minute or two, edit them, upload them to your website, give the chamber the links to the videos, and then watch what happens.

The chamber will probably email all its members and tell them to go to your website. Many of those members will share the links with their friends. The links will end up in the next chamber newsletter. And who knows where else.

Here’s the best part. You can offer that same videos to the local newspaper, magazine and TV and radio stations for use at their websites. Print media, in particular, are hungry for user-generated video, even if it’s of events that they’ve decided not to cover.

That’s what videographer John Easton does in Charlotte, North Carolina. He covers local business events and uploads them to his blog, or to his own streaming video channel, sort of like his own TV station, and then he offers the video to local media.

Too busy to fuss with all these details?

John says every community is teaming with people who you can hire for next to nothing to shoot and edit the video for you. He explained how to find them when he was a guest on a teleseminar I conducted recently on “9 Clever Ways to Use Video to Become a Publicity Darling in Your Industry or Community.”

If you’re not a member of a chamber of commerce, you can still cover events in your community and submit the video to local media that are hungry for user-generated content.

Posted In: Blogs, Business Promotion, Citizen journalism, How to Interview, Magazine Publicity, Media Leads, Publicity on the Internet, Radio Publicity, Special Events, Video
posted On: 6/3/2008: 6:35 pm: By Joan
Comments: 1 Comment

Are you a business owner who’s happy as a clam after returning to traditional employment?

Mildred L. Culp, who writes the column WorkWise which is syndicated in print and online in such newspapers as The Dallas Morning News and Hartford Courant, is looking for sources. If this doesn’t apply to you but you know somebody who fits this description, would agree to be interviewed and wants some publicity, forward it on to them.

Sources can email Mildred.

Posted In: Business Promotion, Media Leads, Newspaper Publicity
posted On: 4/21/2008: 3:24 pm: By Joan
Comments: 1 Comment

Do you have a “pink product” that supports breast cancer research and that you’d like journalists to see in time for their October 2008 coverage of Breast Cancer Awareness Month?

The first “Think Pink Media Event” will be held from 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Tuesday, April 29, at the New York Marriott Marquis Times Square. At the show, you can speak directly to journalists who cover consumer products for their magazines, newspapers, talk shows and more. Meet editors from outlets such as Family Circle, Women’s Health, Ladies’ Home Journal, People Magazine, Associated Press, and more!

Cost to exhibit is $1,250, which includes a 6-foot table, lunch and a dedicated online media page at their website.

Reserve your space now. For more informaiton, email Amy Bates Stumpf at 818-790-0775. 

Posted In: Business Promotion, Magazine Publicity, Media Leads, Newspaper Publicity, Pitching the Media, TV Publicity
posted On: 2/1/2008: 8:06 am: By Joan
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‘Tis the season for “Best of” lists.

The Morris + King Co., a New York City PR firm, issued its own Top 10 “Best of ProfNet” list.

ProfNet is a subscription service that forwards leads from working journalists to PR people. M + K chose the funniest and most peculair reporter leads of this past year.

Like the one from the Parents magazine writer looking for a circus lion tamer to pass along tips to parents on how to get bad kids to behave. Or the lead looking for sources who can discuss how barflies can stay in shape by doing exercises at the bar.

This year, M + K honors a journalist “who consistently exhibited a special aptitude for producing unbelievably unique ProfNet queries that have been both compelling in content and colorful in voice…Journalists and PR professionals alike can stand to learn from her colorful use of the system.”

She’s Lenore Skenazy, a humor columnist for the New York Sun, who submitted leads like this one called “Fun with Circumcision”:

Clip and save. That is the message New York is considering giving its men (and new parents, I think). Since circumcision seems to be preventing some cases of AIDS in Africa, New York is considering pushing it here, too. My angle: What will be the ad campaign? I’m doing a column on fun ideas for subway posters, radio ads, TV spots. Yes, an excuse for all sorts of jokes Feel free to join in.

The list is must reading. If you like her wacky ProfNet leads, you’ll love her columns.   

What “Best of” or “Worst of” lists can you create right now to promote your own company? The lists are among the nine types of briefs I discuss on “Briefs, Fillers & Quizzes: How to Write Them and Why Editors LOVE Them”  

Posted In: Blogs, Business Promotion, Media Leads, PR Consultants/Publicists
posted On: 12/18/2007: 10:45 am: By Joan
Comments: 1 Comment