The Publicity Hound’s Blog  

The it-borders-on-kiddie-porn photo of Miley Cyrus in the current issue of Vanity Fair magazine screams for comment from artists, photographers, parents, teens, and anybody else who wants to jump onto this controversy.

Miley, who was photographed by Annie Leibovitz,  has issued a statement saying she’s embarrassed by the way the photo turned out. And her father, Billy Ray Cyrus, is reportedly upset.

Hollywood types have already weighed in with their “what’s the big deal?” comments.   

Parents, what do you do you think?

Artists, is the photo truly art, as the Vanity Fair editors claim?

Photographers, if given the opportunity, would you have shot a famous 15-year-old half nude?

Bloggers, bring it on.

Artists often comment about how difficult it is to generate publicity for themselves. Commenting on controversial topics is one of the best ways. During the teleseminar I hosted on “How Artists Can Sell More Artwork from Online and Offline Publicity,” I suggested artists create a Google Alert for topics they want to follow.   

Google Alerts will keep you updated weekly, daily, or several times a day about when that topic appears someplace online, either in a blog post or video or news story.    

Posted In: Celebrity tie-ins, Blogs, Photos & Graphics, Publicity on the Internet, Magazine Publicity
posted On: 4/30/2008: 1:08 pm: By Joan
Comments: 2 Comments

Are you a business or organization celebrating a big anniversary soon?

Or how about just a Publicity Hound who wouldn’t mind being a celebrity in your own town? This idea is great for both.

This year, the Nashville Opera is sponsoring a “Put Me on a Billboard Contest” to raise funds and awareness for a new opera house. Earlier this year, it launched a promotional campaign in which it photographed local celebrities holding their fancy opera glasses, and put the photos on billboards throughout Nashville.

The opera then opened the contest to anyone and asked local opera-lovers to write about why they raise their glasses to opera. They even built a special website for the promotion.

Winners, including Publicity Hound Beverly Wichman, shown here on the right, were photographed with their opera glasses, and the series of photos started appearing over the weekend on digital billboards throughout the city.

If Beverly’s name sounds familiar, you might know her better as one-half of “The Saucy Sisters.” She and her sister, Barbara Nowak, review wine, write books and entertain at corporate events.

Beverly’s winning essay explains how her parents treated her to her first opera at age 10. She loved it so much that she calls opera her “soul music.”

During her many travels throughout the U.S., she would faithfully listen to radio performances by The New York Metropolitan Opera on Saturday nights. So would her parents. After each program, they would call each other to discuss the shows.

“It was like attending the opera together,” she said. “We would wait for the final applause and the curtain would come down. Then we’d call each other and say,’Bravo!’ ”

I love this billboard idea, too, to promote fund-raisers and special events even though you might have to have a big budget to pull it off.  Here’s why it’s so effective:

—It encourages people to become involved in your cause.

—It brings them to your website.

—It does a great job of turning local people into celebrities.

—It helps raise money for a worthwhile cause or issue.

Your next special event can include elaborate promotions like this one, or much simpler, less expensive ways to capture people’s attention, draw crowds, and attract the media.

“How to Plan & Promote Sizzling Special Events,” a series of six interviews I conducted with Debra J. Schmidt, explains how to inject fun and profit into even routine events like the standard business golf outing. For example, Deb tells the story of a Wisconsin group that hosted a women’s golf tournament and created a huge buzz for the event by featuring something as simple a port-a-potties with candles, scented soaps and pretty hand towels.

At the golf banquet that night, the port-a-potties were the topic of conversation, and the participants raved about that that nice, unexpected touch really made the event special.  

Posted In: Contests, Photos & Graphics, Nonprofits, Publicity for Niche Markets, Special Events
posted On: 4/22/2008: 10:11 am: By Joan
Comments: No Comments

Thanks to those of you who nominated The Publicity Hound website for this year’s Writer’s Digest “101 Best Websites for Writers.”

My website made the list again this year, and I’m thrilled.

“Consultant Joan Stewart shares tips on self-promotion and how to get free publicity—a key for any writer living on a tight budget.”

When I plucked the magazine from my mailbox today and saw that I was on the list, I immediately wrote a letter to the editor, hoping for additional free publicity. To increase the chances that the letter will be published, I didn’t just thank the magazine for the designation. I offered tips on how others who made the list can promote the honor.

Here’s the letter:

I’m thrilled that you’ve chosen my website, PublicityHound.com, for your 10th annual “101 Best Websites for Writers” list.

Your endorsement has pulled traffic to my website, encouraged sales, and helped position me as a valuable resource for writers.

Here’s a publicity tip for writers or anyone else who make these prestigious “best of” lists.  Let your blog and ezine readers know about the honor.  Write a press release and distribute it through one of the paid distribution services.  Send press releases to your local newspapers.  Add the information to your MySpace, Facebook and LinkedIn profiles.  And display the logo by the organization that has honored you on the homepage at your website.

I’ve been searching for the “101 Best Websites for Writers” logo from Writer’s Digest and can’t seem to find it anywhere on your website.  It appears that the logo or a photo was once on your “Best 101 Websites” page, but it has disappeared.  If you tell me where I can find the logo, I’ll be happy to give Writer’s Digest some publicity by placing the logo on my homepage.  I’ll bet many of the other 99 website owners would too.    

I Googled “Best 101 websites,” and clicked on “images” and eventually found the logo, so I’ll be adding it to my website.  By the way, displaying logos of your trade associations, or groups like the Business Business Bureau if you’re a member, or any “best of” listings adds credibility to your website and makes visitors more inclined to hang around—and maybe even buy. 

What logos can you add to your homepage today to boost your credibility?

Posted In: Blogs, Social networking, Contests, Photos & Graphics, Business Promotion, Magazine Publicity, Publicity on the Internet, Press Releases/News Releases
posted On: 4/11/2008: 10:32 am: By Joan
Comments: 4 Comments

Publicity Hound Sharon Dotson of Houston, Texas writes:

“I am working with two other publicists to promote identical twins Anabel Stenzel and Isabel Stenzel Byrnes, 35, of Redwood City, CA, who between them have survived three lung transplants.

“Half Japanese and half-German, the sisters were born with cystic fibrosis and were not expected to live to adulthood, yet they have defied the odds.  Cystic fibrosis is rare in people of Asian descent, and as daughters of a Japanese mother, their risk was supposed to be minuscule.  Their father, a German physicist who loved statistics, calculated the odds when the twins were diagnosed with CF as infants: he and his wife had a 1 in 200 chance having identical twins, and the odds of having half-Japanese twins with CF were roughly 1 in 1.8 billion.

“Their recently-published autobiography, ‘The Power of Two: A Twin Triumph over Cystic Fibrosis’ has been well-received with small mentions in People, Publishers Weekly and USA Today.  Last month, Reuters published a very nice feature on the Stenzels.

“Our job is to pitch national shows including Ellen, Rachael Ray, Montel, Oprah and the 700 Club.  We also pitched half-Japanese Today show host Ann Curry.  Other news hooks are Donate Life Month, Cystic Fibrosis Awareness Month and in July, the U.S. Transplant Games where the Stenzel twins will be among those competing.

“Thus far, we’ve scored zero on big-time TV shows.  We’re aiming high, but we’re sure Anabel and Isabel have a message that could knock the socks off a broad segment of the media.  Do you think your Publicity Hounds could throw in some new ideas?

Posted In: Photos & Graphics, PR Consultants/Publicists, Blogs, Authors & Publishers, Publicity on the Internet, Newspaper Publicity, Magazine Publicity, Pitching the Media
posted On: 3/18/2008: 1:24 pm: By Joan
Comments: 6 Comments

I lost my dog, Bogie, on Sunday night while taking her for a walk in a residential neighborhood about a mile from our home—shortly after sunset, with temperatures in the 20s and falling fast.

It was trash day the next day on the street where we were walking. When she brushed up against a trash bag filled with empty glass bottles, it tipped over, spooked her, and she bolted.

The retractable leash that flew out of my hand went bump-bump-bumping against the pavement behind her, making our 10-month old German Short-haired Pointer think somebody was chasing her. To make matters worse, the metal hook at the end of the leash was hitting the pavement and creating huge sparks as she bolted down the street. 

My commands to “heel” were useless. She just kept running. 

Frantic, I called Bill. He called the police department, and then drove to the neighborhood to help find her. In separate cars, we drove up and down all the streets for more than two hours.

That got me thinking. How the heck do you find a lost dog at night?

Plan A: Ditch the car and hoof it through the neighborhood all night, calling her name and whistling twice through my fingers, the code she knows means ”get back here right now.” That’s what I do when I walk her off leash at the park in a safe rural area. She always comes back to me when she hears me whistle.

Plan B: Call the vet. I called our vet’s emergency phone number and asked her how to find a lost dog at night. She told me to call the police and to notify people in the neighborhood the next day. She reassured me that dogs have a surprising ability to stay warm even in cold wather. Her own dog disappeared for three weeks in January in Wisconsin’s sub-zero temperatures and somehow managed to find its way home unharmed.

About an hour after I called the vet, as we were searching, I devised Plan C:

Canvass the neighborhood the next day with bright yellow “Lost Dog” flyers. Include her photo. Post the flyers all over town. Then place a classified ad in the local weekly newspaper and on Craigslist. (See my article “Craigslist: A valuable publicity tool.”)

I don’t ever remember seeing a list of tips anywhere on how to find a lost dog, or how to walk a dog so it doesn’t run away while I’m walking it.  Vets, humane societies, pet supply stores and anybody whose business or organization deals with pets should be offering these kinds of tips to the media, in articles and in blog posts.

Other Publicity Hounds can generate coverage by piggybacking onto the ”how to find a lost (fill in the blank)” theme.

—Telecommunications companies: What should people do if they lose their cell phones?

—Accountants: What if people lose the file where they’ve been stashing papers to hand over to you at tax time?

—Police departments and mall management companies, how can people find lost cars at the mall? What about lost children?

Most of you can think of an idea along these lines. When you do, consider writing a tip sheet on “9 ways to find a lost (fill in the blank).” See “Special Report #16: How to Write Tip sheets That Catch the Media’s Attention.”)   

So here I am on a cold Sunday night, trying to devise Plan D when the cell phone rings. It’s the sheriff’s department, telling us that a pastor at a nearby church found Bogie ”chained” to his garbage dumpster. But he didn’t know if she’d bite, and he wouldn’t get close enough to her to see that she wasn’t chained. Rather, her leash got caught on the bottom of the dumpster. All she could do was jump up and down and bark.

On the two-minute drive to the church, I was sobbing, promising myself to never be so stupid again.

We brought her home, put her in the bathtub to wash the blood off her feet and dried her with warm towels. She pranced off to bed, right into her kennel, where she slept the entire night and most of yesterday.   

I’m still puzzled. What should I have done differently? How do you walk a dog so it can’t get away from you? The retractable leash doesn’t seem to solve the problem. And how do you find a lost dog or cat in the dark?

Tips, anyone?  

Posted In: Blogs, Photos & Graphics, Writing Articles, Publicity on the Internet, Newspaper Publicity
posted On: : 9:53 am: By Joan
Comments: 43 Comments