Creating Buzz About Your Company

The key to any successful PR campaign revolves around creating interest in your company - both with your customers and with the media. In this article, we reveal tips for putting your business in the spotlight.

There's a famous saying that goes like this, "If the circus is coming to town and you paint a sign saying 'Circus Coming to the Fairground Saturday,' that's advertising. If you put the sign on the back of an elephant and walk him into town, that's promotion. If the elephant walks through the mayor's flower-bed, that's publicity. If you can get the mayor to laugh about it, that's public relations. And if you planned the elephant's walk, that's marketing."

While this may seem like just a cute anecdote, there is an important lesson to be learned from it: A well-timed public relations (PR) campaign can increase your businesses' chances of reaching your target market with exactly what they want to hear and when they are ready to hear it.

Good Strategic PR is an Art

The art of building a successful PR campaign revolves around creating strong relationships with the media and your customers, planning special events and building an image - elements that when combined gain publicity, or "buzz," for your company. You need not spend thousands of dollars creating buzz about your company, however. Innovative methods, such as identifying a media niche, creating a theme, and using trade shows and celebrity spokespersons are all publicity-generating vehicles for budget-minded businesses.

Can You Hear the Buzz?

You can garner attention for your company using a variety of creative techniques, from basic media relations to outrageous stunts. Entrepreneurs who seek to generate excitement about their businesses should start by establishing local media contacts and building long-lasting relationships with them. On the other end of the spectrum, staging a larger media event or stunt related to a specific product or announcement may help generate buzz about a company.

Staging Your Own Media Event

Trade shows can provide an excellent, cost-effective arena for creating buzz about your company and introducing new products or services to a captive audience. One way is to turn trade shows into your own media events. Send engraved invitations to the media that will be attending and have a special time set aside for them, then dazzle them while you are there.

One company that put such a plan into motion is Connecticut-based Verilux, Inc., a full spectrum lighting company, which lit up the competition at a national hardware trade show in Chicago. To promote a line of healthy lighting products, they featured a representative dressed up as a "human light bulb" and circulated throughout the convention center talking to attendees and posing for photographs. The light bulb stood almost eight feet tall, which made the Verilux booth very visible to the attendees. They also sent out a press release before the show to let people know to look for the human light bulb to find the Verilux booth.

The stunt worked: the other lighting companies were talking about the Verilux light bulb. It was so unique that even some of the trade show organizers and personnel came by to get a photo with him. This brought a tremendous amount of media attention including that of the Detroit News and the Chicago Sun-Times.

Finding Your Media Niche

When it comes to approaching the media to attract buzz, customizing your message is the only way to get their attention. After all, you don't carry on the exact same conversation with everyone you know, so why would you send every newspaper the same press release?

Each media outlet has different story needs and a different audience. Before attempting to pitch your story to an editor, ask yourself what would make a disinterested party want to read an article about your company. Once you hit on the hook, you have a story.

Why Some Companies Get All the Buzz

Have you ever wondered why the same companies seem to attract all of the media coverage? No matter where you turn - newspapers, trade magazines, even lifestyle publications - it seems that some businesses are just natural media darlings. Do they know some secret that the rest of us don't? Well the answer is probably not all that mysterious. Companies that get all the buzz usually have a good marriage of solid or innovative product or service with good promotional ideas.

Most experts agree, the best way to get the industry's attention is with a 'first, biggest or best' of a new product or service. If you are the second company to offer something, you are already at a disadvantage, but if you can show why yours is different than the rest, you are on your way to getting buzz.

Again, experts agree that promotions are important, but there needs to be something behind it. A good example of an inexpensive successful campaign is Nabisco, maker of Oreo cookies. During a 1997 news assembly at the National Restaurant Association conference, the cunning cookie company generated an economical buzz by listing the event in daily conference announcements, in addition to distributing a "media alert" that they were holding the press briefing. The information given out was not ground breaking at all, but Nabisco had an ace up its sleeve: They fed the news conference attendees milk and Oreos. As a result, the company had a packed house of hungry reporters and PR people listening to their announcement. It wasn't an expensive promotion, but it was effective. It fit the company culture and accomplished Nabisco's goal of getting reporters to their news conference.

Creating Buzz by Creating a Theme

Savvy companies use media kits to create buzz by creating a theme. Small businesses should use creative media kits to break through the clutter on a reporter's desk. Theme-based press kits can help personify a company. It needs to capture the spirit and message of the product, company, organization or event. In public relations, creativity for the sake of creativity is dangerous - that is what art is for.

Contrarily, sometimes the best press kit is no press kit at all. When the Boston Beer Company, maker of Samuel Adams beer, started out, the company consisted of its founder Jim Koch and his secretary. Koch himself became the information vehicle for the media. "If we had sent a big, fat press kit, we would have left the incorrect impression that there was a company there," says Sally Jackson, founder of PR firm Jackson & Co. Koch went door-to-door selling the recipe that had been his great-great grandfather's and embarked on a telephone calling campaign to media and restaurateurs as part of his PR stratagem. "In that case, the media, who covered the story, created the buzz. And we did it without a press release, a product photo or anything like that. It was a couple of months later that we issued our first press release, and that was only after we'd been voted Best Beer In America at the Great American Beer Festival," says Jackson.

Getting the Word Out

Experts say mass distribution of media kits can be expensive and ineffective. The best way to distribute media kits depends on what you are trying to accomplish, most experts suggest selected mailings to targeted reporters; for the smaller outlets, you can usually just send them a release, for larger national outlets, very individualized mailings are more appropriate. Follow-ups are just as important as the initial mailings. Experts agree three days is the standard waiting time, unless breaking news is involved. They also say, make sure when you are pitching a reporter you actually have news or a reason why your company should be profiled. When you build a relationship with a reporter they will cover you again - ultimately, that is how you create ongoing buzz that will help your business grow.

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