Whenever I fly American Airlines, I pull the inflight magazine out of the seat pocket in front of me and turn to the back to see if there’s a Mensa Quiz. Then for the next half hour or so, I go to work filling in the blanks, or decoding a series of numbers, or playing the word association games.
An hour later, I tally up my points and see if I’m Mensa material. (Not!)
The “High IQ Society” generates fabulous publicity with these quizzes. You can borrow their idea and dream up a fun quiz of your own, then submit it to the print publications on your media hit list, including inflight magazines if the topic is a good fit.
Be sure to include the answers, and give those taking the quiz a key so they can grade themselves. Mensa does something else that’s brilliant. It provides a bonus question, then tells readers to go to its website, log in and find the answer. What a great way to generate website traffic.
You can do the same thing–offer bonus questions or even have an additional quiz at your website.
In my “Special Report #29: Fly High with Publicity in Inflight Magazines” I give you all kinds of tips (plus contact information) on how to pitch 36 inflight magazines. Most imporant: You must hold the magazine in your hand and look through it, or see the online version, so you have a good idea of exactly what content it includes, its various departments and features, and even the freelancers who write for it.
You also must be sure you know EXACTLY what each editors want. Inflight magazines, for example, usually don’t print business features unless they have a bearing on tourism