Publicity Hound Sue Lowery of Chattanooga, Tennessee saw a short news item on one of her local TV stations about how the Bliss Spa in Dallas, Texas pampered an elephant the day before it was making its Dallas debut at the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey circus.
She said the news clip showed a spa worker giving the elephant a facial by slathering mashed avocado all over its face. (The photo at left was taken by the Dallas Morning News.) The worker also used an oversized nail file to give the elephant a pedicure.
Curious, Sue started searching for the story online and found a short video clip at the newspaper’s website.
I watched it this morning, and got all excited that I had stumbled upon a great story. I Googled the Bliss Spa in Dallas, found the website, but saw that the only phone number listed was the one to call for reservations. I was hoping to reach the manager and ask her how the story originated, then congratulate her on a brilliant publicity coup.
Silly me.
I reached what sounded like an answering service, or perhaps the woman who takes reservations for the entire Bliss chain of spas. She said there was no way to reach the manager, and the only thing she could do was send her an email on my behalf.
When I asked for the manager’s email address, she wouldn’t give it to me. So I patiently dictated the message. She asked me to wait while she proofread it.
This, my dear Hounds, is called making somebody jump through hoops to give you publicity. Had I been a working journalist, I would have given up long before then. I patiently explained to the woman who answered the phone that I send my electroonic newsletter, “The Publicity Hound’s Tips of the Week,” to more than more than 30,000 people, and this was a chance for the spa to get even more publicity. She didn’t seem impressed.
I cry big, fat elephant tears when I learn about missed opportunities, or how people who generated fabulous publicity didn’t follow up. Publicity Hounds can learn four things from this lesson:
—Make sure your front-line employees understand the importance of media inquiries. Give them an emergency telephone number they can use if the media call on deadline. Better yet, include the emergency number at your website.
—When you get a fabulous media hit, include it at your website. Most local and network news people will gladly let you use the clip. I found nothing at the Dallas Bliss site–not even a mention.
—The Bliss Press Room included several press releases which I didn’t have time to open. I couldn’t find the name or phone number of a media contact anywhere on the site. Put contact information–including a shipping address, phone number and email address–in an easy-to-find place on your homepage.
—I got callbacks from Vollmer PR, the local firm in Dallas, which pitched the idea, and from the Bliss national PR person who told me they won’t put the media contact phone number on the homepage because they get “flooded with calls.” (I thought lots of calls were a good thing, not a bad thing.) Besides, she said, the national media all know how to contact them, which I find difficult to believe.
She asked if I wanted to be added to their media list. Uh, no thanks.
For more tips on how to make the media’s job easy, see my ebook “How to be a Kick-butt Publicity Hound.”
Joan, reading about this spa and the struggle you went through to give them publicity gave me horrifying flashbacks of my days as a columnist and radio personality. I used to have big bruises all across my forehead from pounding it on my desk every time I ran into a similar situation. Your story hints at something I see frequently—a sort of arrogance that sometimes grows in companies that see themselves as successful. That gets translated through employees in an attitude that says, “We’re big and important and you’re not.”
Of course, business being what it is, success ebbs and flows and the company that blew me off on Monday was often back on Friday, trying to cozy up to me so I’d mention them to my readers.
The worst case I ever ran into was a business owner whose shop I’d frequently mentioned. The day the newspaper let readers know I was leaving, I ran into this business owner at a charity event. He cut me dead with a few curt words, letting me know that without a column I was no longer of any use to him. A few weeks later, when he discovered I’d left the old column to write for another publication, he was back on the phone, trying to revive the corpse of what I’d once thought was a friendly working relationship.
In my experience, business owners who work to build and maintain mutually respectful relationships with media people are as rare as frog’s teeth. Those who do are a priceless asset both to the media and their own business. Those who don’t—well, they get this kind of publicity.
Bonnie, business owners like the one you described don’t seem to understand that when a reporter leaves a newspaper or a beat, he or she often briefs their replacement on the great and sources they relied on–as well as the pests and malcontents who should be avoided at all costs.
People who cozy up to journalists only when they want something, then run for cover when the news is bad or blow off the journalist who is no longer in a position to help them, do indeed deserve what they get.