When Harley-Davidson unveiled plans last week for a $95 million museum here in Milwaukee, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel splashed a big beautiful color photo of the museum on the front page.
Since the museum isn’t built yet, but bikers and other visitors appear in the foreground of the photo, I’m guessing that what I saw was a computer-generated architect’s rendering.
It was a lot more interesting than the cliche shot of company executives pulling a piece of cloth off an architect’s rendering that’s sitting on an easel at a press conference. You know what I’m talking about because you see these all the time on the news–staged press conferences with smiling people in suits and ties making “announcements” and acting as if the press conference is, in fact, the news.
Yawn.
The next time you’re tempted to do something like that, think twice. The media hate, hate, HATE press conferences. The only thing they despise even more are ribbon-cuttings. And ground-breakings. And check-passings. And what they call “grip and grin” photos of somebody receiving an award–gripping the hand of the presenter–and looking into the camera with a dumb grin on their face.
No Publicity Hound worth its pedigree would ever try to wimp out with something like that.
Dan Collins, one of the best PR guys I know works for Mercy Medical Center in Baltimore and was my guest during a teleseminar titled “Fun Alternatives to Boring Ground-breakings, Check-passings and Ribbon-cuttings.” Dan says all it takes is a little creativity to come up with an interesting media event without resorting to a cliche production they’ve seen a million times before.