24-01-11
|
| Advanced Member | | Join Date: Apr 2010 Location: Pennant Hills, Sydney
Posts: 155
Thanks: 3
Thanked 2 Times in 2 Posts
| |
 Re: Seeking DIY PR success stories
hi Anna
Here is a story about what happened in my business a few years ago. It sure was a great PR success story for us at the time.
My business is a travel agency. In 2006 a local charity (Rotary) contracted us to organise and run a fundraiser for them - a steam train charter called The Rotary Express.
Our job was to organise the charter, do the marketing and promotion of it and sell the 600+ tickets. To start with we have contacted all the local media, suburban papers, placed some ads, dropped hundreds of leaflets but the results weren't that great. Certainly nowhere near the target.
I then decided to write an email with a vey brief story about the event to the "editor" of the travel section of the Sydney Morning Herald. Again, no response. I've been always told, that journalists hate when people hassle them or chase them so I did absolutely no follow up. It was over one month later on a Saturday morning when I was at the office and the phones started to ring like crazy with requests for tickets. My obvious reaction was to ask "how did you hear about this event" and the reples were "from the paper". At first I thought people were talking about the small ad we placed in the local paper. But then someone said "from the article in today's SMH".
I said what article ? Obviously I quickly managed to get a copy of the SMH and there it was - a half page article with a huge photo talking about our event. We've filled the whole train on that day and even had to arrange additional carriages to accomodate more seats requests.
And all this resulted from one short email sent to a travel journo, which started with: "Not sure if this is something that you will find interesting but..."
To this day I wish I could replicate this sort of success more often.
Rgds
|
