A Tale Of Two Interviews

ESPN Sports announcer Dick Vitale (famous for his "it's awesome baby"
line) was talking with Milwaukee's 50,000 watt blaster station as part of an interview about the Milwaukee Bucks, delivering picture perfect soundbyte quotes about why the team deserved attention.

(Remember short, sweet, high impact comments when you're on air - they're the quotes that get pulled from the interview and rerun multiple times throughout the day - which is exactly what happened with the Vitale interview.)

Then suddenly Mr. Vitale jumped, with no warning, from the team to "I'm doing a book signing for my new book at Barnes and Noble on x street today at..."

It was amazing how abrupt his change was, in fact, it was so abrupt that the DJ actually cut him off in mid sentence.

And he didn't just cut him off by jumping in and talking over him, he hit the mute button, literally cutting him off the air. Dick was clueless that it even happened, because a few seconds later the host unmuted the line so that his co-host could make a comment, and there was Dick continuing to blather away about how great his book was in the background.

Not good...

Don't do that!

You've got to find an elegant way to morph from talking about issues to whatever it is you wish to promote. Ask permission, do a clean seque, but don't be abrupt.

Some do it well, Dick didn't. So, Dick, you've officially been inducted into our You Should Have Known Better Hall of Fame. Congratulations, "it's awesome baby!"

Then, just 10 minutes later, along came a great example of how it's done, from an amateur at that!

For some reason, of which I remain totally clueless, Wisconsin is obsessed with the Green Bay Packers. The whole state literally shuts down when they play,
especially on the rare occasion when they actually make it into a playoff game (it's a great time to go shopping - you can shoot a cannonball down the aisles without fear of lawsuits.)

Some of you may be aware that this weekend, Green Bay is playing Philadelphia in the second round of NFL playoffs. This is officially a big deal, so it makes big time news and commentary up here north of the arctic circle.

It just so happens that, like in every big city, we have a bar/restaurant in Milwaukee that specializes in Philly Cheese Steak Sandwiches. The owner of that establishment is a Philadelphia Eagles fan. So he's created a little island in the midst of green and gold Wisconsin for other Philadelphia fans by decorating part of his bar with Eagles stuff.

I don't know if he pitched the story to the media, or whether they found him, but he scored 3 minutes of what I call "gold time" on the #1 news/talk station in the state, during drive time talking about his establishment and how people come there not because of his team preferences but because his food tastes great.

Then he threw out the kicker - if Green Bay wins, he's offering free drinks, if Philly wins, he's offering free Philly Cheese fries.

Not only will this fill his tables, but it created another 5 minutes of "chat" amongst the hosts after he got off the line as they tried to figure out what exactly was in an order of Philly Cheese Fries.

What a master! And he's an amateur.

And he beat you Dick. It's awesome baby!

Lessons learned -

1. Aggressively pursue every opportunity that comes your way - there are probably a dozen Philly cheese steak joints in Milwaukee, only one got on the air.

2. Work to ensure that people hear what you want them to hear (great food) *in addition to* what the host wants them to hear (This is an Eagles Bar)

3. It's best if you can make an offer that gets attention (free stuff, depending on who wins)

4. If possible, leave a kicker - something that the hosts will keep talking about once you get off the air, to further reinforce your story.

One of the things we've discovered is that as PR seekers we oftentimes spend all of our energies trying to get PR (chasing the stories), then don't optimize the results once we get the gig. Consequently, we don't do as well as we'd like once the reporter's notepad comes out or the microphones get turned on. Not only does this diminish the results of our PR efforts, but it casts us in a bad light with the media, hurting our chances to do well in the future.

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