Grab That Gift Horse And Ride Him As Far As His Legs Will Carry You!

The Shirt Shot

Remember as you read this that I live in Racine, Wisconsin...

Not the world's most thriving metropolis. But, at 80,712 we're not chopped liver either.

A couple of months ago a human interest piece was written about a high schooler, Morgan Dexter. It turns out that Morgan had an emergency appendectomy just before the Winter SemiFormal dance, and missed the big gig. (A story that hit close to home for me, as I had surgery just before my final formal high school dance too. I didn't miss it, but was highly medicated up and shuffling all evening - not the most romantic night for my date, as I recall.)

So her friends held a surprise prom just for her, even crowned her queen.

The article ran a picture of Morgan, wearing a tiara, with her friends gathered behind.

End of story.

Except it wasn't. You see, emblazoned across Morgan's T-Shirt in that picture was a very large, very visible Aeropostale logo. So the bright manager of the local Aeropostale store wrote a letter of congratulations to Morgan.

And enclosed a $20 gift card.

Plus $10 coupons for each of the other 25 kids who attended the mini-prom.

Then, the manager was bright enough to show all of his employees the picture and to tell them the story. So, when Morgan came in to redeem her card, an employee recognized her, and grabbed the manager, who came out to meet her.

This all had a big impact on Morgan and her Mom. Enough so that they called the paper's community editor this time, who ran another story, with the same logo-emblazoned T-shirt picture, but this time Aeropostale was the hero - telling the story of the coupons.

Now, these things may not always work out this well for you, but here's a manager who truly understands that public relations is not just about getting media coverage.

It's about creating positive relations with the public. The media is just one of the tools in that process.

So, even if he didn't get mentioned again in the press, he had, by mailing out the coupons, conducted a very viable public relations campaign.

The manager spent $270 (assuming everyone uses their coupons).

I'm confident that these 26 people will make him much more than that, plus he's gotten some pretty good press.

He's done a good job of building relations with his public.

How can you do the same?

The Wall Street Journal Article

Two weeks ago I got a call from one of my coaching clients, James Lange. Jim had just been written up in the Wall Street Journal, on the front page of the Personal Finance page, probably the best place in the world where an article about his financial planning business could be placed.

Jim was understandably thrilled. He wanted to know what he should do now.

Never ask a PR expert what one should do with an article written up in the WSJ

unless you've got a piece of paper handy and 30 minutes to listen!

And listen Jim did. Within 30 minutes, we had outlined a whole plan of how to capitalize on the results of this article. It was a riot, and both of us were pumped by the end of the conversation.

We talked about some ideas:
- Sending copies of the article to other national media
- Sending copies of the article to his local media and providing a local slant in the pitch letter
- Sending copies to potential clients
- Running teleseminars on the subject of the article
- Writing a letter to the WSJ editor to clarify a point from the article
- How to include the article on his website.

Jim has now gone out and done several of the key things we discussed.

Want to know the details of how to do what we talked about? Check out our special report: How To Recycle Your Publicity

Another key to recycling your publicity is understanding what your legal rights are to your work and how to set things up in the very beginning so that you retain the rights you need. We offer a must-have audio CD to help you in this area: Legal Issues You Must Know When Writing Articles For Fee or For Free

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