The PR-Pulling Power Of Being Outrageous

(Two of these examples deal with political issues - so I encourage you to ignore your feelings about the matter at hand and observe the tactics used.)

There is a guy in Colorado who got tired of paying more and more taxes every year. So he went on a personal campaign to create a law that said that all future tax increases had to be passed by the voters before they could go into effect.

His opponents argued that "this is going to mean that we will have to cut police / fire / library services". He countered by saying that his plan wouldn't cut taxes at all, it would simply require that any *new* taxes or tax increases had to be approved by the voters.

But therein lies his PR problem. The press wasn't paying attention to his claims, because his opponent's argument was better communicated in soundbites and naturally invited "what would the effect of a reduction in police force" interviews.

So he decided to get outrageous. He called a news conference on the steps of the capital building, and made sure that the leaders of his opponent group would be in the crowd. He also called several of his favorite TV reporter friends and personally invited them to the conference, telling them that he was going to do something that they would want to have on film.

During the conference he called his opponents to the front. Then he pulled out a cashier's check for $10,000 made out to his opponent and asked that opponent to verify that it was properly made out to his organziation. Then he handed them a copy of the proposed legislation and said,

"If you can find anywhere in this bill where it says that taxes will be cut, I will give you this cashier's check for $10,000 made out to your organization."

His opponent, knowing that the language wasn't in the bill was caught speechless on camera, at which point the point was driven home in one simple phrase - "this bill doesn't cut taxes, it simply prevents them from increasing in the future without asking the voters first."

He got his coverage, the public turned to his side, the measure passed.

(I still wonder how he got the money back into his account from the cashier's check...)

Example #2: The people campaigning to get individuals to stop eating meat have created a very clever campaign that has gone viral on the web.

The campaign, found at themeatrix.com is a flash- movie that is tightly based on The Matrix. In it you see a pig on an idealistic family farm, who is approached by a cow, eats the red pill, then finds out that much of the meat is grown on industrial agriculture farms. It's a fun watch, while revealing their message.

Introduced in November this site skyrocketed in the rankings to the point where by mid-November it was in the top 5,000 sites on the web. Since then it has dropped to being one of the top 15,000, but that's still a hefty chunk of visitors.

In the meantime, it has garnered 1,190 other sites linking to it (I guess that will be 1,191 when this shows up in our blog.)

It certainly has gotten a bunch of attention!

Example #3: One of my private coaching clients, Paul Lemberg likes to create what he calls "aggressive" headlines for his media releases.

For example, when he recently wrote a release for a piece of software that helps risk managers better manage financial risks, he interviewed the CEO of the company who said "most risk managers aren't fully trained and make lots of mistakes in their work. This software helps prevent their mistakes."

His aggressive headline: CEO States Risk Managers Don't Know What They're Doing"

Another example - one of his specialties is helping companies to systematize their processes to cut costs and effort required to manage tasks and the company as a whole. He holds that lack of systems are the number 1 thing cutting into corporate bottom lines.

His aggressive headline: Systems Failure #1 Problem For Small Business.

Paul says that "reporters love these headlines, and I get much higher pickup when I point out that something's wrong in the media release headline."

See, there are lots of ways you can be outrageous without having to hurt your reputation in the process.

Want to learn how to generate publicity ideas, pitch them to the media, and get the publicity you desire? We've created a special publication just to help companies and individuals come quickly up to speed in these areas. It's called Media Relations Power: 199 Ways to Get Free Publicity for Your Company, Cause or Product and is an MBA in PR in one handy place.

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