This article originally appeared in our ezine, MTN News. Subscribe at www.transformmarketing.com and claim your free bonuses.
It’s my first day back in the office after a week long family vacation in – are you sitting down? – Cleveland.
Yes, Cleveland. Ohio.
We rocked out at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (www.rockhall.com), experimented at the Great Lakes Science Center, toured the botanic gardens, cruised to an island, captured butterflies (images only) and rode a wide range of roller coasters at Cedar Point (www.cedarpoint.com).
Now it’s back to business and I have to start off with an apology. I’m using a new phone service that allows me to greet callers with an extended absence greeting. Thinking I was being thoughtful, I set it up to run while I was out of town. What I didn’t know is that this option will not allow callers to leave a message.
So, thanks to all of you who followed my greeting’s guideline to send an email. And, apologies to all of you who called and could not leave a message. If you have this option on your phone service, you may want to call your voicemail to see what happens before you turn the system on.
What I learned on my summer vacation . . . how to be famous
Twenty years after marrying the DJ whose voice I fell in love with, it was time to make the trip to Mecca: The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. With our 16, 14 and 11 year olds in tow, we drifted into I.M. Pei’s dynamic architectural creation consumed with a sense of wonder and intrigue.
Although we were there for five hours, it turns out we missed a lot. There’s too much to see in a day. One thing we didn’t miss was my brother in law Ted’s sound engineering – his mix is the one used in Billy Joel’s inductee clip. Thanks to Ted, I’ve sat at Billy Joel’s piano, been backstage on Bruce Springsteen’s tours and watched many shows from the wings.
Here are a few lessons we learned at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
- Wardrobe is everything (think Madonna) or nothing (Bruce in Levis), depending on the performer
- Elvis was not allowed to talk to his barber
- To get to be famous, you have to have something to say
- Life moves way, way too fast – we are older today than we think we were yesterday
- It’s okay to be a one-hit wonder – if you hit the top of the charts
- Rolling Stone hired some delirious writers who got them lots of attention
- Bob Dylan’s early videos induced naps in 40% of the audience we were in
- My 14 year old son is about the same size as Mick Jagger
- Spandex rules
- You can write a masterpiece on a cocktail napkin
- The Wall still stands and looks harmless and a bit wacky in the sun-splashed atrium
- Deadheads never die even though Jerry did, may he rest in peace
- Video killed the radio star
- Cherish remnants of youthful moments and revisit them often
PR Lesson::How to Get Famous
How do some people get to be more famous than others?
Lots of ways, but having a fabulous publicist on your team may be the fastest ticket to the top.
For example, the Dixie Chicks have an ‘embedded blogger’ on their tour that makes it easy to follow them. Now, how cool is that?
(Washington Post story: http://tinyurl.com/fswhl Blog: http://3dixiechicks.spaces.msn.com/PersonalSpace.aspx)
Wouldn’t you just love to be the lawyer who got that gig?
Another way to get to the top is to follow a proven system that works and do it yourself . . . stay tuned for our upcoming teleseminar series and we’ll show the secrets you need to know to get your name in the news.
Here’s a glance into our public relations (PR) perspective . . .
We don’t practice conventional PR theory that advises you to write and distribute plain vanilla releases and tells you to: stick to the facts, take out the drama, wash out the color and erase all the sparkle.
So all you have left is bland, but true, grit.
We advise the exact opposite. Here’s why.
Most editors and reporters are bored by the ho-hum drill of who, what, when, where and why. They LOVE reading stories they can write about. (How do we know? We asked them.) And, as budgets cut staffs, reporters don’t have as much time as they’d like to write the stories they want. Sometimes they use our stories, almost verbatim, instead.
Through trial and error, we crafted a custom approach to categorizing our information so that everyone gets what they want and then some. You’ll find all the details along with character, color, vibrancy and drama even in the shortest releases. And, we often write at least two versions: one for live editors and one for robotic search engines.
If you’d like our professional opinion on how to make your story more compelling, call us for more information on our PR packages.
