Forgive me if you have heard this old joke about publicity, but I tell it to make a point. When Moses and the Hebrews fleeing from the Pharaoh of Egypt were trapped at the Red Sea, Moses called a council of advisors to ask for ideas on how to get a million people across the expanse of water. Bernie the publicist raised his hand.
“Bernie, do you know how we can get across the Red Sea?” asked Moses.
“No,” said Bernie. “But if you can do it, I will get you a three-page write up in The Old Testament.”
The joke is about the power of earned media, otherwise known as publicity. And to earn publicity, your product or service must be newsworthy.
In 2014, Pedego Electric Bikes hired the PR team of Teri Sawyer and Sandra Eckardt of T&Co. to literally put it on the map. When they started, Pedego had fewer than 30 branded stores. Today, the privately held company has grown to more than 150 stores globally. Without advertising. Just publicity.
“I bet five years ago you didn’t know about Pedego Electric Bikes,” says Sawyer. “I bet you didn’t even know what an electric bike was. Unless you’ve been under a rock, today you know about Pedego, the number one electric bike company, and you’ve most likely tried an electric bike.”
Such is the power of publicity. From a marketing standpoint, publicity is just one component of promotion. While advertising is bought and paid for, publicity must be earned. Typically publicity coverage would appear in the media, but today publicity is also earned in social media.
I met Sawyer and Eckardt because we are all speaking at the Growth U Summit (www.growthusummit.com) at UC Irvine on June 13, 2019. Here are some powerful publicity tips Sawyer shared with me:
- Be familiar with the media outlets before you pitch. “For example, for Entrepreneur Magazine, the T&Co. team pitched a story on why Pedego elected to license its stores rather than franchise, which turned into a point-counterpoint with Nektar, a franchise-based juice retail chain,” said Sawyer. “The result was a four-page spread.”
- Be creative in your pitches. “Your pitch needs to be relevant,” says Sawyer. “For Inc. Magazine, the T&Co. team pitched a story on how Pedego put Baby Boomers back to work in second careers as owners of Pedego stores. The result was an eight-page spread.”
- Research, research, research. “Look at their profiles, see what they’re writing about, what interests them and what connections you have in common,” says Sawyer. “For example, for AARP magazine, the T&Co. team found that the top editor had written a book on cycling and offered her Pedego bikes to try, which translated into several feature stories reaching their nearly 40 million readers.”
- Utilize your raving fan customers. “For the Wall Street Journal, the T&Co. team pitched the story of a 70-year-old former Hollywood cinematographer who uses his Pedego mountain bike for exercise and family time,” says Sawyer. “The result was a full-page feature in the ‘What’s your Workout?’ section.”
- Maximize your celebrity customers. “Celebrities including William Shatner, Martha Stewart, and Snoop Dogg are huge fans of their Pedego bikes,” says Sawyer. “T&Co. has turned their love of the bikes into high-profile feature stories, social posts and blogs.”
Earning publicity is easy to understand, if sometimes elusive to obtain. People are more interested in news than in advertising.
