The Mission: Strategic Press Placements
In a perfect world, we’d have major news announcements from our clients every month, guaranteeing the media would continue to cover their outstanding contribution to society with their emerging technologies. But sometimes, that’s not the case. Therefore, Spark Rocket is strategic and creative in garnering press placements. We want to be clear, we will never let you distribute or pitch items that are inherently fluff or self-aggrandizing—that’s the fastest way to get your releases ignored and, frankly, tank our cred with the media.
So we won’t do it. What we will do for you is provide the editors in your space stories and pitches that provide their readers something of value. There are tons of ways to skin that cat, here’s one.
LAUNCHPAD CHALLENGE: Response-based coverage
With alerts and feeds we are all able to monitor news events in real-time, but, do you have the relationships needed to get your call through during a major news event. That is our goal for our team and for our clients. When editors and producers respect you, they will take YOUR call—or in this case, OUR call—even in the midst of breaking news.
On August 10, 2006, the world awoke to the news that a major plot involving liquids explosives had narrowly been averted. Our client was the only distributor of product that could detect liquids explosives, even hidden under clothing.
If you manufactured that kind of product, in that newsroom-busting breaking news day, would Jeanne Meserve (chief security correspondent at CNN) or Anderson Cooper’s producers take your call?
ROCKET-FUELED SOLUTION:
Be ready to respond and know your editors and producers They took our call. Why? Because we had delivered them solid, news-driven, quality advance work on the clients’ offerings which they had featured on less-critical days, but which gave them knowledge of the product offering. So within an hour of getting the alert from London, we were on the phone pitching producers. And we managed to connect all of the parties logistically from our Florida office, arranging for the Washington correspondent from Atlanta-based CNN to be at our Detroit-based clients’ partner office in D.C. We topped that with a satellite hookup to our California based technologist and had our client and their expert positioned as the leaders in concealed explosives detection by the end of the day.
THE IMPACT:
• 3504,744 in publicity value
• 11 appearances day one of coverage on CNN
• Coverage by Jeanne Meserve, Anderson Cooper,
• And additional 16 appearances over first three d
• Unmatched visibility for a start-up company
• Coverage “roll” to Fox, MSNBC, ABC and over 50 print/digital outlets in 24 hours. Lou Dobbs, Erin Burnee says of story
THE PAYLOAD: What’s on board!
• Ongoing monitoring of editors’ needs
• Valued press relationships
• Ability to cold pitch effectively
• Logistics management of story from anywhere