Never be afraid to be creative

Advertising and public relations messages proliferate, and people can’t easily escape being hit by them every waking day. The proliferation results in clutter where many brands fight for limited consumer pesos. The challenge for you as a communicator is how to get your brand’s message out. In such a predicament, an effective PR stunt that offers simple, amusing and enlightening ideas is just what the doctor ordered.

In the book, Can We Do That?! Outrageous PR Stunts That Work – And Why Your Company Needs Them, author and PR Guru Peter Shankman brings perceptive and imaginative propositions about how to plan and implement successful PR campaigns — covering various areas from brainstorming to formulation of strategies and tactics, and implementation of creative executions that work. It records some of the most outlandish, unconventional, and crazy PR stunts of all time. And for those  “stuck moments,” this tome will surely get you “unstuck,” allow your creative juices to flow more freely and make you think outside what is usual. Below are fine examples of PR stunts that work.

Taco Bell floated a giant target in the middle of the ocean and said that if the Russian Space Station hit it upon crashing down on earth, everyone in the United States would get a free Taco. That was brilliant. Taco Bell got tons and tons of press coverage from the stunt, and it raised the creativity bar a little higher for the rest of us.

RegisterFree.com’s “Free Hour” promotion was so successful it virtually shut down Internet access on the US East Cost for nine hours. With the premise, “We sell domain names cheaper,” and after some brainstorming sessions, the PR group came up with this key proposition: “Fight the power! Domain names should be free — and Thursday night, for one hour, they will be.” The press release was a challenge. Not only did the PR team impart a sense of urgency, they also made it clear that the company wasn’t a fly-by-night operation, and is really an accredited domain name registrar.

The Geek Factory, an out-of-the-box communications firm, promoted its services and showcased its ability to get media attention. The job is to create “tellable” stories: who they are, and in their case, they are “the agency that loves what they do!” They’re the group addicted to the feeling they get when they create a successful campaign. After pushing the “addiction angle,” a brainstorming ensued to discover positive ways to best tell the story and fulfill that “high,” as it were. The solution: Webdive 2000, a skydiving event convincing leaders in the New York New Media company to jump out of the plane with them. When the communication was out, partnerships requests and donations poured in, and within four days of the initial announcement reporters of major publications started calling, asking for more information. The groundswell of buzz around the event was big, and the actual coverage even bigger. On the big day, more than 100 CEOs, dot.com workers and media figures jumped out of a plane in the name of brand visibility and essence.

A PR consultant to such companies as Snapple, Discovery Channel and Napster, Shankman offers these key takeaways on how to get your business and your products noticed:

PR for the sake of PR is a waste of time. Consequently, a PR stunt for the sake of a PR stunt is a waste of time. If you’re not getting people thinking, reacting and talking about your company, brand or service, and not just the stunt itself, you’ve wasted money. A great PR stunt is part of a larger strategy that’s already working 100 percent at getting the media coverage you desire and the impact you want. It’s only after that’s implemented that you can say “Okay, let’s see what else we can do.”

Think differently – be a bit above “normal” and you’ll receive good attention. To be creative, you have to do different things than you’re doing right now. Treat yourself as the client — when promoting yourself or your company, do it the same way you would if you were a client. Try everything at least once.

In PR you will deal with stoppers. They are people devoted to killing your awesome idea even before it comes to life — lawyers, scared executives or clients, or “naysayers” on all fronts. The key to handle stoppers is to nail them with facts and figures. Shankman captures the principle in the acronym ROAR — Responsibility, Opportunities, Awareness, and Results. Your challenge is to answer micro questions. The more facts, figures and answers you can provide when asked, the more likely the “stopper” will say, “Okay, you seem to know what you’re doing — let’s give your recommendation a shot.”

Pitching something that has nothing to do with what the reporter writes is one of your biggest problems. Don’t just e-mail them out of the blue. If you hit him with what he doesn’t cover, he will hit back. Don’t “massblast.” You’ll get zero coverage, and lose a lot of future chances for coverage. Know your reporter. Try to establish a relationship with them first, before you pitch them. PR isn’t rocket science. It never will be. If you learn the ropes of the practice when dealing with a journalist, the profession will be all worth it.

Social media is not a fad and it should not be ignored. If you aren’t taking advantage of social media, you are behind on the curve. Time should not be a deterrent because anything that helps your business for not a lot of time, and not a lot of money, you should be doing. Shankman illustrates how passionate listening to your customers is the key to success. The concept is demonstrated in real-life stories from service businesses like hotels and airlines — from lost luggage, unconfirmed bookings and missed flights — and skyscraper analogies to keep people talking about you.

Treat your customers nicely. In a research into companies on how they treat their customers and investors, those who care for their customers make more money. This was found to be true — companies that are doing “the little things” a little better than everyone else almost always fare better. “Niceness indeed rocks. In most cases however, customer service sucks. A lot of fast food operations, for example, have no real incentive to get the customer’s order right. The norm is crap, so if your brand does something a little better than the norm then you’ll win.”

In today’s milieu, people now have the ability to complain. And thanks to digital media they are also now able to share their complaints more quickly. They can talk about companies and these companies in turn are also afforded the ability to shift what people are saying — from negative to positive or from the wrong messages to your key message track — by using the audience to do the talking for them.  On the most basic level, it’s like a dude at a bar who says “I’m awesome,” but the girl has no reason to believe him until her friend says, “Yeah, he’s awesome.”

Use citizen journalist to your advantage. Let people photograph, blog, cover, write about, or video your events. When they do, they will most likely use or show it. As such, they become your citizen publicists, free of charge. Make sure though to work out the legalities of using the films covered and images of celebrities used.

Every PR communicator has varying ways of enhancing his or her creativity; each one makes up his or her own rules. Shankman provides help and list these principles on PR creativity and off-the-wall ideas:

Get up, stand up and then jump around. Shut off your computer, put on a T-shirt, a pair of shorts, and some running shoes. Go for a walk, or a run or a hop, skip and a jump. It’s all about upping your endorphins, and you know endorphins are your friends.

Overcome a fear, and stagnation goes out the window. Whatever it is, conquer it. The incredible rush you get from that which makes you mother wince is sometimes exactly what you need to pull creativity back from the brinks of doom.

Talk to a child, think like a child. Children live in the moment. They don’t understand the worry of anticipation, or the trauma of the “potential.” They know what’s going on because they’re seeing it happen in front of their eyes and nowhere else. Children simply do what’s in their heads, right at that second. And that’s a wonderful way to be.

Walk a dog. Or a cat. Or a parrot. Animals provide comfort, happiness, joy and beauty to a sometimes superficial and cynical world. And like children, schedules or day planners don’t rule them. Go take a dog for a walk along the beach. Toss a stick, watch the unabashed joy in their eyes, and try and remember that excitement level in them.

Read things you’ve never read before. Sometimes you get so trapped in your little world that, even when you think you’re being creative and different, you’re still doing it inside your own comfort zone. You haven’t escaped it, even when you think you have. To get out of the rut, focus on new readings, topics and engagements, creating new pathways in the brain where new information can go — information that might connect to other points of information and allow you to be a little more creative on all fronts.

Work somewhere else. With wireless technology built into virtually every laptop nowadays, and with Wi-Fi hotspots in very coffee shop, airport and stadium, there’s no rule that says you’re required to be at your desk. Get out of your office. Go work somewhere else for a day. Observe something other than the wall of your cubicle.

Creativity is the lifeblood of any communications platform, and more so in the practice of public relations. As Shankman’s final rules state: Don’t ever be afraid to be creative, and don’t ever be afraid to fail. If you’re in a place where either of the two previous rules can’t happen, ask yourself if you’re really meant to be there.

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E-mail bongosorio@yahoo.com and bong_osorio@abs-cbn.com for comments, questions or suggestions. Thank you for communicating.