Business and professional people wrestle with tiny advertising budgets. Now they can learn how to inexpensively publicize and promote a business. This contemporary, real world class is called BREAKING YOUR OWN NEWS & is taught by a media pro.

Jacksonville, Florida, February 28, 2012 -

Media exposure can position business owners and professionals as experts in their field, which is particularly important in a down economy.  The Employ Florida Banner Center for Creative Industries will offer its first public relations course, BREAKING YOUR OWN NEWS, a highly anticipated course designed to teach how to inexpensively publicize and promote a business. This  new hands-on class is taught by a seasoned news professional with experience at CNN, NBC, CNBC and the New York Times.

According to media veteran and instructor Sandra Gehring “Contrary to contemporary thinking, getting publicity is not a battle but rather an intelligent partnership. During this two evening class I will help you ‘decipher the code’ about how any professional or business person can get positive press coverage.”  Gehring adds; “To make the class meaningful and meaty every attendee will be receiving press release templates, easy-to-use formats for writing media alerts, sample news announcements and check lists for interview preparation.”

Participants will learn how to write their own press releases, media alerts, and story pitches as an integral part of this participative and experiential class. Attendees will practice verbally pitching stories and then will be “interviewed” by Gehring to learn the step-by-step media coverage process.  

“The Banner Center for Creative Industries is working with subject matter experts to ensure that the trainees are getting the very best knowledge that they can use immediately out in the workforce,” said Philip Green, State Director for the Banner Center for Creative Industries. “We are fortunate to be working with Sandi Gehring and this is a great opportunity to learn from a true professional.”

The Breaking Your Own News press and publicity course is one of many new courses offered by the Banner Center in an effort to provide a trained workforce for the expansion and sustainability of Florida’s creative sector. 

For registration or more information about this course and other courses offered through the Banner Center for Creative Industries visit creativeflorida.org or call (904) 620-4200. Find the Banner Center on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn by searching for Creative Industries Banner Center.

The growth of a new company requires great business acumen. From due diligence to funding, turning a start-up into a high growth, financially stable enterprise requires a keen understanding of your own business and of your customers. Successful new companies also need a strong marketing strategy to create a competitive advantage. Advertising and publicity are important tools for a new business and PR is a low-cost option.

But like in any other business, contacting the press (via media alerts, press releases, social media or phone calls) will only be successful if you understand the fundamentals.

There's nothing more disappointing than “announcing” your great news to the world, only to wait by a phone that doesn't ring or an email inbox that remains forlornly empty. Your story seemed SO newsworthy! Why didn’t anyone care? The hard cold reality is that sometimes it's not your news - it's the way that you tell your story to the media.

Sandi Gehring hosts a national radio show called PR 9-1-1 to counsel professionals, entrepreneurs and small business owners about how to successfully create a story suitable for the media. Gehring is now available for one-on-one coaching sessions with UCF New Business Incubator client to help then with their own personalized PR 4-1-1.

Gehring’s personalized sessions at the nationally acclaimed New Business Incubation program will focus on;

• Your target audience
• Understanding the news and the news cycles
• Finding a strong news angle for your product or service
• When, Where & How to position your story
• Who to contact

Sandra Gehring is a media veteran. An Emmy award winning journalist with a background in both news and marketing, she has literally written the book on D-I-Y press and publicity.  Her book, Breaking Your Own News…Using the Media to Spread Your Message and Grow Your Business is frequently used by business people to create their own publicity.  

 

Marketing and publicity is getting smarter, edgier and better. And in the view of one emmy award winning media pro; the controversial but hands-down winner from last year has something to teach the so-called marketing professionals in 2012.

Spirit Airlines is the uber-discount carrier who has abandoned traditional advertising in favor of quick-hit viral marketing campaigns. The Spirit campaigns masquerade as pr ploys and the year long effort was a winner for the upstart airline.

The marketing from Spirit Airlines is cheeky, gutsy, tacky, and never-ever boring.  And most marketing experts HATE Spirit Airlines.

Spirit sends out email blasts that poke fun at all things contemporary. In 2011 they used email (and of course the resulting press & pub) to market themselves this way;

• A “$9 weiner sale – with fares too hard to resist” following the Congressman Anthony Weiner debacle
• A ”seat selling sale” pointed at former Illinois Gov Rod. Blagojevich after Blago was found guilty of doing just that
• A “living the dream sale” with “WINNING” fares during the Charlie Sheen tiger blood meltdown
• A  “9 – 9 – 9 Vacation Plan sale ” when Herman Cain’s 9-9-9 economic plan was hot

Every email blast was a pr ply that was timely, edgy, and re-post on Facebook-able stuff.

But why do so many professional marketers and so-called brand strategists rail against Spirit Airlines.  Good question.  Many of the marketing experts opine that Spirit is damaging their own brand. The marketing academics say that Spirit’s messages “cross the line.”  Bloggers write that Spirit is “tasteless” and that their direct marketing ads are “crappy, ugly and annoying.”

“Who is minding the brand?” they all whine?

Listen up marketers, you are missing the point.  Let’s break it down;

Point #1; The Spirit brand IS cheeky, gutsy and irreverent.  Spirit is the airline that sells advertising on flight attendant aprons and charges for carry-on bags.  Spirit engenders passion, and it’s not always pretty. “Fly the friendly skies” they ain’t. They don’t have to be.  The quick hit, contemporary messaging is relatively inexpensive and it gets people talking.  When people start talking about Spirit they also check out the Spirit fares and special offers. Seems pretty brand appropriate to me.

Point #2: Great marketing means taking risks and risk-taking means occasional failure. That’s why they call it, uh…RISK!  Oh sure, some of the Spirit campaigns have fizzled. “Check out the oil on our beaches” after the gulf oil spill sure didn’t win ‘em a ton of fans. And there was that thinly veiled obscene acronym that didn’t fair too well either. But as marketers and publicity hounds, it’s okay to make mistakes. Some of us find it refreshing.

In our current economy, fliers want low fares.  Airline customers could care less about clean, safe, marketing messages from carriers that now charge for a bag of peanuts.  The marketing cabals report being terribly offended by Spirit Air. The customers?  Not so much. They want cheap seats.

The proof is in the proverbial pudding my peeps. Spirit ticket revenues rose 35% in the third quarter to $ 186.6 million. Clearly Spirit has a successful formula that passengers have accepted. Spirit is proof that if you can put low fares together with edgy pop culture references and bundle them together in an inexpensive direct marketing package you can grow your business.

Spirit is probably laughing all the way to the bank. Given their keen sense of pop culture, they’re likely saying; “Hey old-school marketing types; who’s ‘redonk’ now?”

 

The end of 2011 is in sight and that can only mean one thing.  Oh joy; it’s time once again for the “lists.”

This time of year no one is immune from the list making. The press & PR people regularly create a top 10 list of PR mistakes.  But the most important list of PR gaffes  is barely a list at all. Okay, it’s a list but it’s a really short list.

The major PR disasters in 2011 were wide ranging and diverse but they all boil down to a few fundamental mistakes.  The biggest PR gaffes of the year were the direct result of three little things effectively that felled the mighty.

• Underestimation
• Lying
• Ego

Who are the rocket scientists that blundered their way to PR infamy in 2011?

UNDERESTIMATION aka “man, we didn’t think those pesky customers would react so strongly!”

Netflix

The 2011 title goes to two companies who seriously underestimated both the media and the customer. Netflix takes the blue ribbon in the underestimation category, followed closely by Bank of America.

In the summer of 2011 Netflix went from a wildly successful company beloved by its customers to the Obfuscation Kings of the Year. Netflix did this by sorely underestimating how strongly their customers would react to a change in the business model, followed by conspicuously crappy communication.

Whether it was good business decision or not, Netflix communicated the original policy change news in a particularly dunder-headed fashion. No reward for current customers, no grace period, no Nothin. Complete obfuscation on their part.

To compound the original gaffe, the Netflix CEO let his ego get the best of him by offering a belated faux apology via blogging. Apparently not content with the original gaffe, the so-called apology went on to detail new changes that irritated even more customers So much wrong with that.  In the world of press and publicity making 2 out of the 3 critical mistakes is bad news, literally.  

The Netflix stock price dropped like a rock. Netflix has announced that it now expects to post a loss in its 2012 fiscal year, shocking analysts who expected a profit for the period.

Bottom line?  Check out what Netflix had to say in their recent SEC filing;

"If we are unable to repair the damage to our brand and reverse negative subscriber growth, our business, results of operations, including cash flows, and financial condition will continue to be adversely affected."

Bad bad bad. The Netflix PR blunder was so serious that the company may not survive.

Bank of America. 

B of A underestimated their own customer AND the power of media, particularly social media. How so?  In the good old days, a bank could pile on additional charges and customers. But in today’s world if you combine a new five dollar monthly charge with no increase in service AND a crummy economy it might backfire. It did.  

In the Bank of America case, they took a ham fisted approach to communication and service for their customers. The B of A customer base became frustrated and angry. As Bank of America continued merrily on its Ebenezer Scrooge-like way, customers banded together via social media petitions and eventually forced the bank to back down. Sheesh.

PR bottom line: underestimation + poor communication strategy = disaster. Goodwill gone. Customers gone.

LYING

Remember the old Winston Churchill line? “A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to put its pants on.”

 And that was pre-twitter.  Let’s look at the crème de la crème who lied their way to fame this year;

Weiner gate.  In an odd burst of symmetry, Anthony Weiner managed to combine lying, Twitter and lying about Twitter. We can credit the former congressman with adding “sexting” to the mainstream.  The now disgraced Weiner tweeted a pic of his personal parts, and then lied. And lied. And. Lied.

Weiner initially claimed that his account had been hacked and that he was the victim of a right wing conspiracy. Later, he admitted to lying and sexting and resigned in disgrace.

Publicity bottom line – do not lie. It. Will. Not. Work.

There are also a few noteworthy also ran’s in the lying category

Casey Anthony.  Hard to know where the lies stopped and the truth started, but bottom line is that lying notwithstanding Ms. Anthony was acquitted in the murder of her daughter. The PR prob?  All justice aside, if Anthony had hoped to escape with a life unscathed, her well documented lying has made her a PR nightmare.  Normal life? No way. Anthony is now so infamous for lying that she is the PR equivalent of toxic waste.

Arnold Schwarzenegger. Another child? With the housekeeper?  A lie of omission is still a lie. The governator’s image is hugely tarnished. Arnie gets minor kudos for eventually owning up to the lie, but it’s still a lie.

Funny, but the world of public relations is a lot like life.  Lying won’t work. Not for long.  The PR takeaway is simple; people in the public eye must tell the truth. Failing to be honest always results in the public and the media figuratively washing your mouth out with soap.

• Tell the truth no matter how foolish you feel
• Tell the truth even if you think you can get away with lying
• Tell the truth and take your lumps without reacting defensively

Liar liar pants on fire indeed. In the world of PR, you will eventually be found out if you lie and your pants are going to be the least of your probs.

EGO

There is an old Middle Eastern proverb; “arrogance diminishes wisdom.”

Biggest ego related PR mess?  The race is too close to call.

Charlie Sheen’s “winning” and “tiger blood” rants cost him his job and a lot more. Sheen’s super-sized ego also cost him his publicist and then became the fodder for national ridicule.

Kim Kardashian’s mini-marriage had viewers tuning in by the millions, but the woman described by Barbara Walters as “having no talent” turned off her fans by turning off her hubby. In KK’s case being famous for being famous isn’t enough.

Oprah going off the air and striking out on her OWN falls into this category too.  Actually the always classy Ms. Winfrey hasn’t committed any PR gaffes. Conversely though she has married the dreaded underestimation with ego and is now stuck with a pricey cable net sans viewers. The big O failed to realize that her fan base wouldn’t/couldn’t follow her 24/7 and she erred by not creating a strong communication platform to bridge the transition.

2011 was the year that 3 little mistakes had a major PR impact.

About the author:

Sandra Gehring is an Emmy award winning writer and PR pro who has literally written the book about D-I-Y press and publicity. Gehring’s book Breaking Your Own News is available on Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble.com and at Scribd. Gehring is available for consultation, coaching and interviews.  Please contact her via; www.copydoneright.com

National spending patterns have always seen a substantial spike in sales beginning after the Labor Day holiday, and continuing through New Year’s Day, due to the cluster of national holidays within the autumn and winter months.  It is during this crucial consumer craze that small businesses should find effective marketing and attention-getting advertising most beneficial in yielding seasonal customers who will become loyal patrons all year round. A media insider provides valuable information to the public on how to do just that.

Orlando, Florida- September, 2011 – The National Retail Federation predicts that 2011 holiday season sales are to exceed $441.7 billion, a 2.3% increase over the past three years, and the importance of business preparation for such a spike is essential.  As summer winds to a close, small businesses all over the country are taking measures to get consumers’ feet in the doors during this all-too-important time to ensure both patronage and word-of-mouth advertising. 

Tune in to Your15Minutes Radio on September 13, 2011 at 6p.m. EST to hear media expert and author Sandra Gehring of Velocity Marketing give small businesses the tools they need to market their businesses effectively during this competitive economic time.  Listeners can hear the interview by visiting http://blogtalkradio.com/your15minutes, and can also follow a real-time Twitter feed at http://twitter.com/#!/sandragehring  for updates and information during the show.

In her new book, Breaking Your Own News…Using the Media to Spread Your Message and Grow Your Business! Gehring outlines a series of marketing tactics versatile enough for any business, yet easily adapted to suit the individual needs of any growing company.  As the holidays approach and marketing strategies become infinitely more important, Gehring’s book shows small businesses how to stay ahead of the curve and employ innovative tactics such as up-to-date and media-friendly press releases, attention-grabbing headlines, and flawless interview strategies designed to attract both media and consumer attention.

Gehring provides information to small businesses as an accessible, experienced resource.  Her insight is available through her new book, media interviews, articles and much more. As Velocity’s President she is available to teach small businesses the skills they need to establish their own press coverage and market themselves successfully through an increasingly competitive market.

The Super Bowl is a money maker of epic proportion simply because of the unrelenting media exposure.  The Super Bowl-sized secret to any business growth is the same high level of repeated exposure to current and potential customers.  A media insider has just published the game plan for successful-do-it-yourself press coverage and is ready to share the play-by-play.

Orlando, Florida  - January 25, 2011 -- The first quarter of the year means both Super Bowl fever and that businesses desperately need some “free advertising” to get their year off to a fast start.  Tough economic times mean nonexistent advertising budgets so do-it-yourself publicity and press coverage is the perfect, inexpensive solution. Taking her cue from the Packer’s vs. Steelers matchup, author Sandra Gehring is coaching small business owners to create their own news media victories.

In her new book; Breaking Your Own News…Using the Media to Spread Your Message and Grow Your Business! Gehring combines her significant media acumen, journalism background and management experience into a press release game plan that will work for anyone.  From publicity basics to press release sample templates and exacting  interview preparation the book is the perfect playbook to quickly master the  who, what, when, where, and how of getting  media coverage.

As the Super Bowl attendees can attest, press and publicity is a powerful weapon. The media is ripe with opportunities for business people if they know the right game plan. An expert in broadcast news and advertising Sandra Gehring delivers a must-read for small business owners, professionals in any field, and even non-profit organizations. After stints at CNN, CNBC, and The New York Times Television the author opens the media playbook and shares what she knows about game changing press strategies.

 "Contrary to popular opinion ‘publicity’ is not a battle to be fought” said Sandra Gehring, author of Breaking Your Own News. “Creating positive publicity is really more like a game with its own set of rules. We’ve timed the book release to pair up with the Super Bowl specifically to underscore the opportunity for business owners to create D-I-Y media coverage game plans, craft the right publicity plays and ultimately score a big press coverage victory.”