Got a fax from one of my enormously successful publicity students, Dave Panther. I\’ve written about Dave\’s publicity successes in my hardcopy newsletter. Dave owns a restaurant – The Hamburg Inn. He also ran a publicity campaign that I recommended. It was called \”The Coffee Bean Caucus\”. Here\’s how it worked: During the last presidential campaign, Dave set up two jars in his restaurant. One jar represented the Republican candidate. The other jar represented the Democrat.

When people came to his restaurant, they were given a coffee bean. They were asked to put the bean in one of the jars based on who they thought would win the presidency. Each week, Dave announced the results of this coffee bean poll to the media, indicating who his patrons thought would win the election.

The media people loved it. Dave got great publicity for his restaurant from this simple effort. Every time Dave wanted to send out a press release and get more publicity for his restaurant, he only had to spend a few minutes updating the results of the coffee bean poll in his press release and then send it out to reporters. But the story gets better. During this whole publicity campaign, people from \”The West Wing\” TV show contacted Dave about featuring his restaurant and his coffee bean poll on the show. Sure enough, The Hamburg Inn and the Coffee Bean Caucus were featured on the show. Keep in mind this was all a result of a simple press release talking about the number of coffee beans his customers were putting into two jars. But the story gets even better. Here\’s what Dave said in his fax. Be sure to read the P.S. in the fax:

\”Paul,

Just wanted to give you an update on our success using your system. As you know, the producers of \’The West Wing\’ contacted us about having the Hamburg Inn and our \’Coffee Bean Caucus\’ as part of an episode in which their candidates come to Iowa for the Caucus and two of them stop at the Hamburg Inn for the Coffee Bean Caucus.

This would not have happened at all without the idea for the Coffee Bean Caucus coming from your material and the press releases we sent out to make that such a great success…

I got my headline for the West Wing press release from your newsletter from the gentleman from St. Louis with \’The Most Unique Family in America\’. (I changed that to) The Most Unique \’Political\’ Restaurant in Iowa…

This press release gave us front page stories and large stories with pictures in The Daily Iowan, The Iowa City Press Citizen, The Cedar Rapids Gazette, The Burlington Hawkeye, The Mt. Pleasant News, The Quad City Times and smaller stories in the Des Moines Register and many other newspapers. We also had several TV news hits and countless radio interviews and announcements.

We are now sending out another press release with the results of our \’West Wing Coffee Bean Caucus\’ which we will keep running in-store and online until the West Wing Presidential elections. This will create another opportunity to get media attention months from now.

I believe I\’m getting better at this by reviewing your materials over and over. Thanks again.

Dave Panther

P.S. – Just got a recognition letter from the Governor of Iowa and a certificate of recognition from the State of Iowa State Senate which we can now quote in our press releases.

Dave sent me copies of the letter he got from the Governor and the certificate he got from the Iowa State Senate. \”Success usually follows the path of most persistence.\”

Dave persisted. He saw his opportunity. He jumped on it. That created more opportunity. He jumped on those. And on and on and on. Now Dave is enjoying the benefits, the good life, the rewards of his efforts. How many people say: \”I just have a restaurant. How can I get publicity for that?\” Replace your product or service for the word \”restaurant\” in that sentence. Have you said that?

I\’ve told you over and over and over again. You don\’t need some dazzling, dramatic, wild story to get publicity. Dave set up two jars, gave customers a coffee bean and asked them to put the bean in one of the two jars. Can it get any simpler? He even extended that by running the coffee bean poll for a fictitious presidential election taking place on a TV show! Why aren\’t you getting the publicity you deserve? Are you taking the opportunities available to you just about every day? There\’s no magic to this. There are no miracles. You have to make the effort. But the opportunities are all around you, all the time.

I don\’t care if you have a retail business, a service, a professional practice, a book, a new product, a non-profit organization – whatever. There are publicity opportunities all around you, all the time.

Get the most reliable advice on how you can get massive publicity for your business at http://www.Hartunian.com

Get the most reliable advice on how you can get massive publicity for your business at http://www.Hartunian.com

Author Bio: Get the most reliable advice on how you can get massive publicity for your business at http://www.Hartunian.com

Category: Marketing
Keywords: what is a press release, how to write a press release, how to release a press release, online pr,