100th Anniversary Publicity for the Archdiocese of Vancouver
Some call it a seamless moment. Others call it being in the zone. Whatever happened, everything went right for me on Nov. 23 2008. After two months of preparation, we were finally celebrating the big day - the 100th anniversary of the Archdiocese of Vancouver. I had been responsible for publicity for the event, meaninig I had to get both the general public and the media there. I had created flyers, posters, web pages and videos in the hopes of enticing people to go.
I also burned up the phonelines calling different media outlets to promote the event. As you might expect, getting 14,000 people to attend was the easy part. The hard part was getting 20 reporters to show up.
Time for the big pitch
The big pitch I used was to tell reporters about a really cool human element of the event. As it happened, Shirley Leon, a woman from Mission, was receiving the Benemerenti Medal of Honour from Pope Benedict XVI for her work with First Nations people. Shirley had tirelessly worked with the First Nations community for decades. She was going to be recognized for her efforts in front of 14,000 people.
Ironically, when I first pitched the story it was met with a somewhat lukewarm response. However, Glenda Luymes from The Province saw the merit in the story and ran a piece on it in advance of the event.
Open the floodgates!
Then, the floodgates burst and I was fielding dozens of calls from reporters interested in attending. It was truly amazing. When the big day arrived there were about a dozen media outlets who arrived. I was over the moon. The coverage was outstanding and for the next week or so, I was walking on clouds.
Here are some examples:
Catholics Pack GM Place for Anniversary Celebration - Mary Frances Hill - The Vancouver Sun
Pope Bestows BC Grandmother with highest Honour - The Province - Glenda Luymes
BC 71 year-old gets Pope's highest honour - CTV - Jon Woodward
Lesson learned: Media Releases are on the wane
I think the best lesson I got from this is that Media Releases aren't all that effective in comparison with getting on the phone and making the big pitch. For this particularl instance, I didn't send out a single release, and had 20 reporters show up. To read more about my general theories on media relations click here.
