Reality TV is Great PR for Business

Is a uniform company interesting? If I asked you to watch a show a company that makes uniforms you would ignore me. However, a reality TV show, millions of people watched an executive from the company fumble around trying to work a real position there. The same company is trending on Google. That means the TV appearance is creating an interest in the business. How the capitalize on that will be an interesting questions. To have millions of people suddenly at our site and leave is a tragedy. You have to only hope that they are capturing some of that traffic.

300px-Donald_Trump_announcing_latest_David_Blaine_feat_3-altThe main reasons businesses participate on Donald Trump’s show is the publicity they will get. It’s a 1-hour commercial about their products and services. Not to mention the get access to some top executives who are looking for work. They can recruit while getting publicity! What people fail to realize is that those companies pay to be placed on the shows. There are companies that just work on product placements. It’s a huge industry. Because there are many similar products, a company will pay to have their product on a show instead of the competition. Sometimes it’s just about blocking the competition. Company X many realizes that if Company Z gets that kind of exposure, it could take them over the top. Reese’s pieces surpassed M&M’s when it appeared in the movie E.T. M&M was asked and said no. I wonder what happened to the executive that made that decision?

Reality TV gives attention to locations, as well as products. Trump Tower tours are up! People love to take pictures in front of the building and tell people they were there while in New York. Golf courses that get featured see more people after being on TV. Some are patrons who have a renewed desire to be on the course after seeing it on TV. Many are new people who are interested after seeing it on TV. Reality TV can also promote events. One of the Housewives visited her husband who was in a play. I do not think the play was still running when the episode aired, but it could still be considered good PR for the play and other actors involved.  Getting your jewelry or clothing line worn is easy. If you can get the attention of a star and give it to them, you could be lucky and have them wear it on a show. Then if they were asked about it, they would talk about your brand. Just give them the jewelry or clothes for free and you have a deal.

PR and the Super bowl XLV

The Super bowl is so well known, it doesn’t need publicity right? Wrong! The Super bowl continues to grab publicity along with its advertising for the event. The Super bowl is one of Americas most watched events. There is lots of advertising for it. Then there is a lot of publicity. There is publicity around players. Even the players that are not well known have the Super bowl publicity machines working for them. There is publicity around the ads. Betty White made a huge impression on people in her commercial. No one leaked that she would be in the commercial. There is some speculation of what kind of commercials will be on.300px-Betty_White_2010

They systematically leak who is booked for the half time show. Very few people watch it. The last half time show I remember watching is PRINCE. We are all going to the bathroom or heating food. No one is really watching the show. There is a lot of publicity around the half time show. Then you will see the build up of the two teams. All controversy is brought back out and chewed over endlessly. Even things that happened at the beginning of the year are used for publicity.   All of these things are used up until the day of the game.

Then you have post game publicity. Any players who stood out will get extra recognition, be invited to talk shows and others places you would not normally see them. There are so many angles of publicity on the Super bowl that no one could name them all. Some of them work well, some do not. Because they have a large budget, they can afford to try different things and see what works. Check out all the silly stories around the next Super bowl and think about how these same angles might work for your business. You could end up with enough ideas to last you all year. The publicity stretches all the money spent on advertising because you are constantly hearing about it. The publicity helps other companies understand that they need to advertise on this particular game in order to get new customers. One company even had a 10 second commercial because it’s all they could afford. The publicity around that short commercial was valued at more than 10 times the cost of the commercial. It only ran once during the game. If you were watching, you barely saw it.  Yet, here I am talking about it today!