The 5 Top-Performing American Apparel Ads, and How They Get PR for Free (NSFW) Above and below are five American Apparel ad campaigns that ran for less than $1,500 each.
Designed to get attention and create controversy, they were covered in AdWeek, The Hollywood Reporter, Daily Mail, NBC, Gawker, and dozens of other outlets and blogs. Despite this minuscule budget, they did millions of earned media impressions all over the world. People are still talking about them today. Click on each for more context (or, in one case, an uncensored Sasha Grey).
The real question this raises is: how do you craft an message, ad, or story that people talk about years from now? We’ll aim to answer that in this post… Ryan Holiday is the author of this guest post, which is a step-by-step guide to getting PR for free. Ryan develops media strategies for clients like American Apparel CEO Dov Charney and Tucker Max. Note: This is a post on the process of getting media (much like this one), which can be used for anything from environmental non-profits to military propaganda. Enter Ryan Then… Media Relations in the Social Age: Pitching Reporters Via LinkedIn PPC. In the beginning there was snail mail.
Then there was the telephone. The fax machine came along after that, followed by e-mail, which put its clunky predecessor out to pasture. (If you’re still relying on a fax machine, please tell us why in the comments. Seriously. We’d love to know.) All of these communication channels have been used as mediums to deliver pitches to editors and reporters since the dawn of public relations.
You might be asking yourself, why in the world would I take out an ad to pitch a reporter when a perfectly good e-mail will do? Pitching or seeding a story through social PPC is a great way to gauge interest. Are there downsides? You might not get an immediate response. OK, enough of the theoretical. Want to get in front of the eyeballs of some of the most influential tech reporters, such as David Pogue?
How about travel editors at the nation’s top newspapers? You can even target trade pubs. Editor Titles Reporter Titles Producer Titles Other Titles Pretty wild, huh? HOW TO: Use Social Networking to Effectively Build Media & PR Contacts (Tools and Tips) The majority of journalists are involved in social media already: journalists use social media to collect and syndicate the news as well as (which is so important to us, marketers) find sources to cite.
Journalists are in constant search for original (first-hand) news and article ideas. Social media sites make it very easy to track sources down. Would you like to be in popular journalists’ contact books? Would you like to have the list of influential reporters to share your important news next time you have any? Would you like to be cited in popular (both print and online) media outlets? Note: While the focus of this article is primarily on building media and PR contacts using social media, you are never limited to one use only. Twitter: Finding Journalists by Company Twitter is highly breaking-news-oriented and therefore Journalists love it. Here’s the best way to find journalists on Twitter: bio search. Twiangulate is a great tool for that. Twitter: Finding Local Journalists Good luck!