by Trey Ryder

One of my former clients, a lawyer, owns a farm that grows and markets Christmas trees, pumpkins, and a variety of produce. Around Halloween, he looks for a way to get air time on the TV news, hoping to draw customers to his farm.

As you can imagine, assignment editors for TV news shows are buried under an avalanche of news releases, query letters and phone messages. My friend takes the simple approach. He calls the news producer or assignment editor and asks their permission to come by the station and drop off a pumpkin with the station's logo and call letters on it.

Naturally, they always say yes.

My friend walks in the front door of the station carrying a 50- to 60-pound pumpkin, often on a refrigerator dolly. Like magic, receptionists electronically release the anti-terrorist security doors and buzz him through to the newsroom. All eyes are on him as he gives the producer a giant pumpkin with the station's logo and call letters painted in bright colors on its side.

In most cases, the TV news shows happily display the pumpkin on their evening newscast. And, not surprisingly, they mention where the pumpkin came from, giving my friend his free plug, often inviting the public to visit his farm.

If you have anything relevant to your area of practice, consider setting up a display for a TV news team. For example, you've probably seen lawyers around the Christmas holidays go on national television to identify the 10 most dangerous toys of the season.

Television news shows like visuals for the camera. If you can show anything that is interesting, unusual or entertaining, you have a good chance of winning their attention. Depending on the item's size and portability, they may invite you to the studio or they may come to your office.

Before entering law school, another former client graduated with a degree in music from the University of Nevada at Las Vegas. While in school, he played in a traveling orchestra that went from one hotel to another on the Las Vegas strip. This traveling orchestra substituted for the hotel's in-house orchestra so the in-house players could have one or two nights off each week.

On this lawyer's behalf, I wrote a news release with this headline: Phoenix-Born Jazz Musician Finds Second Career as Lawyer; Gave up Vegas Glitz for Law School. TV stations and newspapers jumped on this story. One daily newspaper that was key in his marketing area gave him 90% of an entire standard-size newspaper page; 70% of the page was a close-up photo (nearly actual size) holding his soprano saxophone, and the bottom 20% of the page was the article, which continued on inside pages.

The soprano sax was such an unusual instrument -- and the musician-turns-lawyer angle was so compelling -- that the newspaper couldn't pass it up.

So... if you have anything you work with in your practice that is visual and unusual or interesting, consider sending a news release to the media. Daily newspapers and TV news programs have deadlines every day. They're under extreme pressure to keep their audiences informed and entertained.

Often, if you can help them with an interesting visual, they will gladly focus their attention on you.

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© Trey Ryder

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