Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Peter Shankman is the CEO of The Geek Factory, Inc., a marketing and PR strategy firm, whose clients have included Snapple Beverage Group, Napster, and the Discovery Channel. He is also CEO of AirTroductions, the Internet's first in-flight dating and networking service. He lives in New York and frequently speaks at trade shows and conferences on PR, marketing, and creativity.

Von der hinteren Coverseite

What would you do to get your business noticed?

Every day consumers are bombarded with advertising and public relations messages. With so many companies competing for limited consumer dollars, how can you get your company's message out? Sometimes, a successful PR stunt is just what the doctor ordered! Can We Do That?! looks at real-life PR stunts that will blow your mind and inspire you to think nontraditionally and find new and creative ways to get your company noticed.

PR Guru Peter Shankman chronicles some of the most ridiculous, outrageous, and possibly crazy PR stunts of all time. Wading through the silliness to get to the root of why some stunts work and some don't, Shankman offers a funny and insightful look at what it takes to win the game of PR. You'll learn how and why:

• A stolen Yoo-Hoo truck became a promotional and media relations coup
• RegisterFree.com's "Free Hour" promotion was so successful it virtually shut down Internet access on the East Coast for nine hours
• More than 100 CEOs, dot.com workers, and media figures jumped out of a plane in the name of brand visibility
• A small yarn shop in upstate New York caught on with hip city dwellers interested in eating their sweaters
• And more outrageous ideas!

Shankman looks at these and many more case studies and provides the historical background and follow-up needed to fully gauge their success. But most important, Can We Do That?! shows you how to develop effective PR campaigns on your own. Getting noticed is no easy task, especially for small businesses. This handy guide to guerrilla PR explores the tactics and stunts that work and shows you how to apply them to your own business without busting your budget.

Aus dem Klappentext

What would you do to get your business noticed?

Every day consumers are bombarded with advertising and public relations messages. With so many companies competing for limited consumer dollars, how can you get your company's message out? Sometimes, a successful PR stunt is just what the doctor ordered! Can We Do That?! looks at real-life PR stunts that will blow your mind and inspire you to think nontraditionally and find new and creative ways to get your company noticed.

PR Guru Peter Shankman chronicles some of the most ridiculous, outrageous, and possibly crazy PR stunts of all time. Wading through the silliness to get to the root of why some stunts work and some don't, Shankman offers a funny and insightful look at what it takes to win the game of PR. You'll learn how and why:

• A stolen Yoo-Hoo truck became a promotional and media relations coup
• RegisterFree.com's "Free Hour" promotion was so successful it virtually shut down Internet access on the East Coast for nine hours
• More than 100 CEOs, dot.com workers, and media figures jumped out of a plane in the name of brand visibility
• A small yarn shop in upstate New York caught on with hip city dwellers interested in eating their sweaters
• And more outrageous ideas!

Shankman looks at these and many more case studies and provides the historical background and follow-up needed to fully gauge their success. But most important, Can We Do That?! shows you how to develop effective PR campaigns on your own. Getting noticed is no easy task, especially for small businesses. This handy guide to guerrilla PR explores the tactics and stunts that work—and shows you how to apply them to your own business without busting your budget.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Can We Do That?!

John Wiley & Sons

Chapter One

You probably don't know me from Adam, but I am known. The media knows me, and more importantly, they know my clients. So I'm here to tell you why you should listen to me.

So you've bought this book. (Or you're sitting on the floor at a bookstore reading it while sipping a latte.) Either way, you're looking for a different way, a better way of marketing your company, your business, or yourself. You've listened to all the "PR Professionals," the "Publicists," and maybe even taken a course or two.

You've learned how to craft a press release and fill it with your latest company news or events. You've come up with a catchy boilerplate and made sure you listed the right contact information. You double-checked the date in the first paragraph, and confirmed all the numbers with your CFO.

You spent a week writing the release, got it cleared by your company lawyers, got a quote from your CEO, printed it on company letterhead, and sent it out to all the editors and reporters in your city.

Finally, it's the moment of truth. Your company has earthshaking news, a major announcement. You're ready to tell the world.

And then you wait.

And the tumbleweeds blow by your desk, and the crickets chirp.

And there's not one story.

And you're left explaining why-to your bosses, to your shareholders, to your partners, to your clients.

This is not fun. In the PR world, the scientific term for what you're going through is, "This sucks."

We've all been there. The town of No Press. It's a lonely place, full of confused publicists who thought they could make it on a press release alone. It's like a retirement home for PR people who didn't have what it took. Meanwhile, journalists, savvy publicists, and the public are all watching, shaking their heads, saying, "He sent a press release addressed to `Dear Editor.' He never had a chance."

Fortunately, there is a better way. Back in 1998, I started a small PR firm out of my apartment with one computer, one desk, and one cat. In eight years, the firm has handled PR, marketing, and events for some of the biggest companies out there-American Express, Disney, Juno Online Services, Richard Simmons, The Discovery Channel, as well as some of the smallest-Flying Fingers Yarn Shop, The Scott-e-Vest, the Bla-Bla.com ad network, and a ton of others. Big or small, household names or startups, they've all had one thing in common-they've had very successful public relations and marketing campaigns produced by my firm, The Geek Factory, Inc. These campaigns have generated revenue, exposure, and growth, sometimes beyond their (and our) wildest dreams. In this book, I show you what we did, how we did it, and how you can create those kind of results yourself.

There's only one rule I ask of you as you read and then apply what you've learned here:

Don't be afraid to be different.

Ask my parents. They'll both tell you that from the second I was born (way late and upside down) I always liked to do things differently. Sometimes I'd come home crying and tell my mom that the other kids didn't like me. She'd say that it wasn't that they didn't like me, they just didn't understand me, because I did things differently. I "marched to the beat of a different drummer," as she phrased it. She told me that one day my uniqueness would help me in the grown-up world. She promised one day I'd find out that not being like everyone else would come in handy.

Of course, like moms usually are, she was right; two successful companies, obscene amounts of media, and tons of satisfied clients later, I'm happy to have strayed from the pack.

At the time, though, I thought she was totally and completely out of her mind. I mean, come on-when you're 11 years old, not being like everyone else is a death sentence. Find me one kid who wants to be "different" at age 11. You can't. No one wants to be different when they're young. Hell, the majority of us don't want to be different now that we're older. But that's the true death sentence, in both business and life. You need to be different. Different gets you remembered, not simply recalled. Different gets the recognition and praise heaped on you, and not someone else.

Here's a secret: because the majority of people out there are afraid to be different, it allows people like us to own the ball game, the playing field-hell, the whole damn stadium-as long as we're just a little bit better, a little more distinctive. Be a little bit different, and you'll soar. People will notice. The media will write about you. The world will be your oyster, and all those other trite sayings. You'll be King of the World, or your little corner of it, anyway.

Quick quiz: Who will you remember more: the office mate who sends you a memo properly formatted; on white paper; with the correct subject, heading, and subhead, or the one who drops you an email that says, "Hey, wanna get with you on this project-can I buy you a burger later and talk?"

The answer is obvious. Burger Man will almost always win.

Be different. Be Burger Man.

It's being different that got me where I am, and gotten my clients the successful notoriety they've experienced. It's what put Bacardi on the top of the "Yahoo Most Emailed Photos" page, and what got Flying Fingers Yarn Shop a three-page spread in The New Yorker. It's what put RegisterFree.com on the front page of CNN.com, and New Frontier Media in the Wall St. Journal. It's what got me personally in USA Today and on CNN, more than once.

Being different has gotten me virtually all the PR, marketing, and for that matter, personal success I've had so far. It's also been the cause of some of my most spectacular disasters. But learning from them is half the fun.

OBJECT LESSON: WHO DO YOU REMEMBER?

You're on a crowded subway. It's packed full of people. You're standing, holding onto the handrail, drifting off into space, waiting for your stop. Virtually everyone looks the same, right? Try really looking at people tomorrow. It doesn't have to be on the subway-could be the freeway, the supermarket, the park, wherever you are where there are a ton of other people. They all sort of merge into one faceless, nameless person: "the crowd."

Well, there's a reason for that. Your brain simply can't process every single person you come in contact with on a daily basis. And why should it? We're all born with the spectacular instinct to dismiss the banal. If it bores us, serves no purpose, doesn't help us run our lives, do our jobs, or be happier, we tend to dismiss it. Every other car on the highway? Not important to us, other than the one in front of us we don't want to slam into. Other people on the subway? Who cares? They're not impacting our life in any way; we don't need to process them.

But, imagine.... You're on the freeway and out of the corner of your eye, you notice a fire-engine-red Lamborghini speeding up in your rearview mirror. You notice how low to the ground it is. You see the shiny, freshly waxed coating of paint. You admire the sleek, smooth lines on the car. It roars past you. You hear the purr of the engine as it gracefully hugs the road. You stare at it, you process it, you take it all in.

That car is a...