By Paul Hartunian
I guess there are some people who think getting high is the ultimate experience. Others smoke or overeat. I'll have to admit my drug of choice is creating free publicity.
Over the years this "habit" has served me well. Back in the mid 80's it helped me make a fortune selling chips of wood off the discarded pedestrian walkway of the Brooklyn Bridge.
Every year I do 150 to 200 radio interviews from my home around Valentines Day promoting my book How to Find the Love of Your Life in 90 Days or Less
( www.LoveIn90Days.com )
But I'm far from alone in this wonderland of free publicity. There are others out there who have also managed to make a mark in history as being the "Guru's" of the publicity world. Most of them would rather you never knew who they were. They pride themselves on being members of a unique profession that dedicates itself to finding news stories in mundane situations. They're called Press Agents. And they, too, share my addiction to publicity.
They're people like P.T. Barnum who once said "My dear sir, the bigger the humbug, the better the people will like it". And he should know. Between the years of 1830 to 1891 he lived a life full of exciting media manipulations. He began by promoting a hoax. Joice Heth, an old black slave lady toured with him claiming to be George Washington's personal nurse. Simple math would have made her 161 years old, but nonetheless, her personal stories and a bill of sale convinced crowds around the country that she was real. Then there was Tom Thumb and a list of "freaks" he made famous in and around New York City. His circus and other exploits are legendary.
Then there was Alan Abel. He once staged his own death in Central Park just to prove he could get his name in the New York Times obituaries. When Donahue moved his show from Chicago to New York City, Abel was hired as a publicist. He arranged to have a rash of women in the audience swoon and faint during the show. Abel explains that he hired a group of women to faint on cue, but other audience members immediately joined the pandemonium. There were even those that suggested it was an outbreak of Legionnaire's disease. The epidemic faintings eventually led to Donahue having to clear the auditorium and finish his show without an audience. The story prompted over 6,000 news stories around the world and shot Donahue's ratings into orbit. Although Abel admitted to having staged the hoax years later, nobody has ever been able to find evidence that Donahue had any idea what happened.
In 1962, Abel next created The Society for Indecency to Naked Animals (SINA). They had a theme song, letterhead, board of directors and a manual that offered free patterns for people interested in clothing their pets. It may sound like a passing hoax, but their bookkeeping claims to have amassed over 40,000 members and a bank account of over $400,000. Their president, G.Clifford Prout, Jr. toured the country doing talk show appearances. He appeared on "The Tonight Show", "The Today Show" and "The Tomorrow Show". The San Francisco Chronicle ran continuous coverage of the exploits of the organization. Off the record, senior editors admitted later that they realized it was all a hoax, but it made for such great stories that they carried it anyway. Eventually the Chronicle exposed Clifford Prout as actually being Buck Henry, a comedy writer for the "Gary Moore Show". They never made any mention to any questionable issues with SINA.
John Lennon and Yoko Ono are still remembered for inviting the media into the bedroom during their honeymoon. The only shots anybody ever saw were tasteful, fully dressed shots of the two sitting up talking to the reporters, but not before they got more than enough media time to discuss the need for world peace.
John D. Rockefeller began with a reputation as a self-seeking rich opportunist. After a major mining accident in one of his mines where many died, he became one of the most hated men in America when he refused to talk to the media.
Publicist Ivy Lee was then hired by Rockefeller to try and clean up his image. At Lee's suggestion, Rockefeller started carrying pockets full of shiny new dimes. Whenever a camera was around to capture the moment, Rockefeller would start giving out dimes to children as they went by. The image of this rich tycoon giving away money as crowds of children chased after him almost immediately transformed his image from a hated, self seeking monster to a benevolent caring grandfather.
Ringling Brothers Circus press agent Roland Butler as also a master of the "tall tale". He "leaked" a story once to the Cincinnati Enquirer where he claimed one of the giraffes had been arrested in Texas. Butler's release claimed the giraffe had developed a sore throat and was forced to get regular rubdowns of bourbon. The circus was forced to carry 5 cartons of bourbon just for the medicinal needs of the giraffe. A dry county in Texas decided this went against local law and had the giraffe and it's whiskey impounded. Nobody ever proved if anything had happened, but it sure got some good publicity for the circus.
And the list can go on and on. Jim Moran ended up taking 82 hours to find a needle in a haystack as a publicity stunt for the Rudy Vallee show. He also donned an Uncle Sam suit in 1944 to disprove the Democrats contention that you couldn't change horses in midstream. He managed to switch horses in the middle of the Truckee River in Reno, NV, but it wasn't enough to convince voters not to re elect Roosevelt.
These guys obviously were the masters. In fact, many of the major news story you have probably heard of at one point or another involved a good press agent. They found ways to get the media to cover the mundane. And it's an art that isn't delegated to the past.
Creating news today is just as easy. It involves first defining some news angle that'll make yours a story worth reading about. You then need to write a powerful press release (you can get help doing this at www.PressReleasesMadeEasy.com. After the press release is out, you'll want to sit by your phone and wait for calls from reporters. At that point the entire process boils down to simply telling your story. I know it's doable; I do it all the time. And so do thousands of people around the world who follow my system.
It really is that simple. If you need help getting organized, get information about my complete, do-it-yourself publicity kit at www.MillionDollarPublicity.com. It has everything you'll ever need to do powerful, exciting, profitable publicity campaigns for any product, service or business.
And it won't be long before you'll start proving to the world that your dog-training institute can, indeed, teach an old dog new tricks. Your chocolate store will test the aphrodisiac qualities of chocolate or your blood drive will include a staff of actors dressed like turnips lining up to donate blood (a stunt Publicist Jet Fore pulled to promote the movie "Health"). It proved conclusively that you can get blood from a turnip.
Want to know more about how publicity can help you? Click on the links on the left side of this page.
© COPYRIGHT PAUL HARTUNIAN - ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Paul Hartunian, Box 43596, Upper Montclair, NJ 07043 - (973)857-4142