I know you asked for personal off-list correspondence, but I feel this may
be
of use to general readership as well, so I'm putting it here in case it
can
help others.
<< I need to put together a PR packet, and contact newspapers in advance
of
contests and put us on the map with the magazines too.
I have ideas and I am sure many of you do to. I want some guidance from
people who have actually done the PR job. ... I need to
know what worked, what didn't. How to make contacts with the Newspapers,
what belongs in the PR packet. We are looking to attract new membership,
either kids, or adults, never flown, or have flown other disciplines. >>
There are many avenues to pursue, many outlets, some of these are not
always
apparent. I did PR for my club activities for a while, always got the Tv
stations to come out, and got nice articles written up in the paper.
Events got
good attendance and we were a familiar name to the local government
people.
For TV/radio stations, you send a press release to the news director or
assignment desk and a copy to the public affairs director, and it helps to
compose
it in the typical format (which you can find examples of by googling). For
papers, the Assignment Editor or just the main Editor works. Look up and
use
their name if you can, the personal touch gets noticed. Keep it short and
factual,
W,W,W,W, and H. but since TV is a business of images, you have to hint at
what parts of this activity will be visually interesting. One time we were
doing
a simple spot landing contest, but because we painted up a few sheets of
plywood gray and called it a "Top Gun- movie-styled carrier landing
contest" with
photo-ops, we got them to come out and see us, even in the rain, and make
a
segment out of it.
For radio and print, you want to find a hook that appeals to a certain
reporter's or hosts pet subject. Education is one natural, because our
hobby/sport
has so many applications in that area, from science, to history, to math,
to
English lit (poems like High Flight, books like The Little Prince, Night
Flight,
etc.). You could work on doing a historical reenactment of some local
historic aviation event. In February, maybe recreate a Bessy Coleman
Flight, or
a Tuskeegee Airmen escort mission with checker-tailed P-51's. You get the
idea. Find the local "hook" into area history or culture, and put the
prop-er
spin on it. For example, my town was on Lindbergh's airmail route, I would
try to
do some demo flights in the undeveloped land where he use to take off
from.
Any aviation-related anniversary may present you such an opportunity. If
you
were to fly an RC "missing man formation" for someone who's passed away,
don't
you think a photo editor would be curious?
One time we did a grade school demo fly, the reporter got hooked on one
little casual comment we made, about how kids working on building and
flying these
planes were too busy to mess around with drugs, and that became the "hook"
for
his whole coverage, how this was a great, wholesome activity. I wish that
was
planned, because the standard coverage reporters do on our hobby is
"overgrown man-children and their toys". It's an easy story to do, it
writes itself,
and if they are lazy or pressed for time, they'll go to that theme always.
You
have to give them more, a fresh angle. I think there's not enough women in
aviation, and I think a special "girls fly" day would be a great event. I
bet
your gears are turning already, with better ideas than these!
Standard PSA type releases should be sent out to the attention of the
Public
Affairs Director at all the local tv, radio, and cable outlets. It's free,
but
the timing and placement are not usually that great, unless they feel like
tying it into news coverage they are doing... You can also often get
someone to
do a full show about you for the local cable access channel, or you can
get
access to the TV gear and make the show yourself, even make it a monthly
deal!
If you combine an event like a fun fly with something like a charity
fundraiser for the local scouts or a scholarship or etc. that's gold. Get
with a
school to support a science fair type project with an aviation theme, or
to do one
of those historical reenactments mentioned before. Things like a
heavy-lift
design contest or paper-plane design-and-fly are a natural. Even if these
things
don't all directly translate to RC gliders, they all lead to the same
good
place, and your club WILL benefit.
If you have a 1st of the New-year frozen-fingers contest, let the local Tv
and paper know about the photo-op a couple days ahead, those kinds of
holidays
are often slow news days and they need cute local-flavored filler.
Mall shows are always a good way to attract attention. Have videos and a
simulator available, even do some actual building onsite so show how easy
it can
be. Order up the premade literature and pamphlets AMA makes, they are a
good
start, then use them as templates for your club's pamphlets and guides.
Publish
a schedule for public-welcome events, and make it easy to read and find.
Realize for getting younger members, you have to figure accessibility for
their
parents to find the time to drive them to things, and the schedule
conflicts of
school event calendars. Look ahead three months at least when scheduling,
so
your big shindig isn't up against the highschool championships, and you
need a
minimum 3 months lead on announcementsto meet the pre-production
requirements
of the various hobby magazines. Seems obvious, but we all live in a bubble
of
our own narrow interests, and we miss the easy stuff sometimes.
BTW, malls aren't the only good venue for a Mall Show. Public Libraries
and
even local museums or galleries can often be talked into displaying some
of
your planes inside the building for a month as part of an aviation-themed
book
reading campaign or something similar. Heck, even a restaurant might go
for it.
These kinds of static displays, with the planes hung up out of reach but
in
active poses, are great to do in winter/rainy months for Northern
latitudes
when your planes would just be in storage anyway.
At all these public events, it's a delicate but necessary thing to get
together with all the club members and brief them on what your club's
goals and
"party line" message are to be. It's best to appoint one or two
spokespeople to be
the main contacts with the public and media, then to just let any club
member
do it. What you get otherwise is, everybody imposes a slightly different
interpretation/agenda on the event, when what you really want is everybody
giving
the same message. For example, if you're trying to encourage new members,
you want everybody talking about how training is done, the type of planes
that
are easiest to fly, how to reduce economic barriers to entry, the value of
what
you learn in the hobby and how it can be applied in school and life,
etc. -
-And this can all be disrupted by some wiseguy bloviating in a corner
about
his hot-sierra turbine, prop-cut fingers, thousand-dollar radios, how
expensive crashes can be, potential terrorist uses of RC, speed records in
level
flight, stories of daring-do and questionable judgment, dissing sissy-ish
ARF's or
any particular type of plane/flying... you see what I'm getting at? You
will
have at least one guy like this in every club, I guarantee you, and the
best
detail to put him on is minding the hot dogs on the grill or the parking
outside. It's delicate as herding cats to get your membership wise to what
they need
to do and NOT do, egos can be bruised, you don't want to tick anybody off
or
discourage member help, but make sure they understand what kind of "help"
you're asking for, why this approach is in the member's best interests as
a group,
and get their promise to stick to the flight plan.
Finally, use free internet resources like RCgroups and even Craigslist to
get
out the word on your events. Be sure to give an email address for
inquiries,
probably to the PR director of the club. Make it one point of public
contact,
so things don't get confused in a left-hand-right-hand situation.
Wow, that's a lot of text, sorry to digest readers for taking up the room,
and please, you don't have to re-quote the whole thing to comment. But
these
things worked well for me, and maybe they can help a lot of other people
you
know. Thanks for your time.
-Mark
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