McDonald’s Canada and Ad agency Cossette in Vancouver have brought to life an interactive ice sculpture on behalf of McDonald’s Restaurants in Alberta, driving consumer interest in the company’s Dollar Drink Days campaign. Hosted in the town of Sylvan Lake, the stunt saw 8,000 pounds of ice moulded into a seven-foot tall installation, containing over 4,000 sparkling coins, shaped into McDonald’s famous Golden Arches™. Watch the interaction as the ice begins the melt… Thanks to adlag

(Jon Price – Designer)

A dull press release is likely to find the bin!

Working with a good PR person can achieve incredible results (I once witnessed someone secure a motorcycle manufacturer more than £60,000-worth of coverage with two phone calls) but if you don’t have the budget, it’s also possible to achieve measurable results on your own. After all, who knows the interesting aspects of your business better than you?!

Here are a few tips that might help…

1. Make it relevant. You must make sure that what you’re writing is relevant to the people who’ll be be reading it. If the editors don’t think it’s relevant, they won’t publish it.

2. Make it unique. Journalists receive a lot of dull, corporate press releases. Those that don’t stand out will probably go straight in the bin. As long as it doesn’t conflict with the way you do business, don’t be afraid to do things differently, be refreshingly honest or come up with a publicity stunt.

3. Understand what the journalists want. Now more than ever, journalists are looking for something interesting to publish. Information is so readily available on the Internet, they need something special in order to compete. If you can give them something that’s relevant to the hot topics of the moment, you’ll have a much better chance of gaining coverage.

4. Don’t blatantly advertise your business. You can refer to what your business does, or talk about how you’ve managed to benefit a company/person/community, but don’t promote too heavily – it’s a massive journalistic turn-off!

5. Talk about issues you know a lot about. Journalists are often generalists – particularly in the regional press. Many journalists have a network of contacts – industry experts – to whom they will go for comments on specific issues. If you can position yourself as an expert, you may find the journalists will start coming to you!

(Opinion: Jim Green – MD)

Our PR Manager worked her magic as this month we opened the local newspaper to find our Devonport news story splashed across the front of the business pages. Our Webteam has been getting rave reviews for the DNA built & designed www.devonportyachts.com, with special mention of the homepage movie showing a fictional yacht completly created in CGI. Team Web design Devon based, and looking great!

But please ignore the Christmas decorations in our team pic – they used an old image from previous press coverage – Smile everyone!

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