How to Capitalize on Events and Happenings

Staying in the public mind is a mightily difficult thing to do. You need to constantly be thinking and upgrading your efforts. You always need to keep one step ahead of the others. Today I will show you an example of how a tiny country like Croatia does a job a hundred times better than many of her European competitors.

This is not heaven or Hawaii... It's Croatia!

In this day and age, the Internet is the key to doing so. But many companies confuse the issues. As Brian Tracy writes in Focal Point:


Many Internet companies define themselves as providers for free information geared towards attracting as many eyeballs as possible. In reality, the Internet is a communication and distribution channel that must be focused on selling products or services and making a profit, like any other business.

Anyone who reads this blog with any regularity knows that I often harp upon the need to giveaway great free content to get readers... But how to reconcile that with the need to make money? That's what I'd like to blog about today; giving away great content online and offline and using that offline content to increase your online appeal by use of press releases and more.

Let me introduce you to a guy named Edouard Tripkovic Katayama. Edouard is in charge of the Croatian National Tourist Board in Japan and, since he set up the office here, three years ago, they've been a party to a 300% increase in sales and Japanese visitors to Croatia. That's incredible! (Disclaimer here: Before I go on too much, I must state that I know these things to be facts as I am proud to be a part of Edouard's promotional/marketing team and an advisor to such a cool service and wonderful country).


A 300% increase in Japanese visitors to Croatia? And in a down market? Are there any others who could make the same claim? I doubt it. Those are amazing results in any market, not to mention in a down one. I can't think of another organization that has shown such excellent results in Japan.


Of course there are many things that have all played a part in this success story, but let me give you a good example of one that we have coming up that is a marketing dream. The event will fulfill all the requirements that I always mention that are necessary: online and offline elements; news releases; promotion before, during and after; and mutually beneficial tie-ups to help defray costs amongst the partners.


Edouard had correctly decided that Croatian needs a URL that is Japan specific (I wrote the reasons for this here) so we are about to launch an Internet Funnel site for them. At about the same time that the Funnel site will be launched, a famous Croatian Classical Pianist named Kemal Gekic will be touring Japan...

Hear some of Kemal Gekic's fabulous music for free here!

Croatia is launching a new Japan specific Funnel site? A famous Croatian Classical Pianist is touring Japan?


I smell a great promotional opportunity!


Now, here we have an incredibly lucky convergence of events that we can use to promote Croatia Tourism, Kemal Gekic's tour, Croatian cuisine, and to increase awareness amongst the Japanese of just how cool and cultured Croatia is; and what a wonderful travel destination it is for the entire family. Not only that, since there are several parties with vested interests here, we can keep the costs way down. Anyone can spend massive amounts of money and run a good event. It takes imagination, planning and creativity to run a great event on a shoe-string budget!

Croatia: The Mediterranean as it once was

昔のままの地中海

What we are planning is to have a get-together with 30 - 40 of the most important writers for Tokyo's top Women's, Travel, Dining and Culture magazine's. The event will serve several purposes. It will be the announcement and unveiling of the new Internet Funnel site for Croatia as well as an opportunity to show off Croatian Culture with Mr. Gekic. We will also announce a secret (it's so secret that I can't announce it yet) promotional tie up with the most famous Pizza  delivery company in Japan...Also, we will use the event of create a buzz and to kick off our weekly newsletter that will come as part of joining our web community. (Concurrently running along at the same time as all these other goodies we have planned will be updates using our favorite Social Media like Twitter, Mixi, and photos (of course) with Pick).

The event will be held at the Croatian Embassy and we plan on featuring a short speech by the Croatian Ambassador as well as delicious food and refreshments from the top Croatian restaurant in all of Tokyo, Dobro. Throw this in with a few videos showing the striking beauty and history of the country and, there you have it, the seed of the buzz has been planted.  

Of course, as I said, this is a marketing dream. Everyone gets what they want; The magazines get exclusive information (as well as delicious free food and drink); Croatia Tourism (organizer) gets people to notice; the Embassy (provides the banquet hall) and makes themselves accessible; Kemal Gekic (performs) and his promoter gets people to see and hear his music and, perhaps, write about him; the restauranteur (provides food and drink) gets access to the magazine people who really matter and then he can invite them to write about his restaurant...

Dobro Croatian Cuisine in Kyobashi, Tokyo

〒104-0031 東京都中央区京橋2-6-14 日立第6ビル1F      03-5250-2055

This is a beautiful promotion that can cause nothing but smiles and handshakes (well, in Japan, lots of bowing)... And what does this cost Croatia Tourism? Almost nothing but the time it took to come up with this idea for a great opportunity and make the phone calls to bring in the partners.


So, perhaps, you might have guessed, even now, that this blog you are reading is, in fact, promotion for this event. It is the beginning of the creation of the buzz... I hope I have provided you with some ideas as to how you could steal my ideas and use it for yourselves.... If you can, by all means, please do!

Take a short video tour of Dubrovnik, Croatia here

But please don't forget to go back to the top of this blog and see what was written in the third paragraph;


"the Internet is a communication and distribution channel that must be focused on selling products or services and making a profit, like any other business."


So, I hope you get good ideas from this post that you can use to create your offline events and how to use them to benefit your online activities... I also hope that you've gotten some good ideas on how you can use your Social Media and blogs to sell your products/services without having to say, "BUY! BUY! BUY!"




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Post-note: Of course, as I mentioned in a previous blog, weekly press releases are a must. The above gives us several weeks of press release material before, during and after the event... It also allows us to create a buzz whereby it is easier to get good partners for future events... Heck, who knows? If they go so well, we might even be able to sell sponsorships to these events and have the sponsor pay for everything. So, just remember, the ceiling is your imagination!


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Keywords: business, press release, blog, smart marketing, catchy idea, weekly magazine, publisher, web page, promote,  U-Stream, Buzz, Tweet, Pick, George Williams,  advertising, Japan, marketing, Croatia, European, Internet, Social Media, blogs, 

Make a Press Release Every Week

Creating a buzz is always hard work, but you can increase your chances of doing so by operating like a weekly magazine publisher and making a weekly press release. It doesn't matter if you don't have "Big" news every week... The important thing is that you use your creativity to make something newsworthy every week so that it merits a press release.

Some good folks have asked, "What is the best way to keep in the public eye?" Of course there are many ways, but one of the best and most profitable ways to do so is to create continual press releases about you, your company and product or service; and do it every week religiously.

女性自身 Josei Jishin (Women's Confidence)

Josei Jishin is Japan's oldest and most popular women's magazine

Over 50 years of gossip and still going strong.

Think about those weekly magazines; it is incredibly difficult to come up every week with an interesting jacket and headline that sells magazines. But they work at it and come up with a catchy idea and and catchy image that sells magazines. You should think like they do. The magazines and daily newspapers have it hard. You have it easy. All you need to do is to come up with one good idea once a week that will have people reading about you and thinking about your service.

You will also want to target your press releases to the public and certain people in the media - and I am including all forms of media. Find specific media targets that may be able to help you. Send out e-mails to them - not BCC - specific e-mails addressed to them personally. Keep doing this and, after a few months, they will start to pay attention. Trust me, I know this for a fact after years of working as a radio and TV producer; editors and producers get tons of mail and junk; it takes a special effort to get them to sit up and take notice. Items addressed to "anyone" just don't cut it.

With bloggers or online items, you might be able to get a bit more luck if you take the time to find out who these people are and then write to them directly. A warning though, people don't like it if you ask for favors without knowing at least a little bit about that person (it used to drive me crazy when a record company promoter would give me Hit Parade of Hell albums (Top 40) or a Madonna CD and ask me to play it on my show when I was producing a show that only played Punk and Alternative music.)

I talked to media star George Williams the other day and he mentioned that he was going to start his own blog and design it much like Max Keiser's web page or Mike (Mish) Shedlock's. Like the examples I mentioned, George's web blog will have blogs, videos, U-Stream, Tweets, Pick, and other goodies.

George Williams (right) with up-and-coming rockers,

"Nothing's Carved in Stone"

George and I also discussed promoting it properly. We talked about having a press release party whereby he announces his new web blog and, then for laughs, maybe he announces that he's changed his name to georgewilliams.jp. The party will have drinks and snacks and unveil the web page. This is a good opportunity for George to build a buzz. First, he gets to announce the event; then, report on it as it is happening; then he gets a follow up report... There's three press releases right there. From then on, it's just a small step to making a useful and beneficial press release every week to promote himself and his business.

You can do the same.

So, don't forget to think like a weekly magazine publisher; send out a press release every week. Target several important people who could help you or write about you. Then, of course, you place your press releases on your web page too.

Make a press release every week. It's good enough for the big boys, it's good enough for you...That's just smart marketing.

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Keywords: Buzz, business, press release, smart marketing, catchy idea, weekly magazine, publisher, Max Keiser, Mike "Mish" Shedlock, blog, web page, promote,  U-Stream, Tweet, Pick, George Williams, Nothing's Carved in Stone, publicity, advertising, marketing, Japan

Social Media for Businesses - Create an Online Persona

Creating a useful and powerful way to utilize social media for businesses and corporations can be tricky. Social media is not conducive to "in-your-face" advertising. In fact, if a company is not careful using social media such as Twitter or Mixi to sell product, it can completely backfire and be a total turn-off. A good way to get many people to stop following your, say, Twitter account or blog is to consistently bombard them with information that says, "Buy Me!" or "Sale!" Not cool. Think about it... Would you look forward to, or like to read, blogs or tweets like that?

American icon Betty Crocker sold millions... 
She never existed except on boxes and TV

For your websites and social media to be effective, they need to give and not to take. The killer blog and/or Twitter will be giving away great content for free and doing it consistently. Then the receivers pass the information on for you.

Just as your website should not be a one-way sales brochure, so should your social media usage be geared towards giving away something for free to the receivers so that they actually look forward to your tweets and updates.

I am about to start helping some friends of mine with their online sales of adult beverages. Sure, they have a great line-up of the usual suspects; e-mail magazine, easy to look at web page, etc., but they need something different. They need that extra "Umph!" to push them over the edge. They need something that sets them apart from the competition. While all the other online beverage retail sites say basically the same thing, my friend's site needs to take it one level higher.

As Nigel Tufnel of Spinal Tap fame would say, "These go to eleven."

Yep. Go to eleven. With all the millions of sites on the Internet doing something near or similar to what you are doing, how do you go to eleven?

I'll tell you; give away great content.

Many companies start up their own business blogs or order their staff to write Twitter pushing company product. These never go well... For one, the people asked to do the blogging or the tweets are not the kind of people who should be, or are good at, blogging... Or they might even think, "This sucks. I hate doing this Twitter, but my boss makes me do it." Resentful staff do not make good bloggers...

Think about that for a minute. If the person that you've ordered to blog is not very motivated to do a good job, do you think they will be able to write great material? And everyone knows, in this day and age, if the material on the Internet is not great, then it doesn't cut it.

If the person writing the Twitter or blogs doesn't like it, then why in the world would the "outside" people want to read it? I don't think they would. In fact, if the blog or Twitter is poor, or is not gaining traction or popularity, I'd suggest stopping it until you do find a formula that "works."

Here's a tip: Instead of forcing one of your staff members to do the blogging or Twittering, why don't you have a brainstorming session at the office (maybe after work with a few drinks?) and come up with a virtual person? An online persona? How about a sort of "Internet Milli-Vanilli" to represent your company (for you younger people in the crowd who do not know who Milli Vanilli is, please ask your parents....) Make the character fun. This way, you create a fun atmosphere around this person and it also allows the online persona to have more personality and state more likes and dislikes online.

Make your own Colonel Sanders; or, even better, make your own Bart Simpson as your sales rep. Why not? Who wouldn't want Bart Simpson to be their sales rep? Sometimes he says it like it is. What great promotion!

Everyone loves a character who is sassy, talks back, has an opinion, and not kissing ass and telling us how wonderful the world is all the time.

Volkswagen did this and the results were fantastic. They created an online persona whose name was Helga. The staff of Volkswagen got together and created Helga. Who she is; how old she is; her hobbies; likes; dislikes, even where she was born. She was an immediate Internet hit... And she doesn't even really exist.

(1) Helga on Myspace: http://www.myspace.com/misshelga

Her catch copy says, "Don't be sucking." 

 Hilarious! I love it! 

Now, don't think that this sort of thing is so easy to do. If you realize that a character like, say, Homer Simpson was a creation that has a consistent personality, then you'd realize that this same "creation of a persona" process took place in the birth of Homer. The staff of the Simpson's got together and worked on the characters for a long time before they came to fruition. Homer is funny because he is who he is...

This didn't happen on a whim. It was planned; the creators of Homer Simpson, or Helga, or even Betty Crocker got together and decided everything about this persona... Everything! Every conceivable detail about who they are and what they like...Probably even up to who their parents  were.

This sort of persona creation can be fun and it should allow your company employees to have fun with the tweets and blogs for the virtual character.  It also takes the extreme pressure off that one staff member (who could be slightly resentful) who is supposed to write the blogs and Twits.

You can ask the staff to blog or tweet when they have a good idea... (Like I said, if your staff hates blogging, then you have the wrong people doing it)... If your own staff just won't budge, then there are hundreds of thousands of good people all around who'd love the opportunity to work and write for you as "piece-work." Or, heck, like I said, if the character is fun, you might even find that you like doing the blogging. It's always fun to write behind a mask, if you are so inclined to writing.

Or why not even hold an online contest on your web page or forum whereby your e-mail magazine members (new and old) can join a contest where they can win some great prizes by either writing some great text for you or even creating your character? There are a million and one ways of doing this and the ceiling is your imagination.

So don't forget, the point of the Internet and the blogs and Twitter: Do Not Take! Do not do "in-your-face" sales! Give great content free and create a buzz...

When you create a buzz, they will come... Even if your buzz creator doesn't really exist.

(1) Helga from The New Rules of Marketing & PR by David Meerman Scott.  Page 179


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Keywords: Helga, David Meerman Scott, New Rules of Marketing & PR, Twitter, Internet, blogs, free content, buzz, Internet Milli Vanilli, Mike Rogers, Marketing Japan, Mike in Tokyo Rogers, Betty Crocker