Ever wonder what goes on behind the scenes of a big network television show? Well, our group found out the week of September 7-14 when we worked with The Buckeye Real Estate Group to organize, market, and publicize the building of a new home for a deserving family in our town for the very popular Extreme Makeover: Home Edition.

It’s absolutely incredible what’s needed to support the builders, volunteers, and spectators, while at the same time getting up-to-the-minute news, information, and photographs of the build out to the public and surrounding media.

It was a lot of work, but it was sooooo cool! All of us are, however, grateful to return to a full night’s sleep. And we can rest easy knowing that we followed our plan, ran a great event, and used PR to our best advantage.

(Here’s me, Linda Szyskowski, and Kathy Rotte working the Extreme Makeover build. As project leader, Kathy never had the phone out of her ear — we were fortunate to corral her for this photo!)

Know your objectives
Public relations can make or break an event. After all, it doesn’t matter how well you’ve planned or how fantastic your event is if nobody knows about it. When working with The Buckeye Real Estate Group on our recent Extreme Makeover: Home Edition build, we had four basic goals for getting the word out right:

1. To let as many people as possible know about the Extreme Makeover project and what was happening day by day,
2. To promote our client, Buckeye, in the most positive manner,
3. To make sure the right people knew the right information at the right time, and
4. To help organize and oversee details of the event itself, making sure things came off smoothly.

Many people think that PR is only about getting the word out, but it’s much more than that. You also want to control the message (#2) and coordinate the timing of different messages, to different groups, on different schedules (#3), and make sure that everything happens as it should (#4). In our project with EMHE, we also helped plan every element of the build that wasn’t directly related to hammering and sawing — from coordinating and recruiting corporate contributions to ordering carryout food from one of Toledo’s best restaurants for the EMHE design team at the fundraising concert. It can be quite a balancing act!

Here are some tips on how to publicize an event that you can be proud of.

Get organized, and make a schedule
Our public relations specialist and project leader Kathy really came through on this one, and it was because she always knew exactly what she had to do at what time. As the Extreme Makeover build approached, Kathy and her committees developed detailed plans of every action necessary. On any given day, she knew well in advance what she would be doing — sending a press release to the local media, calling volunteer suppliers, meeting with ABC executives, coordinating the arrival of tents and trailers on-site. Surprise tasks did occur, but because she already knew the backbone of what needed to be done, these were easier to handle on the fly.

Mind your brand(s)
There’s a lot going on during an event, so remember to make sure that your brand and those of any partners are being conveyed properly. Both the Extreme Makeover: Home Edition logo and Buckeye’s logo needed to appear on all of our materials, in specific ways, so our team was on top of that. We made sure to get Buckeye’s new website up before they were announced as the builder so that they would look great and key messages would be conveyed when people started to visit it — to the tune of 65,000 to 100,000 hits per day. We redeployed our own website for the same reason. In every interaction with press, volunteers, donors, or suppliers, we were careful to be helpful and consistent, because that’s part of our brands, too.

Hit multiple media
The classic tool of PR is the press release — the tool everyone knows to use, and the only tool that some people use. We did send out press releases to newspapers and TV — a lot of them, and daily — but we also worked with those outlets directly to arrange interviews with the builders and with members of the recipients’ extended family before, during, and after the build. We hired photographers and videographers to chronicle daily events. Twice a day, we uploaded this content to the portion of the Buckeye website that we created to promote the event, so visitors could follow the construction progress. We also wrote a blog for a local TV station’s website to chronicle daily events. Don’t just shoot out press releases. Use every medium at your disposal!

Create events around your event
It’s not always possible or appropriate, but some events are big enough that you can create supplementary events which have their own purpose and agenda, but which also help to fuel publicity for the main event. For the EMHE build, we planned and orchestrated a fundraising concert, various VIP activities, and are working on a wrap party for when the final show airs in November. Each sub-event had its own set of details to mind, but each also dovetailed with and helped to create excitement for the build itself.

This was a big big task, but it was also a big big success! One thing that’s definitely true with PR is that the more you put into it, the more you get out of it. Having solid objectives at the get-go and coming at an event from many different angles can make a big difference in your outcome.

[tags]PR, public relations, Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, EMHE, The Buckeye Real Estate Group, promoting large events, publicity[/tags]

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 7th, 2008 at 11:20 pm and is filed under PR and Publicity. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.