Last night I was watching the classic “Don’t Tell Mom The Babysitter's Dead” starring Christina Applegate and I realized she was the original Project Runway. Sue Ellen (Applegate) took staid and boring uniforms and turned them into high fashion taking a dying company and giving it new life. She had a rare moment in life where vision and opportunity allow for great achievement.
It got me thinking about innovation and how we see new businesses and new ideas and think, “Wow! That is innovative! Why didn’t I think of that?” We see businesses succeed every day because they tapped into a previously untapped market and have reaped the rewards. Whole Foods back in 1980 was just a natural food grocery in Austin, Texas looking to serve a niche market. Well that niche market grew and spread across the country and now Whole Foods has 187 stores nationwide.
Successful businesses do not happen overnight, they are the result of a lot of hard work and consistent building on top of past successes to even greater success. There is no magic bullet, formula or one media placement that will make a business a success instantly. Pierce Mattie has worked with clients that get that and those that don’t.
Clients that get it understand that exposure in the media is a process that takes months and years to achieve the desired brand image and awareness. These clients work with their PR agency to give them the tools needed to develop a media campaign with story angles, facts, statistics and financial figures. You can’t get media coverage if you don’t have anything to say. And it helps if what you do have to say is edgy, provocative, and a whole lot competitive. When clients talk about why their product is better than anything on the market and why, editors listen. A brand that throws out statistics on shopping trends and needs in the market that they are addressing better than anyone else, editors listen. A brand that just says the same thing as everyone else and expects to get coverage simply by being in business will not get the attention of the media.
Pierce Mattie publicists are asked daily to help brands be innovative and to keep ahead of the competition through publicity tactics and marketing initiatives. They want to be the next Whole Foods or Estee Lauder, innovative companies that have developed their market and attended to the unique needs of their customers to create empires. Neither was an overnight success. Each had a vision and a series of small opportunities that they built upon every day to be successful.
What can small brands with dreams of greatness do? Well, they shouldn’t sit and wait for an opportunity to come to them or for their publicist to singlehandedly make them famous. The secret is to have vision, patience and the ability to seize opportunities no matter how small. We can all hope for the one great big opportunity, but the truth is that these moments rarely happen and can’t be forced. What we can do is keep on trend, keep up with the competition and hope that our great moment comes. To partner with your marketing and public relations team to be savvy, prepared, know your industry, and poised for greatness.
Posted by Serge Gurin on October 9, 2006 1:21 PM
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