The Charlie Sheen Method of Getting Publicity

We have all heard him and seen him: Charlie Sheen in his raw state of angst and anger. The rants, the insults, and the personal derisions leveled against his employer, Chuck Lorre, creator of the hit show, Two and a Half Men. Though it would be better described as notoriety, Charlie Sheen's recent public outbursts and displays can give us a few lessons on publicity, but not the negative kind.

Lesson 1. Make outrageous statements. Soon after getting locked out of the Warner Bros. studio, Charlie contacted radio stations and began to vent. Those vents were personal and offensive toward his employer. Yet they were provocative enough that they made everyone want to hear what he said.

Publicists create outrageous "headlines", but they are meant to grab the audience - not to insult or abuse. The eye-popping headline wants to pull you in order to engage and interface with you. Not push you away.

Lesson 2. Go on a press junket. Though Charlie already has the name to garner any media outlet he wants, he put himself on every network & radio program that would have him. I could not turn on the TV or go online without hearing about current Charlie's problems.

Publicists reach out to the media with relevant stories and current trends. Perfecting your pitch to the media can get you placed, and with patient persistence, combined with a developed relationship, you can become an "inside" source for a reporter. At this point, a press junket may not be too far-fetched.

Lesson 3. Show your "raw" side. Charlie's "big" interview aired on ABC's 20/20 where he smoked a cigarette, admitted he was on drugs, called the "Charlie Sheen drug", and exposed obviously erratic behavior. This was Charlie no-holds-barred, as he told his side of the story.

Good publicity tells your story. It is not about your product, service, business, stats, etc., but about the woman behind the success. We all are eager to know about, and root for, the journey you took to get from ordinary 9-to-5er to the wildly successful venture you launched.

In the world of celebrity, even bad publicity is considered "good" for public image. This is not the case in business. Smart marketing and branding garners good publicity. So when in doubt about your publicity campaign, take a lesson from the Charlie Sheen Method - and do the opposite.

How To Pitch Your Startup To The Press

Here's how most startups that never get written about approach reporters: 

 

Let's say you're working on a new payments system that is obviously better than PayPal in every way, and is therefore a lock to become a multi-billion dollar business within a few years. So, you punch 'PayPal' into Google News, and just like that, you have a list of people who have written stories about PayPal recently. Then you type up an email that starts with "I read your article about PayPal the other day. Very interesting! Since you're interested in PayPal, I thought you might like to know..." You paste in your standard pitch, then you send this email to everyone on your list.
The appeal of this system is obvious -- it lets you reach a lot of reporters in a limited amount of time. The trouble is that none of those reporters will read through this email. Don't waste your time trying to disguise a mass email as a personal one. Instead, use that time to identify one person you think should be interested, and actually write your pitch for that person.
Choosing a target
Avoid the temptation to pitch the person you'd most like to have write about you. Since the time you have to spend on this is so limited, you should instead focus on the person who is most likely to write about you. The way to figure that out is simply to read about your industry -- something you should probably be doing anyway.
Pay attention to who writes interesting things in your industry. If someone is regularly writing about your competitors, that person is presumably interested in what you do. When you are familiar with what someone is writing in general, you're much better equipped to pitch them then when you're referencing a single article.
Pitch a story, not your company
That your company exists is not, in itself, an interesting story. Your job here is to get your company into the news. But the reporter's job is to write things their audience wants to read. You know what sorts of stories this reporter writes. Think of a what a good story written by that person and involving your company might look like, and pitch that. (For more on that, this article by former TechCrunch writer Mark Hendrickson is well worth a read.)
The easiest way to do this is to set yourself up as an expert in your field. If you write interesting things about your industry, or provide interesting data, or are just available to say interesting things about it, reporters will want to talk to you and feature you in other things they write. That isn't as good as having a story written all about you, perhaps, but it gets your name out there, and makes your company and everything it does seem more newsworthy as a result.

Read more: bit.ly/g02BP5