Media Hook Examples Here are some "media hook" examples from the October 28, 2000 issue of The One Minute Marketer: The One Minute Marketer Quick Tip: Sending out a press release can be an effective way to get free advertising. Utilizing a "media hook" within your press release will dramatically increase the amount of newspapers, magazines and news portals that cover your story. Sending out a press release announcing the launch of your new pet supply website would hardly get the attention of the media. Plain and simple, it's just not newsworthy. Now let's add a "media hook" to get the attention of the press. Here's a fun one: We'll say that your pet supply website has a live video cam aimed at the cage of a large snake. The headline of your press release could read: "See Boa Constrictor eat a Live Mouse, twice/day on New Website!" Would the press pick up that story? Absolutely. Because this material is a bit lengthy for our ezine, which is billed as "The Quick Read Ezine," we have created this webpage to present the info. By the way, if you're not already subscribed to this ezine, you can do so here. EXAMPLE #1 A previous client was a distributor of beauty supplies. A run-of-the-mill press release announcing a wholesale website would hardly be a success. Our challenge was to create an effective media hook that could be used on the website and in a PR campaign. So we created a "Virtual Nail Makeover" webpage on their site. (this is the media hook) Visitors could choose from sets of hands with various complexion hands, including green alien hands, and then chose from over fifty nail polish colors. Clicking on the color would immediately paint the nails (we did this using Java, on the browser side, so the color change was lightening fast). Our press release headline was: "New Virtual Reality Website Lets You Get A Manicure in Cyberspace". The press release was a hit. Lots of print coverage, plus two live radio interviews with the company president. The second interview was broadcast on over 100 affiliate stations. We included a few jokes in the press release, so that the newspaper columnists had some good ammo for their articles. For example, after we mentioned the green alien skin hands, we quoted the company president as saying "We don't discriminate based on galactic origin." (this line was used in virtually every article printed) EXAMPLE #2 We created a "Dress Bill Gates" media hook for a client selling Microsoft related books on their site. Remember the childrens books with the pages cut in thirds... you can independently flip the head pages, body pages and feet pages? We did that online with Bill Gates! You could dress him in a cowboy hat, a fireman's body and a ballerina tu tu. Or how about a football helmet, a buff muscle body, and ice skates. Fun. The press thought so. Here's a real chance to have fun with your web marketing! All right class, now get your creative juices flowing. There are lots of possibilities for media hooks for virtually any type of website. Some hooks may be easier or harder to implement... do what's best for you. A media hook could be as simple as a photo of two popular celebrities on a secret date, or as complex as our Dress Bill Gates. Games, puzzles, treasure hunts, Porsche Give-A-Ways, or whatever... if it's got sex appeal with the media, you're in! Blast my website announcement to 1,935 Radio stations, over 1000 Cable & TV Stations, over 100 News Syndicates, over 3,000 Newspapers and over 1200 Magazines Blast my site announcement to the 100 hottest media outlets including Internet.com, WIRED, and Yahoo Internet Life Blast my classified ad to 44,211 free ad sites Get paid 50% commissions from the #1 reseller program on the Internet!!