Here’s a great column by Al Ries in Ad Age about improving PR and advertising effectiveness by staging a regular event. It creates media coverage opportunities, however, with media staff cutbacks, new media and user generated content will become even more important to create buzz.
Remember when a political party used to hold a convention to select its candidates for national office? Of course you don’t. Today, the candidates are already selected long before the convention starts. Then what is the function of a national convention?
Public relations.
More than 40 million Americans watched Barack Obama’s acceptance speech last Thursday night. That’s a larger audience than the Olympics drew on any given night and even larger than the season finale of “American Idol.” As an indication of the real function of a political convention, consider that some 14,000 journalists traveled to Denver to cover the activities of only 3,000 delegates.
