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Media Relations Group 2: All About MEdia for Neighborhood Longhorns
At the McCombs School of Business, students in Ben Bentzin’s marketing class spend a good chunk of the semester helping out local businesses with recently acquired skills. Banking off that premise, I geared my quickie media-relations workshop for those particular semester-long projects during two of Bentzin’s classes on Thursday.
I’m now tracking several students marketing/media relations groups. It will take a while to enter the reports into the system, but by the end of the weekend, they should be launched. I promise to follow them for at least a month.
As usual, each group of six or more students divided up the tasks of pitching me live — via Facebook, Twitter, e-mail, texting, imaging, phone and face-to-face — and I responded honestly as a working journalist.
Student Group: All About MEdia
Austin Client: Neighborhood Longhorns.
The Pitch: This group chose a nonprofit client that uses the charisma of UT sports to promote achievement in elementary and middle schools. “Are you a sports fan?” the clever marketers asked. Of course, had they been reading me regularly, they’d know the answer, but a good opener. Then they made an enticing pitch via various media: Interview Mack Brown, Colt McCoy and Quan Cosby during a “Lunch with the Coach” session.
Although I’d just met Cosby for the first time at the Beyond the Lights Celebrity Golf Classic, the chance to chat with Brown and McCoy is rare for a reporter who does not work for the newspaper’s sports department. And they are big names. I jumped at it. Only trouble — the lunch was the previous week, so the pitch missed its target. I hadn’t emphasized enough in the prep time that the subjects had to be entirely factual.
Hey listen, keep trying, guys. Good cause. Good celebrity gets. If you can get them.
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