The presidential campaign season starts earlier and earlier every four years. And when the major national media airwaves are filled with talk of who is running, who is not running, and the controversy of the day, it can be tough for PR pros to find room on the air for their clients. A well thought out pitch about a client with great industry expertise on a story with major national implications will be tossed to the side if Donald Trump sends a tweet that may or may not have insulted someone.
Sometimes the best approach may be, “If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.” That’s why a smile came to my face last week when I saw this story on the Today Show where a Hollywood stylist offered suggestions for new hairstyles for Donal Trump. It was topical. It was cute. It was fun. And it gave that stylist a ton of credibility.
And it reminded me of some very similar work INK did during the 2008 presidential campaign with our client Hair Club (it used to be Hair Club for men, but a huge chunk of their customers are women so they just called it Hair Club). While there was no one with the crazy hair of a Donad Trump in the Republican presidential primary race, there were a few candidates with notable hairstyles: some good (Mitt Romney, John Edwards), some not so good (Rudy Giuliani, John McCain). We decided to offer Hair Club’s chief hair surgeon up as an expert who could talk about how each candidate did their ‘do, and what improvements might be made. Not only did our expert have good advice for McCain and Rudy, he also made a bit of news by suggesting that Mitt Romney colored his hair. It became such a story that the Romney campaign actually issued a statement saying the former governor did NOT color his hair.
We got some great coverage out of the controversy, including articles in the Wall Street Journal and a live interview on Fox News. It was a great way to insert ourselves into a hot campaign that was getting lots of coverage and offering some fun insight that the media would eat up.
We got some other cool coverage for Hair Club as well. Click here to read the full case study.
