public relations

Square peg for a round hole

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If you live in Toronto, you may have noticed that the city, or at least its politicians, suffer from extreme New York City envy. Toronto copies New York’s tourism campaigns and slogans, follows all NYC trends, and constantly compares itself to the Big Apple.

Back in 2002, Toronto unveiled its newest slab of concrete called “The Yonge-Dundas Square”, which was modeled after New York’s Time Square.

From the “ydsquare” web site: “A unique aspect of the Square is that it is not operated like other Civic Squares … City Council decided to … operate Yonge-Dundas Square as a business venture.”

And this is where the point to this post begins:

The Yonge-Dundas Square has become a magnet for public relations and some other media events.

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Ready for your close-up

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I photographed a week-long tennis tournament last week for the event organizers. The media relations folks were, as always, fantastic. They were friendly, helpful and always available. They answered every question, sorted out every problem, had all necessary tournament information available and arranged every interview. They even handed out free pizza and beer at the end of each day. On very hot days, they’ve been known to hand out ice cream!
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Release This

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Why do fax machines still exist?

I suspect it’s because of the non-stop flood of press releases sent everyday to newspapers and other publications. E-mailed releases exist but these risk being redirected into an editor’s junk folder or getting lost in the deluge of other e-mails that an editor receives each day.

For some (most?) publications, press releases are a blessing. They are a source of free content and who doesn’t love free?

Smart businesses, public relations agencies and other marketing companies should be taking advantage of the weak economy which is forcing all newspapers to cut back. Now is the time to produce quality, newsworthy and timely releases for their business or clients.
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Say Cheese

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So who doesn’t love having their picture taken?

Getting your “official” portrait taken usually starts when you’re one day old, courtesy of the hospital photographer.

This is followed by thirteen years of annual school pictures. Although some grade schools now have “picture day” three times per year.

If you played sports or were involved in any other organized activity when you were young then you had probably many more official pictures.

When you add graduation and prom pictures, driver’s licence photos, passport pictures and maybe even a few police mug shots :-) then you’ve had a lot of official portraits made. And many of those probably had fake, forced smiles.
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