In follow up to my post about the little things that can help Internet startups with some basic PR efforts, this gem crossed my inbox. (Thank you Kyle) This story is PERFECT when discussing PR for startups. Look at the ambition.
In a nutshell: Chris Hedgecock, entrepreneur has a used car website called CarsForaGrand.com. "He bought a car for under $1,000 from the site and drove it coast to coast in an attempt to get some news coverage and visitors to the site. They were successful in appearing on a dozen news broadcasts and driving almost half a million visitors to the site in three weeks - all for free."
If this isn't a great example of having ambition and creative thinking for a PR strategy, I don't know what is. He had a friend who works in PR write up a press release. He then had another friend without ANY PR experience help with the outreach. (Not to kill my industry---but see? ANYONE can do PR!) They outreached to local TV stations. Talked to assignment editors. And then guess what happened? THEY GOT ON AIR.
As Chris says in the blog post: "if you have an idea get off your ass and just go for it. The worst thing that can happen is you will learn something new, and you might just succeed beyond your wildest expectations in the process."
It's a great quote to live by in general, but for timeliness and relevance sake---applies to if you want to go out and get attention to your startup company.
