It seemed perfectly natural that the world’s first solar yacht builder would hire TransMedia Group for its launch at The Palm Beach International Boat Show.
Our PR firm has a history of introducing revolutionary products.
As the first oceangoing yacht fully solar sustainable and exclusively powered by solar energy, this beautiful, futuristic yacht built by Silent-Yachts fit the revolutionary category at sea to a tee.
Over the years, TransMedia Group’s product introductions have included AT&T’s first cell phones and video conferencing, the first car-wrapped rent a cars, gold vending machines and now the first use of blockchain technology by Timicoin.io to store and access medical records instantly from anywhere.
So now we’re introducing the penultimate in solar ingenuity, which resultedin a plethora of publicity, but not after a few anxious moments at the outset.
While some PR people hate to tell clients they’re wrong, or they screwed up, I’ve learned it’s better to tell them to play out the hands they’re dealt. Forget folding and going for the royal flush.
What rattled us was when our well-meaning client postponed the first TV interview we had set up because conditions weren’t exactly perfect. Here we were. A PR firm dealt such a great story. Adrienne’s first media pitch was a strike. A TV crew was dispatched and beat us to the scene.
But our client told them to come back later. They wanted to wash the yacht so it would look better on camera.
When I heard this, my head became a global warming center.
Here we got the largest network-affiliated TV station to senda crew right away to cover the first solar-powered yacht, but it wasn’t clean enough for the interview? The TV crew was told to come back later? What? Later?
Soon as I heard that I called the client and asked him why he would risk losing the first media opportunity just because conditions weren’t perfect? Was the story about the evolutionary power of solar tech? Or how clean was the deck?
I explained that in the PR world when you have a bird in hand, you take it, washed or unwashed.
This is because fidgety editors and assignment desk people can change their minds, schedules and priorities in a minute as they react to a myriad of events competing for attention.
What if there had been an explosion, a shooting, a plane crash? You think that crew would return? Not likely.My client realized he took an unnecessary risk by postponing the interview for a boat wash and thanked me for my sobering advice.
Fortunately there were no explosions, riots or shootings and the crew did come back. There was a happy ending. The PR launch was a buoyant success, including a multi-column story in The Palm Beach Post.
But my advice still stands. Never tell a bird in hand to come back later.
