REICH COMMUNICATIONS

What We Do: Rock, Ribs, and Ridges Festival

We''re handling publicity for the Rock, Ribs, and Ridges Festival, a weekend of southern rock and great BBQ.

Here's what appeared live on WCBS-TV 2 in New York this past Sunday.   

 

What We Do: Rock, Ribs, and Ridges

We'll be doing PR to promote the 14th annual Rock, Ribs, and Ridges Festival, a weekend full of great southern rock music and awesome barbecue in the western New Jersey hills.   

The festival is June 28-30.

More to come...

 

What We Do: National Passenger Safety Week

Kicking off the 3rd annual National Passenger Safety Week for The National Road Safety Foundation, partnering with We Save Lives. 

We're in the midst of a virtual TV tour, doing interviews encouraging passengers to speak up when in a car being driven unsafely. We've hit about a dozen markets so far, with another dozen to go including a live spot Monday morning at 9 on CBS 2 News in the nation's #1 market - NEW YORK.

We're also hitting Washington DC and other big markets including Baltimore, Columbus, Louisville, Richmond, Denver and more.

Here's a clip from an interview our client did with FOX 48 in Charlotte, NC.  Lots more to come. 

 

 

What We Do: Drive Safe Chicago

 

For the National Road Safety Foundation, we're launching the tenth year of the Drive Safe Chicago PSA Contest. 

Working with the Chicago Auto Show, we invite teens in Illinois and the surrounding states to submit ideas for a 30-second TV spot that focuses on driving safety.  The theme changes from year to year, covering distracted driving, drunk driving and speeding.  This year it's passenger empowerment -- encouraging passengers to speak up when in a car being driven unsafely.

Each year, we pick three finalists and then we have an Emmy-winning director work with them at their schools to make their scripts into finished 30-second spots.  The public then votes for their favorite on the Chicago Auto Show's Facebook page.

 

We announce the winner at the Chicago Auto Show and the winning PSA is played throughout the show on giant video screens at McCormick Place.  The winner also gets a $2,000 check. Runners-up get $1,000 and $500.

It's a great way to get teens and their families engaged in talking about traffic safety.

This year's contest just opened and deadline is Dec. 18.  For info and entry form, visit https://www.nrsf.org/contests/drive-safe-chicago 

 

 

What We Do: Distracted Driving Awareness Month virtual media tour

 

April is Distracted Driving Awareness Month and, for the National Road Safety Foundation, we put together a virtual media tour to talk about the dangers of distracted driving.  New estimates show distraction is a factor in as many as 30 percent of fatal crashes, meaning it kills about 14,000 people every year.

Working with Bob Thomas, we are in the midst of a virtual tour that's getting airtime on more than 30 TV stations in markets small and large, including New York, Miami, Washington, DC, Chattanooga, Charlotte, Buffalo, Albany, Sacramento, Richmond and more.

Here's a clip from a station in West Virginia...

Cracking the Code

 

So far, I’ve been reluctant to use QR codes.  I especially dislike being forced to use them to read the menu at a restaurant.  When faced with that situation, I always ask the waiter to bring me a printed menu.   

I have used QR codes in business, though, as another way to connect people to information from a client.  The other format is to use a bitly link to take someone to the client’s site, but that’s not always a simple matter from a cellphone.  That’s where QR codes come in.

I have seen QR codes used in TV ads from time to time – mainly in infomercials on cable.  But the mold was broken during the Super Bowl broadcast, when Coinbase, a cryptocurrency exchange platform, ran an ad that simply showed a QR code slowly moving around the screen.   According to reports in the trades, the ad pulled such a big response that the Coinbase server crashed because it got overloaded.

So, QR codes seem to work. They’ll likely become even more commonplace as more phones have the capability to use them.  More than 83 percent of smartphones today can scan QR codes, up from a bit above 52 percent only three years ago.  Industry experts say that number should hit 99.5 percent by 2025.

I guess QR codes are here to stay.

30 Seconds...Flush...$7 Million Gone

 

NBC announced this week that it has sold all its inventory of commercial spots for this year's Super Bowl.  Some advertisers spent as much as $7 million for a single 30-second ad.    

Yes, it's true that the game and all the hoopla that surrounds it gets big audiences.  And some of the ads get talked about and shown and re-shown online. But I wonder how many people actually see the ads. 

Commercial breaks are when many people make a run to the kitchen or a run to the bathroom.  Who stays to watch a 2- or 3-minute commercial break?  And of you do watch, how many actually remember any specific ad or who sponsored it.

I wonder what else might a business do with $7 million?  Lower prices?  Pay employees more?  Put some into programs that benefit people in need?

Just sayin'.

 

  

 

Common Ground

 

Lots of people watch the Super Bowl more for the commercials than for the game itself.  That might have been the case this year especially, with such a lopsided game.

That said, I didn’t watch any of the game or the commercials. But I did see one ad later online.  The two-minute Jeep ad, titled The Middle and narrated by and starring Bruce Springsteen, ran during the fourth quarter, when the score was already hopelessly lopsided.  I don’t know how many had already tuned out at that point, but those who stayed were treated to a beautiful ad that celebrated unity in America, focusing on the heartland.  The critics at Advertising Age gave it five stars – their highest rating, calling it “a work of art. One that, at some level, is meant to sell Jeeps. But a work of art nonetheless.”

The ad was groundbreaking just for being the first time Bruce Springsteen has done a commercial.  He certainly didn’t do it just for the money.

Despite the creative kudos, the ad seemed to cause some controversy on a few counts.  I took some time to read through the comments posted on the Jeep website.  Without doing a precise count, the general reaction seemed to be favorable,  But some of the negative response was pretty strong, falling along the same divisive political lines we’ve been hearing too much of for the past four years and, ironically, exactly what the ad was hoping to help us get past as a nation.

Some commenters objected to using Springsteen, since he’s been a vocal critic of the previous administration’s policies and rhetoric.

Others were upset with Jeep for talking about divisiveness and, specifically, for a reference to the “re-United States of America.”   I saw some comments that could have been lifted from the previous president’s tweets or from FOX News – rehashing phrases like fake news, the elite media, cancel culture, etc.

I find it ironic that these negative comments come from supporters of a president who never made even a slight attempt to bring the nation together, but instead constantly spewed hate toward those of us who didn’t support him.  This, while President Biden genuinely attempts to find common ground with those who didn’t vote for him -- the very common ground that the Jeep ad celebrates.

Maybe there’s simply no way to win with the extreme right.  I hope I’m wrong.

Click here to see the Jeep ad.  Listen for the words about common ground…

 

“It’s no secret…The middle has been a hard place to get to lately. Between red and blue. Between servant and citizen. Between our freedom and our fear.

Now, fear has never been the best of who we are. And as for freedom, it’s not the property of just the fortunate few; it belongs to us all. Whoever you are, wherever you’re from. It’s what connects us. And we need that connection. We need the middle. We just have to remember the very soil we stand on is common ground.”

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What We Do: Virtual Media Tour Gets Results

The quarantine during the pandemic has put up some tough new challenges to get PR clients into the news.

It's also opened some new opportunities, as shown by a virtual media tour we've been doing for The National Road Safety Foundation (NRSF). 

With Bob Thomas Productions, we've arranged virtual interviews via Skype and Zoom with 19 TV stations in markets ranging from smaller places like Joplin, Missouri to top markets including Washington, D.C., New Orleans, Cleveland, Nashville and Jacksonville... with more to come.

Here are two typical news segments -- Click to see spots from the CBS station in Cleveland and the CBS outlet in Bakersfield, Calif.

In normal times, Skype interviews would rarely be acceptable for most TV stations because of picture and sound quality and reliability.  But now we're accustomed to seeing interview guests and even reporters and anchors broadcasting from their living rooms and kitchens. 

Hopefully, whenever things get back to "normal," stations will continue to take interviews via the internet rather than the more costly and time-consuming traditional methods -- traveling cross-country for in-studio interviews or doing spots via costly satellite feeds.

For now, it's working nicely for us.

 

 

 

 

 

WhatWe Do: Drive2Life

For The National Road Safety Foundation, we promote the annual Drive2Life PSA Contest, which invites teens to give us their ideas for public service messages on safe driving issues.

This was the tenth year of the contest, which we developed, bringing in media partners Scholastic and Teen Kids News. The theme this year was seat belt safety.

Out of nearly 1,200 entries, we selected a concept by Florida teen Madison Henry.  She won $1,000.

Normally, in addition to the cash prize, the NRSF brings the winner to New York to work for 3 days with the Emmy-winning producers of nationally-syndicated "Teen Kids News" -- Alan Weiss Productions -- to script, shoot and edit the concept into a finished 30-second spot that airs on some 200 TV stations nationwide.

This year, the coronavirus pandemic made travel to New York impossible so the resourceful TKN team, led by director Alan Weiss and producer Marilou Yacoub, worked with Madision to produce the spot virtually.  Through countless zoom calls, Madison, Alan and Marilou worked with actors and crew in six locations in four states - New York, Connecticut, Florida and Texas.

After we saw the finished spot Tuesday morning, we arranged for Madison to show it live on "Good Morning Orlando" on FOX35, serving her hometown of Melbourne, Fla.  She also got a shout-out on a popular morning radio show and the local newspaper will be doing a story on her soon.

Great work, Madison.