Entrepreneurial Community Events and Publicity Stunt Strategies

One of the best things you can do for your tiny business in your local town or community is to hold fundraising events for local charities. By aligning yourself with the movers & shakers of philanthropy in your area, it will do your business brand name nice. Of work, like anything else there is a right way & a wrong way to go about doing this. Hosting publicity stunts often makes sense to grab media headlines, in the event you do it correctly & for the right reasons.

Have you ever noticed that back when you were in high school the class clown was always getting lots of laughs? That person would be great as a marketing coordinator or an entrepreneur trying to do a publicity stunt, they have all the tools they need, & they have been practicing since they were in high school, how can anything go wrong? Well, as in high school the class clown often got themselves in trouble, which hurt their advances & their grades.

It is simple to burn media contacts with publicity stunts which backfire. It is also simple to burn friends who are the movers & shakers of the town, perhaps City Council members, school board members, or presidents of service clubs. In the event you do this a few times, you'll be sorry. Some say that all publicity is nice publicity & whereas that might be true, bad publicity is not  as nice as great publicity.

A publicity stunt which does not go off well can deteriorate a brand name, & cause people not to take it seriously. It also causes consumer miss trust when it is done for the wrong reasons which are often transparent. Worse, a poorly done publicity stunt which backfires, will take its toll on future community projects & fundraising efforts, which may be on the up & up. Then there is the media, which doesn't like to get used, or show up at an event, realizing they were set up so the entrepreneur or company could get their name in the paper.

Most tiny business entrepreneurs who host community events & attempt publicity stunts learn through trial & error. & I suppose that is all right, but as the founder of a franchising company I always worried about this because it was our brand name that was at stake, not the franchisee's personal reputation. So a word of advice; hold your community events for the right reason, don't take advantage of your friends or the media, & always be a team player when it comes to spreading around the accolades. think about all this.