Like I don't have to tell you, Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, marks the unofficial opening of the holiday shopping insanity. And tonight's Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) fish and goose soirée in New York City marks the unofficial opening of the CES promotional season.
All you company execs are busy planning your booths; all you retailers are plotting your escape to Vegas. We press people are preparing for the onslaught from public relations folks who want us to make appointments to see their client(s) at the show.
I know this is spitting into a tsunami, but — please, I'm begging you: don't call me. Don't email me. Don't send a telegram, a text message or a fancy invitation in a box filled with pom-poms, greeting cards with music-playing chips, airline bottles of Jack Daniels or any other not-as-clever-as-you-think come-ons. I don't make booth appointments. Unless you supply me with a Segway to traverse the acres of show floor between where I am and where you want me to be, I'll show up and visit you when and if I can.
Now let's discuss press materials. Here's the five bits all reporters need to cover your new products effectively:
1. A full spec sheet, separate from the press release.
2. A high-resolution digital picture.
3. Press contact name, phone number and email address.
4. Price.
5. Availability.
Seriously.
Price.
Availability
There is no fathomable reason for not including price and availability in your press materials, even if price and availability have yet to be determined. We are going to ask. You are going to tell us. Save us the time and trouble and include it, even if it's just "price and availability have yet to be determined." Press materials without price and availability are about as useful as an 8-inch floppy. No, less. An 8-inch floppy makes a lovely Frisbee.
But what I really want to talk about is softball.
Day Zero, the day before the show opens, is filled with nearly 12 hours of back-to-back-to-back dog-and-pony press conferences. Rarely is any real news revealed at these 45-minute "we had a great year last year and we're going to have a better year this year" snoozefests, packed to ballroom double doors with herds of press sheep grazing on shrimp, cantaloupe and chocolate chip cookies. Once the extolling of corporate glories is completed, we are herded into the next press pen. Baaaa! Baaaa!
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Your humble blogger pitching in the 1992 Chicago CES BASF v. Press softball game.
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Day Zero wasn't always this stultifying. For years, the day before CES opened, both in Vegas and Chicago, videotape maker BASF played the press in a raucous softball game. BASF brought beer, bases, bats, beer, hot dogs and sweatshirts (and beer). We carried our gloves and sneakers or spikes on the plane with us in case the airline lost our luggage. We taxied directly from McCarran to the University of Nevada, Las Vegas' athletic fields for the most anticipated CES event of the year. Even press people who didn't play showed up to shmooze, hoist a few cool ones and laugh at our out-of-shape shenanigans. No company dared schedule a press event before 4pm, and the game was a constant topic of conversation for the next three days.
But around 1995, BASF left the consumer electronics business. Goodbye Day Zero softball games. Hello Day Zero cattle drive.
Somebody, anybody: pick up the ball and sponsor a Day Zero softball game. I'll bet plenty of reporters would skip the speech-a-thons for an afternoon in the sun sipping brews, risking sprained ankles by unwisely sliding into second and the embarrassing strike outs. And don't forget the award ceremony trophies!
Sponsoring a softball game has got to be easier, cheaper and more attention-grabbing than 45-minute prompter and PowerPoint perambulations". Plus I'll bet the TWICE editors would love to put a sports action picture with a "Press beats [your company name here]" caption on the cover of the Day One show edition. But it's not whether you win or lose — it's how you sponsor the game.
