We had a b-roll shoot yesterday for Lincoln Park Zoo. One of their gorillas, JoJo, is being moved to Brookfield Zoo as part of a breeding program, so LPZ leaders threw him a going away party.

Our job was to shoot some video and cut it together so that it could be provided to media outlets. It’s something we do occasionally, but I wonder why more companies don’t do this more often… especially in our digital age.

Let’s face it, the bigger the TV market your business is in, the less likely you are to have one of your events covered. Lincoln Park Zoo is legendary. When they hold a media event, they’re certain to get at least a little media coverage.

Despite that, they know they’ll get more if they make it easy on the media. Enter T60 and companies like us. We can provide professional video that’s broadcast ready.

The zoo sends out a news release with a link to download the video and tah-dah! Whether it’s a TV news organization or a blogger who uses video,  they now have all they need to do a story and they didn’t even need to attend.

My background is TV news, so I know what I’m writing about here. If you provide an assignment editor or producer with a relevant story, compelling video, and make it so they don’t have to devote a crew to shoot it… you just gave yourself a better chance of getting into the newscast.

Video news releases (VNR) are nothing new, but now they’re easier and less expensive. No need to print materials or burn DVDs (or video cassettes… yikes!).

Going digital means you have the ability to entice the media that much more.

–Tony Gnau

This entry was posted by Tony Gnau and is filed under Public Relations/Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.