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If your Video News Release isn’t real news, you’re wasting your
money.
You
want TV coverage.
It’s
great exposure, and can be key to launching your product or initiative.
Enter the Video News Release (VNR) – the TV news version of the
printed press release. Shoot footage. Record sound. Upload to satellite. And your VNR is instantly broadcast on TV stations in exactly the
markets you need to hit.
Or
is it? The fact is, TV
stations want news, not commercials. VNRs are supposed to look
like news, but they rarely do. Which is why so many VNRs get ignored,
instead of aired.
“We
only suggest doing a VNR if you have or we can figure out a real news
hook,” said 3D Partner Cindy DiBiasi. “It’s got to look like news,
sound like news and smell like news, or the stations won’t take it.”
New Trucker Rules Make News
Recently
we were asked to produce a VNR for the U.S. Department of
Transportation, Federal Motor Carriers Safety Administration (FMCSA)
about its new “hours of service” rules to combat truck driver
fatigue. FMCSA had a good news peg, but a challenging timeframe: they
called us Christmas week for a VNR that had to be transmitted by
satellite on December 31st.
As former TV news reporters, we approached the VNR as
a news report instead of a PR piece. We drove to a local truck stop and interviewed truckers, a state
policeman and, of course, the FMCSA administrator. We worked our news contacts to get dramatic video of highway
truck accidents, shot by real news photographers, and wrote the kind of
edgy, compelling copy that TV news producers covet.
“I pitched this story to both
weekend and weekday producers, which gave us two chances to get it on
the air,” said Jamie Moss, President of newsPRos, a
New
York area PR firm and 3D’s partner on this
project. “Also,
since producers are always looking for local angles on stories, you have
to really know their market before you pick up the phone to call
them.”
The result:
The story was picked
up by CNN, and major market TV stations like
Los Angeles, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., reaching an audience
of nearly 30 million people.
“We
had a critically important safety message that had to get out to the
trucking industry, truckers and the driving public,” said FMCSA’s
Dave Longo. “We were thrilled with the coverage and the quality of the
VNR.”
VIEW DOT Video News
Release: 56K
300K |
For more information on motor
carrier safety, click on www.fmcsa.dot.gov
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