Five Things I Wish Every Advertiser, Marketer, And PR Pro Knew

A few weeks ago, one of my recent students asked me if there is anything I wish I had taught but never got around to teaching. I thought the question was pretty funny. I told her I had ten years of material.

In truth, ten years of material is a pretty conservative estimate but not because of the quantity. The way I see it, there is never any shortage of material as long as the instructor continues to explore, learn and grow. Ideally, they will with one foot in academics and one in the real world but sometimes one or the other will suffice. No one ever wants to feel dusty or complacent unless they've given up.

Eventually, I settled on five things I wish every advertiser, marketer and PR pro knew because I think all of us, at one time or another, grows weary of watching people fail. That's the way marketing works. You can put in hard work or learn the hard way.

• A Content Strategy Is Not A Marketing Strategy. As content marketing has become a dominant digital marketing tactic, more businesses want to create elaborate content processes, build massive audiences, and become perceived as industry experts. But sometimes you have to ask to what end.

Dial back the meaning of a marketing strategy a few years ago and you might find a creative team tasked with expanding the dandruff shampoo market among men. You might remember how they did it too. The original advertisements showed men in dark suits with their shoulders dusted with flakes, creating a compelling reason to look for the problem and find a solution. Head & Shoulders.

• Breaking Through The Clutter Means More Than A Clever Message. Everywhere you look, marketers want to convince clients that brand visibility, original communication, and writing tips are all they need to succeed. But sometimes marketing means innovation at the product and service development level.

If you operate a lemonade stand on a block with five more lemonade stands, sometimes you have to stop pushing the pink and break open a box of sugar cookies. That is how Federal Express got its start. It started as a small Memphis-based package handler that won with the promise of delivering parcels overnight. So while everybody else talked a good game, they went out and did something.

• Following The Leader Will Make You A Follower. There are plenty of reasons that marketers and advertisers are always looking for best practices, case studies and trends to follow. Sometimes people are looking for new ideas. There is nothing wrong with that. But sometimes people waste time on easy.

If you have ever revisited the book In Search of Excellence: Lessons from America's Best-Run Companies, you know what I mean. It used to be one of my favorite books. There are still some good ideas inside, many of those business aren't considered the best run companies anymore. While everyone was busy trying to follow their lead, someone else invented better operations and opened new markets.

• It's Not Who You Know, But Who Wants To Know You. Given some estimates attribute 60-80 percent of job placements to personal relationships, one might assume that the old adage that who you know really is more important than what you know. But that's not entirely true.

The key word in the compound phrase "personal relationships" is "personal" and not "relationships," which suggests the size of the network is less important than the depth of the connection. People who boast about being connected or treat their network like a commodity almost never come through. It's the people who don't talk about who they know that are more likely to surprise you.

• Stating The Obvious Is One Step From Redundant. Everybody loves to talk about elevator speeches and how to fix them. That might be reason enough to toss your elevator speech out the window. You can say something a million times and even lace all those SEO links with all the right terms, but so what?

Every time you introduce yourself as a noun, the person you're speaking to asks themselves if they need one. Do I need a plumber? Do I need a social media expert? Do I need an advertising agency? Maybe it would be more worthwhile to conjure up a different question inside their heads. Or, better yet, keep your mouth shut and let them tell you what they need.

Incidentally, Michael Port recently reinforced this last point in his book Book Yourself Solid Illustrated. He sent me a digital version a few weeks ago, but I felt it was too weird to publish my review while I was being swept away by life. The review is mostly written. I'll probably add it next week unless someone wants me to write about something else. Maybe I'll have time to make a new masthead too.

Finding Creativity: The Path Of One, Some, And Many

Author Geoff Livingston published an interesting conversation starter yesterday. It weighs individual creativity against groupthink merit. He cites collaborative cultures repeal creativity as part of it.

His post struck a chord with me for two reasons. The most obvious reason: because I've invested the last 26 years of my career playing in the "one, some, many" field of communication despite being one of those quiet, introverted people he talks about. The least obvious reason: I'm struggling with the creative-collaborative dilemma on one of many projects I'm involved in right now. And it's a killer.

Before I share the dilemma, let's define the terms. What is "one, some, many" creativity anyway?

The Creativity Of One. 

This is the genesis that Livingston is talking about in his post. It's an individual who, regardless of what other people are doing, quietly and deliberately dreams something up. You know ones/individuals who do it too.

They are every creative person for whom history has preserved a place. Authors like Zora Neale Hurston, Charles Bukowski, Jack Kerouac. Photographers like W. Eugene Smith, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Diane Arbus. Artists like Vincent Van Gogh, Paul Gauguin, Jean-Michel Basquiat. Musicians like John Lennon, Gustav Mahler, Poly Styrene. Business people like Henry Ford, Steve Jobs, Richard Branson.

Sure, some could argue that they weren't alone. Several of these creatives were inspired, influenced, or received input from other people too. So what? Individual creativity doesn't necessitate isolation from the world. It means you capture a unique perspective and are the master of how you present back.

Individual creativity is where I feel most at home, even if I rarely have time to explore it. It was how I wrote The Everyday Hound, produced Ten Rules Every Writer Needs To Know, and created The Last To Know (scroll down for the mention), an interactive literary piece for an art exhibition in 2000.

It's a very scary place to be until you learn to be fearless. Once you're done, people accept it or reject it. But even if they reject it, you have to remember that you are the only person who can validate it. Art doesn't need popularity to be art. It doesn't even need popularity to be "good" art. Art is art.

The Creativity Of Some. 

This is where I spend most of my time and it's a mixed bag. Mostly, creative people spend time when they cannot do (or don't have time to do) everything that needs to be done alone.

When we interview bands at Liquid [Hip], we often ask how they compose and collaborate. And while their answers are as varied as the music, most of them work just like people do in the commercial field. Somebody on the team comes in with a concept. Everyone else builds onto it, but anything that strays too far from the vision is abandoned.

When the work comes together brilliantly, it is one of the most rewarding experiences in the field. It's sometimes more rewarding than going solo because the enthusiasm for the outcome is shared. Teamwork rocks when you have the right marriage.

But that is the rub. The marriage isn't always one of your choosing. It's arranged. And as an arranged marriage, you don't always know who you will marry or how long it will last. The relationship could last a lifetime or it could be over in a few short and painful hours. It depends on the people and sometimes quantum physics. People carry a lot of baggage around, from apathy to egotism in any creative field.

All the while, someone else — whether it's a publisher or client or label — is busy taking notes and is ready to move in ideas. And that's when things become even more dicey; novices with big concepts.

The Creativity Of Many.

If you ever want to expedite the path toward groupthink, be successful without balls or be talentless with the need for a built-in excuse. While some of the most visible global social campaigns I've worked on were orchestrated on the creativity of many scale, the trumpet of togetherness hits many bad notes.

While Livingston is right, creativity needs circulation or else the artist will be missed, it doesn't mean the master is the masses. Classic works are often unpopular before they become timeless. And popular works are frequently elevated to their own eradication. Crowds are fickle beasts until they know better.

As much as many social networks and program developers have been waving around the "creativity of many" mantra as the new Kool-aid, I can't help but notice that the most successful social platforms listen the least. They have become so standard that people use them even when the networks abuse them.

Meanwhile, the graveyards of dead, buried, and long-forgotten networks that used to populate the net are attracting a steady stream of ghouls on their last breaths. The most common cause of these catastrophic illnesses is adding an abundance of crowd-sourced features someone could not live without.

It's not always the masses who do the deed either. By committee creativity is often an oxymoron when the marriage is made up of more than one partner or no definitive head of household. In a strategic setting, we might illustrate a big arrow pointing one direction with thousands of little arrows pulling in whatever direction suits them.

Trust me here. Great platforms are not crowd-sourced. They are either the work of one or the healthy marriage of a team much like a band. The audience might be invited to make requests, but the real talents know which songs not to cover. That kind of crowd participation only works in karaoke bars.

All Three Are Manageable, But Not Simultaneously.

It might seem like I'm down on the whole crowd-sourced creation thing, but that's not true. The secret is that whatever creativity path you've set out on has to have a purpose, with everyone in agreeance.

Then people have to be honest and to stick to it. You can tell who doesn't. Bands break up all the time, which has no reflection on their individual talents. Many go off to launch better solo careers or develop new relationships that elevate them to the next level. The same holds true in the commercial field.

My project dilemma is exactly that, it changes creative paths like Bartholomew Cubbins changed hats. The first three marriages were golden, but the fourth was rather rocky because the programmer was a solo artist despite saying the opposite. It tipped the entire job in an odd direction of crowd-sourcing.

And that's fine, I suppose, if you like pop karaoke with hard rock drums, and the manager taking country song requests from whatever audience happens to be in the room. It does make me wonder though. Where are the programmers who enjoy playing in a band (besides their own) without the new accountability crutch of crowd-sourcing? We need more Warhol and Basquiat collaborations.

Writing By Rubrics: Painting By Numbers

One of the growing trends in education is the rampant application of rubrics, starting around middle school. The concept behind the rubric is that it sets the criteria that students will be graded on, gives the teacher an easy way to communicate assignment expectations, and provides a fill-in-the-blank outline for students.

As an instructor, I mostly like them. As a writer, I absolutely hate them. 

If there was ever a great tool that elevates and diminishes writing at the same time, it's the rubric. It elevates boring writers because it explicitly lists everything that they need to include. It absolutely demolishes writing because it sucks passion, creativity, and critical thinking out of good ones. 

My son brought a rubric home the other day, which piqued my interest because I'm also teaching Writing For Public Relations right now. It also got my interest because he was struggling with it.

The persuasive writing rubric began with a top-down outline of fill-in-the-blanks: introduce with a hook, opinion, or thesis statement; write three paragraphs, with each paragraph focusing on one point; conclude with restatement, summary, and call to action. Then it listed other elements: at least one expert testimony, one concession, 2-3 qualifiers, one cause and effect example, one rhetorical question, and a "statistic." Check for an effective use of voice, transitions, spelling, grammar, and format. 

Do you know what the rubric reminded me of? Paint by numbers. 

Sure, I'll concede that I cannot teach people to write like I do. Some writers do. Some don't. The best of them all develop their own approaches, which tend to be as varied and interesting as individuals. 

My personal process is self-developed. I research as much as possible about a subject, develop a big picture composite of everthing, and grab a hook out of the ether of it all. And then I write, allowing its direction to carry me along, sometimes stopping to pursue a discovery, question, pattern, contrast, or something I stumble upon along the way. And when everything clicks, it virtually writes itself. 

I know when I'm in that space because even though I don't have the benefit of an old Remington typewriter, the weight of my fingers on the keys is loud enough to turn heads. Maybe that's why I consider writing a contact sport whereas rubrics feel more like fuzzy ad-libs.

It's also why my son was struggling. They gave them the blanks to fill in but not the thought process to do it. And at the rate he was waffling, the project was never going to happen. He needed a process.

How to transform a stupid rubric into the process that writing is meant to be.

I told him to forget about the rubric on the front end. And then I gave him a process that would guide him to complete his assignment. Once he had a draft, he could go back and attempt to stick all those nonsensical mandatories that the rubric instructed — at least one "statistic" and whatnot. 

1. Establish A Thesis Statement. He already knew what he wanted to write about so he was done before he started. He wanted to write about why returning to the moon is a good idea. Professional public relations practitioners might think about something else — what is the objective of the communication. 

2. Research For Facts. Then I told him to research as much as he could, writing down and organizing notes under various subject headers — education, energy, economics, etc. I suggested he shoot for ten. The same might apply to writing a news release or some other piece of communication.

3. Prioritize And Analyze. Since he was writing an essay, I told him to look over everything he found and cut out the chaff. He needed three or four support paragraphs, which meant he could prioritize the three or four strongest research areas. The same applies to writing for communication too. 

4. Flesh Out The Facts. While one might assume that his notes would make it easy, I told him not to make assumptions. If any one paragraph raised more questions than it answered, he needed to find more facts. And while he was at it, he could scan the rubric list to make sure he hit all the points. 

5. Find The Lead. Based on the content of his essay, his lead materialized. When I wrote my own piece on the subject, mine centered around the inexplainable defeatist mentality that had embraced so many who liken the idea of a moon colony to wasteful spending and science fiction.

6. Write The Conclusion. This was the one area where the rubric was sort of right. The best conclusions usually summarize, restate, and provide some semblance of a call to action. Tying in the introduction can be a good idea too, assuming it fits. Most people don't struggle with conclusions, unless their entire body of content is weak. However, I sometimes wish writers would sweat the conclusion a little more; weak conclusions are like movies that don't wrap themselves up. They leave you hanging with nothing. 

My son found the process much easier to manage than the empty ad-lib. He also learned more than his essay would teach. But even more than that, the process helped him learn what a rubric cannot teach. It will help him find his passion in his subject, much like painters find a passion in their art beyond numbers and colors or writers discover the good and bad of applying algorithms to everything. 

Hopefully, these six steps will help my students too. We'll see on the next assignment. At minimum, I hope it changes the only stake many public relations pros have in any assignment (in class or at work): get it done and fire it out along with the other 4.3 million news releases that are distributed every day. Of course, there is one bright side. News releases used to pile up in landfills. Now it's just the Internet.

Minimizing Test Variables: For Better Marketing

While larger marketing campaigns might include varied offers (e.g., A, B, C) relatively few marketers attempt to use scientific models to conduct marketing research. If they did, they would have clearer picture of consumers, especially online consumer groups or communities.

So why don't they? The most common reason is time, as any effective study group only tests for one variable at a time. Since most marketers do not have patience for true scientific models, they tend to test for multiple measures at one time or split variables (A, B, C) among demographics that they hypothesize are more likely to respond favorably to each variable.

An historic case study regarding mixed variables.

Unfortunately, mixing variables can have adverse or disastrous results. Probably one of the most famous accounts is tied to a 1996 McDonald's campaign, which became one of the most expensive marketing flops in history. You can find some background about the campaign on Wikipedia or a reference to it at The New York Times. But it's not the whole story.

Prior to the launch of the Arch Deluxe, McDonald's had simultaneously launched various deluxe versions of its burger across the United States — including one I was directly involved with. Out West, there was no Arch Deluxe (at least, not before the national rollout of the Arch). McDonald's had marketed the California Deluxe, which was also an adult burger with different ingredients.

There were other regions with variations too. If memory serves me right, there were six regions (but I could be wrong here). And as much as the Arch Deluxe was test marketed in the Northeast, the California Deluxe was test marketed in primarily the West Coast.

Each test area also had localized campaigns, created by regional advertising agencies to market the burger. And the winner, determined by total sales, would be the one McDonald's would pick for a national rollout. The Arch Deluxe won, and none of the others were even mentioned again.

On the surface, it seemed to someone that the test market idea was a solid marketing approach. Until, of course, you consider the variables: different products, marketed to different test markets with different concentrations of population, using different messages (within McDonad's mandatories). Add it all up and the marketing study they created measured nothing, even though it had convinced McDonad's to invest $200 million into the campaign.

As a point of interest, the California Deluxe rivaled Big Mac sales in its test markets. But the smaller sampling size predetermined that the better burger was doomed out of the starting block.

A quick take on developing a better test market model, using the historic case study.

McDonald's could have created a different test model, but the timing to execute the campaign would have taken significantly longer. It could have introduced three burgers in one test market with a singular campaign asking people to choose. It could have rolled out one burger at a time in several areas across the United States. Or, well, any number of ways with an emphasis on minimizing variables.

It's one of the lessons marketers (and bloggers for that matter) would be well served to apply. In science, medicine, or psychology, for example, researchers generally create an experimental group (one receiving an independent variable) and a control group (one receiving a similar experimental situation, but without the variable), with the participants randomly assigned.

Provided there is no other tampering, the variable could be anything. It could be two products, one with an "improved feature." It could be the same product, with different creative campaigns. It could be a specific incitement offer. It could be the same everything, but tested in two or more different test markets. Or maybe two different price points. And so on and so forth.

In terms of social media, for example, narrowing the variable can help marketers determine what content different social networks respond to or the style of communication. (Managing several social programs, we've seen differences in each network community emerge over several months.)

The point is to narrow the measurable variables, which increases the reliability (the ability to get the same results in successive studies) and validity (the ability to measure what you want to measure). The benefit is increasing the return on investment by running continuous tests until patterns emerge.

In the case of the Deluxe debacle, for example, they might have found that people in the Northeast also preferred the California Deluxe (or one of the others) over the Arch Deluxe too. But ironically, no one will ever know. Instead, all they learned was the Arch Deluxe could not support itself nationwide.

Turning 20: Copywrite, Ink.

Copywrite, Ink. turns 20 in August. To put that in perspective, the creative computer of choice was a monochrome Mac Classic, preferably one with a flying toasters screen saver installed. Nirvana's Nevermind, led by the hit single "Smells Like Teen Spirit," became the most popular U.S. album of the year. And Tim Berners-Less had just announced the World Wide Web project.

The Cold War was over. The United States liberated Kuwait, and we entered a recession. Generation Xers were mostly pissed off.

I had already earned some agency experience. I worked at an agency and public utility while in college and living in Los Angeles and Reno. But even before I knew there was a communication field, I had done some freelance work right out of high school.

Ten Things You Might Learn After 20 Years With A Communication Firm.

1. People Are People. In working with, talking to, and interviewing some of the most prominent, influential, and wealthy individuals in the world and having the distinct pleasure of interviewing people whom others would consider nobodies, you eventually learn there is no difference between them. Both have invaluable insights and near-debilitating insecurities. The only time class, wealth, and status make a difference is when people allow their own sense of proportion to overshadow who they are, and that is a different problem all together. Treat people equally.

2. Own Every Mistake. Inevitability, you will meet business owners who have been taken advantage of or otherwise harmed by investors, clients, contractors, and employees. The truth is that every mistake directly links to the top, either in the decisions they make or the people they delegate those decisions to. More importantly, business isn't a science, which means there will be mistakes. Make them, own them, learn from them, and forgive them. You can't learn from mistakes you don't own.

3. Talk Is Cheap. Until it is written in a contract or cashed at the bank, promises are as tangible as the wind. Clients who promise the moon and the stars in exchange for breaks on the front end are disingenuous or delusional. The lesson here is simple enough. Treat those promises for what they are — an investment in someone else's business, budget, or career if they are a marketing manager — as much as your own exploration into an opportunity. Anything else is talk.

4. Everything Is Temporary. Companies grow, shrink, and change all the time. They will win, lose, rise, decline, and rise again. Never place too much emphasis on chasing after or catering to choice accounts at the expense of all other clients. The average account will stay with a good firm for four years (our average is significantly longer). Firms that feel secure are generally one change away from losing the account. It pays to value the time you have with an account, but not worship it.

5. Everyone Is Valuable. Everyone on your team is valuable. It doesn't matter who they are or what they do: volunteer, freelance, part time, full time. The person who cleans the office is just as important as the person who lands the account. Likewise, employees are valuable but they are hardly invaluable. Much like most accounts do not stay with one firm forever, neither do employees. Make the most of the time you have them aboard.

6. Offices Are Overrated. While some professionals excel in offices and it's worthwhile to maintain them from time to time, they aren't necessary for the success of a communication firm and can sometimes be a liability in terms of overhead. For anyone working out of a home office, recognize the only people who frown on it don't have enough experience to know that many journalists, musicians, producers, radio talk show hosts, business people, investors, executives, and like-minded professionals do most of their work from home offices. Do what works for you for now.

7. Planning Is Critical. Persistence and perseverance alone won't ensure survivability. After a firm becomes solvent, look to create contingency plans. Most agencies and firms fail, specifically, because their operations are based exclusively on accounts, which requires them to hire and lay off based on those accounts. Several agencies shuttered up in the last few years because of it, especially those tied to specific industries. Diversify industries, locations, and revenue strategies. Keep the faith for the best while planning for the worst.

8. Give Back, Not In. One of the smartest things any firm can do is align with nonprofits, giving them the opportunity to make new connections as well as support their community. On the flip side, giving back does not mean giving in or fooling yourself into believing you have ownership. Recognize when any commitment begins to take a negative turn and then walk away. Politics is a sure indicator. Business owners don't have time for it, whether it's a nonprofit or professional organization and participation can adversely affect all those connections when board leaders or executives split the group.

9. Politics Is Baloney. Firms need to be vigilant in keeping pace with politics to prevent unneeded regulations, but never let politics dictate the company's mission, vision, or values. Politics is largely a different world in that success has everything to with electability and almost nothing to do with accountability. Besides, any wagon you hitch your star to is only as good as the next election. Other than making a few contributions, it's best to stay as far away from it as possible and keep most opinions close to the vest. The person you insult over political differences could have been your client.

10. Social Media Is Social. When you make connections online, they are just as valuable as any you make offline. And because of this, they deserve the same reverence. Some communication professionals try to separate the two, but only because they have yet to learn that some of the best and brightest connections you make will never be tied to geography. They're not. It ties directly back into #1 above — if class, wealth, and status are meaningless, how you meet someone is even more so.

There are dozens more than those I've listed here, but they came to mind. So what's next? Nobody really knows the lessons they might learn along the way except for the ones they need to learn. For right now, we're satisfied working with two startups on their near-term launches, developing our alternative review site, and nurturing relationships with select clients, colleagues, and friends (maybe you too). And then, of course, there are a few personal projects always simmering. Other than that, we're grateful (and I'm grateful) that Copywrite, Ink. has crossed the 20-year mark.

Getting Noticed: Top Five Ways To Get Media Attention

Everyone seems anxious for publicity these days. So much so that Patrick Garmore published 109 ways to make your business irresistible to media on Copyblogger. Some of those ideas might work, but Garmore curiously left off the top five.

What's more, none of the top five really require social media (but social media will give you an attention-getting boost). So much so, there is a good chance you will be booked on talk shows for weeks, even if you have never developed any relationship with the media before. So can you handle the truth?

The truth is that all of these proven publicity tactics are so effective that most public relations professionals will never present any them. Why not? Because they just don't know they exist. And, because it demonstrates just how easy it is to drive hits on YouTube and land national news coverage any time you want.

Top Five Ways To Get Media Attention And They Never Grow Old.

1. The Streak. There is nothing more effective than streaking at a sporting event. It's guaranteed to make the evening news and generally draw more than one million hits when it lands on YouTube. Just remember to wear a hat, especially one that can be easily identified with your business.


Planning for a streak session requires just enough exercise to outrun security and the price of admission to a sporting event. Add two or more people to the streaking session for maximum impact. Risks associated with this stunt include angry players, fans, and the possibility of arrest.

2. The Shoe Toss. Originally made famous at the expense of President Bush, the shoe toss remains one of the best ways to gain not only media attention locally but also around the world. It all just depends on the prominence of the person you toss the shoe at or how prominent you might be. The original shoe tosser was thisclose to sparking an international incident. Wow!


Planning for a shoe toss requires a balanced hand at picking the right shoe. The shoe needs to be soft enough not to cause any real damage, but aerodynamic enough to hit the target. It also helps to pick someone not as athletic as President Bush, given it made his assailant look so amateurish with two big misses. Risks associated with this stunt include criminal arrest, deportation, disappearing, and possibly being shot.

3. The Squirrel. Although some stunts have become cliche, waterskiing squirrels or other pet tricks still command attention. In some cases, pets don't even have to have talent if they are cute. But the waterskiing squirrels still rock on both counts, making them the leader of the pet trick pack.


Planning for a waterskiing squirrel or other pet trick is a serious commitment. It could take months or years before it pays dividends. On the plus side, as long as you are kind to your animals and they don't get hurt, there is no downside. They draw crowds when they are at live events and are good for one to three videos.

4. The Rant. While it helps if you are somebody, near incoherent rants from anybody are worth their weight In gold. And if you think the video rant can only be employed by the likes of Charlie Sheen, then you must have forgotten that the reigning rant champ (37 million views) was none other than Chris Rocker.


Planning for the perfect rant is not as easy as it looks. While it can be scripted, rants only work if they appear spontaneous. They also require one seamless take so prepare for several attempts before you get it right. The downside to the perfect rant is that the better the rant is, the harder it will be to top it. Sheen was smart to play his rants down just enough to give himself wiggle room for future toppers. Rocker, on the other hand, quickly lost the momentum.

5. The Flub. While it takes more effort to find the right venue, blowing an answer on live television or anything that looks remotely like a spontaneous man-on-the-street interview is big business. Case in point: While blowing an easy question is still preferred, Kellie Pickler makes her blown answer into a masterpiece as she throws out half a dozen unrelated answers that are also wrong.


Planning to toss out a series of stumbles and still maintain face can be difficult. This is why we picked Pickler as the best example. She has always managed to be graceful in never allowing what she doesn't know to outshine her talent. Prior to Pickler, Miss South Carolina had the crown (but she had more difficultly overcoming the moment).

So there you have it. Making yourself irresistible to the media has never been easier. In fact, we have a list of about two dozen more tactics that have proven effective time and time again. And, much like the top five above, none of them require any hard work like those offered up by Copyblogger. All it takes is the guts to seize your moment, assuming you really want it.

However, there is one primary caution to employing any of these proven publicity techniques: Never mix and match any of them. A rant followed by a shoe toss, for example, will make you look overly aggressive. Answering questions with dumb answers after streaking devalues the original scheme. And any of these actions around animals — such as poodle tossing or appearing naked with animals — will permanently damage your credibility. That said, have fun and get ready for your close up!

Copywrite, Ink. does not endorse any of these tactics per se. They should only be done by trained professionals who are cognitive of the risks, especially any of those that could result in serious harm or fatal embarrassment.