Around Valentine’s Day of 2008, Melissa Cassera of Cassera Communications came up with this genius idea for her client – photographer Dennis Kelly.
Her team ran a special promotion seeking women whose husbands were overseas serving our country. As a gift idea, Dennis offered to shoot a portrait complete with hair/makeup donated by a local salon. He provided the sitting fee and one finished portrait to each woman for free to present as a gift. Because most packages would not arrive by Valentine’s Day, he also provided them a web-sized photo so they could email it to their loved ones and then have the framed portrait as a later surprise. The photography studio got a flurry of media attention and a good response, even from people outside of their local area.
Not only did this idea generate tons of interest for Dennis’ photography studio, but he was able to provide a wonderful Valentine’s Day gift to the husbands overseas who undoubtedly missed their wives. Another interesting point was that the promotion involved a local salon, which also benefited from this PR stunt via cross-marketing.
Have any great PR ideas that generated a lot of buzz? Share them here!
