Time to be Trendy
What do car leases and winemaking franchises have in common?
They’re featured on the front page of the business section of Sunday’s Denver Post. And they’re good examples of trend stories — a great way to make news that often gets overlooked by people looking for ways to get attention for their story.
According to the Post, car leases are becoming harder to get and more expensive. And it says winemaking franchises are a “fast-growing industry trend” that’s started to take hold in Colorado.
An editor once told me his newspaper loves trends and added, only half jokingly, “a trend is anything with at least three plot points.” My experience is that most news organizations love trends. They love them even more if you can help them tell their audience how to take advantage of it or avoid being hurt by it.
One nice thing about many trend stories is that you can use data your organization has that no one else can duplicate.
An example I often quote in workshops is State Farm, which gets huge news coverage every year with its list of the 10 most dangerous intersections in the United States. They”re almost guaranteed coverage in every city with an intersection on the list. And they localize the story even further by releasing lists of the 10 most dangerous intersections in individual states. They’re also virtually guaranteed coverage in every city with an intersection on those lists — which translates into stories all over the country. Information for the releases comes entirely from claims filed by the State Farm clients.
And someone from State Farm often gets quoted giving advice for how to avoid accidents.
What trends are there in your industry that you can turn into a story?
That’s my two cents’ worth. What’s yours?
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Tags: media minute, media relations, monday morning media minute, trends