Dealing with the Media

After a negative experience several years ago with Top Gear, a popular automotive show, where they pretended that our car ran out of energy and had to be pushed back to the garage, we always carefully data log media drives. While the vast majority of journalists are honest, some believe the facts shouldn’t get in the way of a salacious story. In the case of Top Gear, they had literally written the script before they even received the car (we happened to find a copy of the script on a table while the car was being “tested”). Our car never even had a chance.

You can say the exact same thing that a journalist says about you. But, when you say it, you’re just puffing and selling. When the media says it…it’s gospel! [Nathan: I think Elon Musk has figured this out. Warren Buffett has also mentioned on several occasions how important it is to be careful with the media.]

My feature in The New York Times taught me something about getting covered in mainstream, national media. Anyone can do it, you just need to make national-level news!

Reporters, editors and journalists are constantly hungry for great stories to share, but, much to heir chagrin, much of what they’re pitched on a daily basis is either not big enough, not relevant enough or simply not real news. When they stumble upon or ferret out real news, it’s like a blessing. It’s makes their job so much easier.

It’s the same, by the way, with the emerging gatekeepers of social media. The top-diggers, stumblers, blogzoomers and so-on. They are on a relentless quest to deliver killer content to their followings and build their reputations as media-mavens. So, when you serve it up, packaged, well-crafted and ready to go…it’s like a gift!

How do you make national news?

From my experience getting into local media, I knew I needed a hook. But, this time, I needed one with national appeal. Something that could not only take my business to the next level, but be genuine news on a national level. And, then it happened.

It was like idea-manna from heaven!

I needed to tie some aspect of my business to news about a pervasive national desire. But, instead of waiting for something to come along, I decided to create it.

I knew, from my days in the fitness business and, heck, just from being alive in the United States, that, at any given time, tens-of-millions of people wanted to lose weight. I knew I could tie yoga to weight loss, it would not only be a slam dunk for my studio, but would be news on a national level.

And, that would not only be great for business, but, on a deeper, more meaningful level, it would introduce yoga to so may people who, but for this hook, would never have tried it.

So, I spent a bunch of time researching, looking for studies. I found books, articles and even videos that claimed yoga helped you lose weight. But, what was glaringly absent was actual research that proved the issue.

I’d found my opening. I needed to run the first-ever study on yoga and weight loss.

So, I approached the head of the human performance lab at Adelphi University. He giggled at first, but then told me to come in to run a pilot study to see if it was even worth running a full-study, expecting that to be the end of it.

I dropped by, got wired up and, 20-minutes later, turned to face the dropped jaws of all who were in attendance. Wow! The only question was how quickly I could get together participants for a full study. Part one accomplished, I’d set the wheels in motion to…

Create an event that was deserving of national-level media attention.

Now, it was time for part two. I didn’t have the money to hire any PR firms or publicists, the people with connections to editors and producers. Nor did I have any connections, myself. I needed to figure out how to…

Get the attention of top media.

I wanted this to run in fitness, not yoga magazines, since their reach was far wider.

So, I read the mastheads of the top 5 fitness magazines, got the names of the right editors and hand-delivered letters to them that

Revealed that we were secretly conducing the first-ever university study to measure how many calories yoga burned and
We wanted to offer an exclusive to the right editor.
Within hours, the then fitness director of Self Magazine called me. She wanted in. But, there was a problem…

The fitness director of the country’s top women’s fitness magazine wanted to actually participate in the study. She wanted to be a subject.

And, she wanted to be able to write about her experience. I knew that the university had strict rules about this, so, over a period of weeks, we negotiated her participation and she agreed only to release basic information and only after the university gave her the okay. (In fact, much to my surprise and the discontent of a number of participants, the detailed reports were never released to us, as I’d expected).

After much organizing (and cajoling yoga students to join in the experiment), the university conducted the study and the results were pretty eye-opening. That alone would’ve made for a great story and nice image-building for the studio.

But, the story doesn’t end there…

A few months before writing about the study, the fitness director called me to let me know she’d be including a small blurb in the fitness page. But, she was concerned about something.

The magazine had a giant national readership and very few of its readers would be able to actually get to the New York studio to try our style of yoga. She lamented about the fact that we didn’t have a video that she could recommend. Which is where it was time to take a giant leap o faith.

She wanted a video, I gave her one…even though none existed!

I told her that her call was quite fortuitous, because we were actually in post-production on a new video that would offer an adapted, more moderate variation of the sequence done on the study. She asked the name and I told her it was called Vinyasa Heat Live! She asked the price and I said it was $19.95. She asked where people could buy it and I told her it would be available at our website.

I hung up the phone, turned to my partner and said, “I don’t know how to tell you this, but we need to film, edit, produce and package a video in 8-weeks.”

It was a wild adventure, but with the help of friends, students and a friendly record label who let us license music for 100% back-end, we were able to get he first run delivered literally the day the magazine hit the street.

At first, orders dribbled in. But, within days, we were overwhelmed.

I never intended anything to happen, all I can tell you is why I think it happened. That being said, here is what I think: 

1. The internet at it's core is wires which are connected to things, therefore most of the attention of the internet is generated through introducing new and unexpected connections at great distances. If you are able to introduce two things that were once assumed to be far apart and create a connection you will spark the internet to revolve and build threads around it (going viral).

2. To create this, it is important to have the seeds already planted to two major areas of socialite interest (or emerging interest) especially for millennials who will kick start the distribution of the content. The seeds should be just under the surface of

3. Framing the message is critical so as to never reveal what your message is. This is not manipulative, it's just easier for people to come to your idea on their own accord (arguably no one ever thinks the same thoughts, they just think in the same direction). Think of presenting your topic as if you were were planting a garden for your idea/concept/product to exist. The garden should be mysterious and you should introduce attractive (sexually or financially) elements of it's messaging. 

4. Apart from sexuality, vulnerability is the currency exchanged on the internet. However, vulnerable people are not cool and uncool is not viral. To solve this dilemma you may have noticed many celebrities sing about or talk about a fictionalized version of themselves (slim shady and marshall, Jay-Z and Shawn Carter, etc). Create an alter-ego, and talk about him. Create his oddities. You must add personal traits of your own that make you very unique or different. Launching a camera app named "Wave" is a stupid idea, launching an app called "Nathan's Camera App" describing why you just made the app for yourself because of these things. And casually drop the fact that you live in a tree house. 

5. Ignore logos, design, fb pages, self promotion of any kind. The rest of the internet is doing that. When you are doing it right the engine will come to you. 

Off the top of my head and to get your head going here are areas ripe for "network effects". 

- Open marriage. 
- Violence as a form of political control. 
- Permanent effects of sweat lodges.
- Nootropics. 
- The power of lies. 
- Female masturbation. 
- The return of Christianity. 
- ADHD
- Robots to protect you from robots. 
- Anything about models in Asia 
- A pop-up cult in a box. 
- The positive effects of EDM.