A few months ago, one of my clients told me that he had a major competitor who was having delivery problems.  That gave rise to the question, “could we use publicity to take advantage of that weakness?”  Having had experience with this concept before, with a client who does specialty plastic coating, I knew it could be a great publicity opportunity and create a lot of sales.

For confidentiality reasons, I don’t want to be specific about the company and product involved, I’ll just say that the product was a specialty fastener and we decided that describing the product line and the fact that my client had a huge inventory, ready for immediate delivery, would be a terrific topic for a press release.  My publicity challenge was to describe the product and convey “adequate availability” in the photograph and press release.  As always, I had to focus on what editors would want to know for their readers.  It had to be newsworthy.

The bottom line turned out better than expected.  We were successful at getting publicity for these fasteners in some key publications and websites and as a result, two significant distributors for my client’s major competitor jumped ship and joined forces with my client because he had product availability.  They’ve already begun placing significant orders!

So, product publicity isn’t just about product features.  Check with your sales department, it can also be about many other related topics, even product availability.

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