The Tribune

By D’Arcy Rahming

You should strive to make your products and services newsworthy. If you say it, it is either based on sales or you are bragging, but when The Tribune or the BBC reports it, it is news, fact, and a positive affirmation for what you are doing.

Once it hits the newspapers, you are famous for that moment to the person who is reading it. By tomorrow, however, you will probably be forgotten. And no one wants to hear the exact same story over and over again, so you have to use news events as social proof. The question for members of the marketing revolution is: How do you take your 15 minutes of fame, when it happens, and stretch it further?

For example, last week was a great news week for the Olympic Committee and the Bahamas. The Queen’s Baton Relay appeared on a lot of news shows nationally and internationally. In some countries, the relay did not feature an Olympic sport or even a Commonwealth Games event. Instead, they featured things such as a run around the island or tracking mountain chicken frogs in Dominica.

I want to point out that this was an awesome time for any country to market its sport product. The Bahamian sports fraternity probably gave the Bahamas millions of dollars in free publicity.

This was very clearly orchestrated by our Bahamas Olympic Committee president, Wellington Miller; general secretary, Romell Knowles; and his executives, as well as the national federations and the Ministry of Youth, Sports and Culture. And it is not over yet. A DVD will be released, along with YouTube clips and a TV show, chronicling the entire Queen’s Baton Relay and the many athletes and members of the sports fraternity that took part.

My answer is that first of all, you make sure everybody has heard about the event once it happens. So you scan the newspaper or get a link to the YouTube clip where it occurred. Then you go to all your family and friends, and you send them e-mails. You post it on your Facebook page and any page that the event is associated with. Then you add it to all your literature. For example, all Bahamas Judo literature will now bear the tag: ‘As seen on the BBC World News’.

Next, as you have already sensitised people to your product or service, you follow up with an event, or a sale or something else appropriate. For example, on May 9-10, the Bahamas Olympic Committee will be hosting an art show at the K.G.L. Isaacs Gymnasium, along with a career day. The Judo Federation will have an international tournament on May 10 at the same location while the art show is going on. I’m sure you can think of many ways in which you can create an event off of your product or service, too.

• NB: D’Arcy Rahming holds an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. A lecturer at the College of the Bahamas, Mr Rahming has clients in general insurance, the retail, health and medical fields, sports federations and financial services. He is also treasurer of the Bahamas Olympic Committee. To contact him he can be reached at DArcyRahmingsr@gmail.com.