It's funny the places you find opportunity for publicity. I recently had Jack Canfield (Chicken Soup for the Soul) as a guest on my radio show. He said one of the great publicity tricks for Chicken Soup happened during the OJ Simpson Trial.
The jurors were not allowed access to outside material so Jack and Mark sent all the jurors copies of Chicken Soup for the Soul. The media picked up on the books and soon everyone was talking about the books the OJ jurors were reading.
Guess what.
It happened again but this time it was food instead of books and it was the Michael Jackson trial, not OJ. Here's the story we the media received:
The Michael Jackson trial judge was overruled by the jury Tuesday when they extended their 10-minute snack break because of an unexpected bonanza: free pizza. Superior Court Judge Rodney Melville has been running an unusually rigid schedule with no lunch hour, just three quick snack breaks during six hours of testimony – a hunger-inducing regimen he calls "the Melville diet." When jurors took an extra 15 minutes getting back into their seats, he offered an explanation. "The Olive Garden heard a CNN report that the jurors were starving to death," he announced. "So they sent over a bunch of pizzas." He said the jury "sent out an attack squadron" with word that they wanted time to eat their pizzas. "So now they're full, and they can thank CNN," he said.
Is it similar? Well I thought of the Chicken Soup Story as soon as I heard it. The moral of the story…feel free to recycle ideas. You don't have to reinvent the wheel just change the tread once in a while.
OK I'm off to the Olive Garden for dinner…. Wayne
