On October 7, during the Vice Presidential Debate, an icon was born. While many of us were glad to experience a normal debate, nothing compared to the humor of a fly landing on Vice President Mike Pence’s hair. While it was only there for a few minutes, it felt like an eternity. Judging from the tweets immediately following the debate, both sides of the aisle found it hilarious. Many even called the fly the third candidate on stage. Based on the public reaction to the fly and the persona assigned to him, it is only right to develop an entire PR campaign for him. Wouldn't you do the same?
After my fictitious meeting with Mr. Fly, he agreed to sign on as a client of mine. During this meeting, he told me his main goals were to increase his presence on social media, gain national attention, and remind people to vote. Being a decent practitioner, I gave the fly what he wanted.
Social Media:
Mr. Fly created a considerable amount of buzz following the debate, so the strategy was to ride that wave into a sizable social media following. Since most of his presence was on Twitter, we started by making him an account. Here, we created a social media calendar for the month leading up to the election. Every Tuesday and Saturday we tweeted his opinions about the debate, and every Thursday we posted #TBT pictures of him on other celebrities’ heads. We tagged political leaders and celebrities to help gain attention, engagement, and followers.
Media Attention:
After we established a large social media following and even gained the attention of some celebrities, it was easy to obtain media attention. Every reporter wanted an exclusive interview with the fly who photobombed the Vice Presidential debate. Even though interviews were offered to us every day, we still pitched national news networks. We were able to book interviews with Good Morning America, The Daily Show, and The View. We even got our own 60 Minutes segment.
Reminder to Vote:
Since we created a large platform, Mr. Fly wanted to use his voice to remind people to vote on November 3. Every Wednesday, he tweeted various resources that informed his followers on how to vote during the pandemic. He also continuously retweeted valuable resources from other accounts. In each interview, he reminded everyone tuning in to register to vote, request their ballot, or make a plan to vote in person.
He even asked me to include the following links below:
Need to register to vote? Go to https://vote.gov/
Need to request your ballot? Go to https://www.vote.org/absentee-ballot/
This blog post was written by Amelia Wilt, Conference Coordinator.
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