Two days before the Sept 17 premiere of the Mysteries of Laura, CTV sent out an email to journalists.
Titled, “The Top 10 Reasons Why Detective Laura Diamond is This Fall’s Most Loveable Leading Lady on Prime-Time TV!” the release in the email was more a piece of content than a pitch.
Styled like a Buzzfeed list, the writeup was penned by CTV’s in-house communications team and included pictures of the show’s star, Debra Messing, in Spanx, chugging wine, and brandishing a Nerf gun, with captions like, “Laura’s OMG face is flawless!”
The release was a clear homage to the current list-heavy state of web content, but what about the entertainment reporters on the receiving end? What did it offer to journalists who use releases to pen articles of their own?
Marketing posed that question to Jacqui VanSickle, the publicist at CTV who sent out the release. According to VanSickle, CTV sees content-style notes like the one as a quirky, irreverent reminder notes that fall into a different category of PR than traditional press releases.
“We don’t classify these notes as ‘releases,’ per se,” VanSickle said, explaining the network had already sent out an info-packed release to announce the premiere date and wanted to follow up with a less serious reminder.
“The premiere date was announced some time ago and we wanted to remind the media that the premiere was imminent, so we had an opportunity to do something different and have a little fun with it,” she said. “The idea was to send something short and eye-catching to stand out amongst all the other e-mails that journalists receive from TV publicist during this time of the year.”
The intent, VanSickle said, was not to have the list published in full by outlets, or to inspire new coverage, but to get the show back on the reporters’ radars as they waded through all the fall premieres, increasing the chances they’d cover the first episode.
For the fall 2013 season, CTV took a similar tactic for the launch of The Goldbergs. Because The Goldbergs is set in 1985, the network sent out a list of facts from 1985 – like the fact that the top film at the box office was Back to the Future and tickets were only $3.55.
VanSickle confirmed the network was inspired by socially-driven sites like Buzzfeed and said CTV has taken a content-driven approach to media relations for many of its shows, including Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Once Upon a Time and The Following.
In addition to sending the notes out to press, CTV posts them on its CTV.ca, giving its communications team more content to push and a promotional opportunity on its owned properties.
