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An Unconventional
(but Successful!)
Year of Telling Our Story
Two major national platforms in ’05-’06 included People 4-page spread in November, then an hour on Queer Eye in January
> Three basic rules of the marketing/media-relations business were driven home for the Moose in pursuing such efforts in the past year, said Director of Communications & Public Affairs Kurt Wehrmeister in his Monday morning report to a Joint General Session.
“First,” he said, “is that when you’re trying for free media exposure . . . you take your opportunities where you find them–and you can’t be afraid to think outside the box.” Agreeing last year to have the men of Huntington, NY Lodge 318 cooperate on the national TV show Queer Eye, a show about the exploits of five gay men, advisers on style and fashion, was “outside the box,” all right. “Let me level with you,” said Wehrmeister. “When I first heard of this idea, to have the Moose get involved with this particular TV show, I was probably like some of you--I thought it was the dumbest idea I’d ever heard.” But, he said, the final product worked, presenting the Huntington Moose in a positive light and getting an unexpectedly large amount of air time talking about Mooseheart Child City & School. And, with coverage of the hour-long Jan. 17 show getting a full three minutes on New York’s 11 o’clock news, he added, it proved a second rule of media relations: “Media exposure tends to breed more media exposure.” Wehrmeister also reviewed the groundwork that led to People’s September 2005 visit to Mooseheart , leading to the positive four-page spread in that 4 million-circulation national magazine in late November. He noted that visits to www.mooseintl.org and www.mooseheart.org skyrocketed after both major media appearances, and have as of May cleared more than 1 million in a month.
Oh , that third rule? “No matter how good a job we may do...the crucial matter is, always, how YOU present the image of the Moose on a local basis!”
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118th International
Convention
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Please click on any photograph below to view a larger image.
Director of Communications & Public Affairs Kurt Wehrmeister thanked Huntington, NY Lodge 318 officers Tony Pennetti and Steve Gabriel from the Convention stage for showing the Moose in such a positive light on the Jan. 17 nationwide Queer Eye broadcast.
A Southwest Airlines flight attendant recognized the two men on their homebound flight and gave an enthusiastic “plug” to the entire plane about their fundraising calendar--which has raised some $12,000 for Mooseheart.
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August/September/October 2006
