Publicity

Last night ended up being a really good night. We didn’t have loads to drink but we definitely had a good laugh and it was nice to have the lads together for the night. My brothers, Rich and Jamie, went home around 3am and I ended up going to bed at about 4.30am. Nathan stayed last night so got his head down on the sofa but another of my friends, Stevo, stuck around playing Fight Night until about 6am!

I got rudely awoken at about 10.30am by the phone ringing. Normally, people ring off after about six or seven rings but it rang for ages! After a couple of minutes I decided I would have to get out of bed as it didn’t sound like they were going to give up. It turned out to be the estate agents ringing to say that they would have to reschedule my appointment until tomorrow as the person coming out to me had to go home ill. They will be coming out at 4.30pm tomorrow instead now.

I have had a fairly lazy day today. I was going to do a workout with Nathan but neither of us could really be bothered so we decided to leave it until tomorrow. We sat around for most of the day playing either Football Manager or Fight Night. Again, it was a pretty enjoyable day just taking some time out to do absolutely nothing!

I took Roman out for a run on the field with Nathan this evening and we had him on there running for about twenty minutes before he knackered himself out. He has so much energy it’s unbelievable! I can’t wait to get back to the vets on Wednesday to make sure that they think his paw is ok so that we can start going on our long walks again. We will get to have a look at some dog boots too on Wednesday.

I have had a fairly busy evening today – I decided to start looking for ways in which to contact magazines in order to try and get my story published to help with publicity. I got a response from one magazine really quickly – K9 Magazine – and later found out that the editor in chief who I had emailed is a “big supporter of Rottweiler related causes”! It sounds like I struck lucky there. He recommended that I put together a press release but I have never done anything like this before.

I sent a fair few emails and filled in forms on several websites – the magazines I have sent requests off to are Take a Break, Chat, That’s Life, Woman’s Weekly, K9 Magazine, Your Dog, Dogs Monthly, Dog World, The Rottweiler Magazine and Total Rottweiler Magazine. Hopefully, I will receive positive responses from some of these. I will be looking at other avenues tomorrow afternoon in order to try and get my story into as many public arenas as possible.

I got given my uncle’s email address yesterday too – he works in advertising so I thought I would send him a copy of the poster I am intending to distribute around companies in an effort to get them to help with publicity. I sent him an email this evening and thought I would ask if he knew anything about press releases. As luck would have it he knows of a managing director of a PR company and recommended I tried to contact him.

I sent him an email also tonight but have heard nothing back yet. It is a work email, though, so I guess I would not hear until at least tomorrow anyway. It would be really good if I could get someone like that on board as this side of things is something I am really unfamiliar with. I would imagine he has a broad scope for contacts within media too and this would probably save me a lot of leg work.

I got an email back from Max Clifford’s PA which basically said he would be unable to help me. The email said he already does lots of work for charities he is a patron of and was unable to help with my request due to the volume of work requests he gets. If I am honest, I wasn’t really expecting to get a positive response but thought it was worth a punt anyway. Hopefully I will have more luck with the PR guy that my uncle has recommended.

I am hoping that my uncle will come back to me tomorrow with a verdict on my poster so that I can start distributing it. I was thinking it might be a good idea to distribute this via email to as many vets as possible as well as dog related companies such as dog food manufacturers, boarding kennels and pet stores. It will be a pretty large task and will probably take me a fair amount of time to sort out but if it helps build interest then it will be well worth the effort.

I also need to put together a concrete route for my walk. I am going to aim for 20 miles every day, give or take a mile here and there. If I can get all of this information then I can start working out which newspapers, TV news stations and radio stations I can get in touch with as I will be able to co-ordinate interviews as I will know where I will be each day. Again, this will be a fairly big job but I am sure that it will be an enjoyable one.