Getting news coverage for non-news-related items was next to impossible this fall. The news hole has grown since the immediate aftermath of Sept. 11, but scoring ink for a
story on massage therapy still seems unlikely. So how did Citigate Communications place major stories in outlets like USA Today and MSNBC.com for the American Massage Therapy
Association in October? Flexibility.
The AMTA conducts a survey each year to determine why and how consumers take advantage of massage therapy. The results are released in October during National Massage Therapy
Awareness Week.
It has become harder and harder to find a strong news hook for the survey in recent years, says Candice Warltier, director for Citigate in Chicago. This year, Citigate and the
AMTA had planned to focus pitches on the increase in physician referrals for massage therapy. But even that worthy angle could not compete with stories on war, terrorism and
anthrax.
Citigate had planned before Sept. 11 to release the results to USA Today as an exclusive. In October, "we gave them the results, and they basically said, 'We're sorry, but
[terrorism] is all we have time to cover; all our space has to be dedicated to this major news story,'" Warltier says. Citigate did some speedy searching for a hook that would tie
the results of the survey to the news of the day. After some research, the team discovered that many therapists were seeing a huge increase in their clientele in the wake of the
attacks, and clients were telling therapists they had come in because they were so overwhelmed by world events.
The press loved the new angle, and USA Today immediately picked up the story. Citigate communicators began arranging interviews with therapists from tiny towns in North Dakota
to Boston, all of whom were seeing a dramatic pickup in business.
"I think it really proves the need to be flexible and not look at what we have and what our message is, but fit it into the news of the day," Warltier says. "Organizations can
become so focused on the original plan, you sometimes have to take a step back and say, if the goal is to get coverage of the organization and its issue, we may have to switch
plans." That flexibility won the AMTA coverage in USA Today, on MSNBC.com, and in TV news segments across the country. (Warltier: 312/895-4715, [email protected])