Why are we starving while he prints money?

There’s a fascinating term in public relations called advertising value equivalency.

It supposedly measures the benefit to a brand a from the media coverage of a campaign. You simply take the size of the coverage gained and its placement, and then calculate what the equivalent amount of space, if paid for as advertising, would cost.

Not surprisingly, there have been many criticisms about this metric over the years. Academics and businesspeople alike have rejected the premise as arbitrary, unscientific and obsolete.

Which is fair, as public relations is not an exact science.

But just for laughs, one of my old marketing professors helped me calculate my advertising value equivalency. And my number came out to somewhere around ten million dollars.

That’s how much of an advertising budget it would have taken to reach the number of people who ultimately heard about my nametag story, over the past two decades.

It almost seems unfair. In fact, back when giving speeches to big companies was my full time job, many people in my audiences would be resentful of my public relations success. I could feel it in their eyes.

What the hell? Some dorky guy who wears a sticker every day can capture the imagination of the mainstream media, for multiple years on end, without paying a dime; meanwhile our brand shells out millions a year only to get peanuts?

But that’s the reality of modern media. As my marketing professor famously told me, if you have a good story, you don’t need to ask for a favor.

Because think how many brands out there with mediocre products who are trying to game the system and work the lists and optimize the algorithm to create their lightning in a bottle.

It’s an uphill battle. And believe me, the media has long since moved on from the story about the guy who wears a nametag every day. They’re too busy peddling outrage porn.

But yes, there was a time when my narrative moved straight to the front of the public relations line.

Not because of the strategy, but because of the story.

Nolan said it best in his award winning movie:

The subconscious motivates through emotion, not reason. We have to translate every idea into an emotional concept. 

Talk about value equivalency.

LET ME ASK YA THIS…
Are you hoarding favors like airline miles, or creating a life worth writing about?