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The quickest answer is to send the media a continuous flow of material that is too well-prepared and too newsworthy to ignore. I had the unique opportunity to establish a public relations and advertising branch of a major insurance company's new regional headquarters. From a bare piece of land in a suburban industrial park, we built a chain of three large office buildings that housed 2,500 employees, most hired locally.

Part of my job as PR&A manager was to supervise corporate advertising in the media covering most of the U.S. northeast coast states. This was fairly routine, and I didn't have too many specific duties that required seeking free publicity for our company's corporate advertising on major TV networks and national publications.

However, another important duty in my regional public and community relations was to make regular contacts and maintain favorable relationships with city newspapers and television stations in our region. This included submitting news and feature articles concerning to our home office staff of 2,500, plus the 250 field office staffs, which included another 10,000 clerical and sales staff employees throughout our territory.

My basic marketing duty could be called PR101. My staff and I sent out dozens of daily news releases, photos, information on company products, regional activities and articles on individual employees and sales agents. We also reported on regional sales results, new hires, promotions, in/out management transfers, community honors and other items.

My division staff also created audio-visuals. In our early years as a new regional headquarters, we often sent out video cassettes relating to products changes and introductions, major executive speeches and employee accomplishments. Then, with the introduction of DVDs, we continually upgraded our equipment to create professional-quality disks to be sent out for broadcast on the regional TV stations.

If there's a secret to getting free exposure of our company's products and services from the media, it is that we sent out quality print and electronic materials. To strengthen our relationships with our media sources, we made personal visits to find out if our services were effective, and to ask for ways to improve them.

If it can be called PR202, or maybe PR501 grad school quality, we earned considerable respect and frequent cooperation from the media with our community relations efforts. One service we created was Operation L.O.V.E. (Lunchtime Outreach Visits to the Elderly).

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