During the height of the 2004 presidential race, the H. J. Heinz Co. faced a challenging task: deflect media attention away from its political connection — Teresa Heinz Kerry, ketchup heiress and wife of presidential candidate, John Kerry — and direct it toward its new product. (Note: Heinz did not endorse either presidential candidate.)

Heinz was launching the fourth version of Celebrity Talking Labels — ketchup bottles imprinted with celebrity quotes. Heinz knew that simply placing the celebrity-endorsed bottles on grocery-store shelves wouldn’t be enough to garner attention. So the company turned to long-time public-relations partner, Pittsburgh-based Jack Horner Communications (JHC), for help.

JHC turned the ketchup bottles into “stars.” Four celebrities lent their signatures to four Heinz Ketchup bottles — each one hand-jeweled with more than 6,000 Swarovski crystals. Heinz then held a press event at the prestigious Sotheby’s auction house in New York to auction off the bottles for the celebrities’ selected charities.

To entice the media to attend the auction, JHC sent an over-sized press kit stuffed with a celebrity video b-roll, a pair of sunglasses, and a bottle of Heinz ketchup, followed by an invitation to the event.

JHC cleverly tailored each ketchup bottle to the recipient. Sports editors received a bottle that quoted NFL Hall of Famer Terry Bradshaw or Olympic gold medalist Mia Hamm. Entertainment press received a bottle endorsed by teen actress Lindsay Lohan or Hollywood legend William Shatner.

And because no celebrity event is complete without a celebrity, JHC secured William Shatner to attend the auction.

In addition to raising $45,000 for the charities, the event resulted in more than 50 million media impressions, including 250 print clips and 44 broadcast placements. Coverage highlights included Fox News, ESPN2, the National Enquirer, E! Online, New York Daily News, Newsday, and the Chicago Sun-Times. Plus, less than 1 percent of the coverage made reference to Teresa Heinz Kerry.

Tyco International is used to getting a lot of press, but for all the wrong reasons. In the wake of corporate scandal — including charges of grand larceny and securities fraud against former CEO Dennis Kozlowski — the manufacturing company decided to hold a product launch to help the media move on.

In April 2004, Tyco partnered with New York-based Peppercommotions to create an image-rehabilitating launch event for Sapphire, a fire-suppression product from Tyco Fire and Security, one of Tyco’s five main businesses. Sapphire is purported to look exactly like water, but causes no water-like damage to electronics, books, artworks, or irreplaceable artifacts.

The event invitation alerted reporters to live, “very visual” demonstrations that would take place at the Library Hotel in Midtown Manhattan, right before the start of Library Week.
While sitting in the hotel’s Poetry Garden room listening to the product’s attributes, brave members of the media dunked their notebooks into the liquid and watched in amazement as the pages dried instantly without a smudge. Tyco representatives even tossed in a cell phone, dialed its number, retrieved it, and answered the call.

In addition to providing hands-on product demos, the launch event introduced the faces and names of the people behind the company’s innovations, and showed the media that Tyco was worth writing about — for positive reasons.

Several major newspapers and morning news programs picked up the story, and Tyco Fire and Security received more sales leads in the 24-hour period following the event than it had in the five months from December 2003 through early April 2004. In fact, Tyco’s Web site was so flooded that the company was forced to rebuild the site’s infrastructure. One sale alone, directly attributed to the media coverage, brought in $100,000. And best of all, Tyco’s dramatic launch pushed the scandal off center stage.

When cat-food producer Meow Mix Co., made its first foray into the $2 billion-a-year wet-food category last August, it wanted to create an event that would generate massive publicity. With the help of New York event marketer Grand Central Marketing, the Secaucus, NJ, company created Meow Mix Café, a temporary restaurant on Fifth Ave. in Manhattan, where cats could sample the seven new flavors of wet cat food.

Nearly 30 media outlets, retailers like Petco Animal Supplies Inc., investors, advertising partners, and their felines, attended the event. Guests entered the 3,500-square-foot café by escorting their felines down a red carpet. More than 50 cats graced the event, including guest of honor, actress Eartha Kitt, better known as Catwoman.

Waitstaff served the cats a selection from Meow Mix’s seven new wet-food flavors, while their owners enjoyed a comparable dish. For instance, if a cat dined on Fillet Meow (beef in gravy), its owner enjoyed tenderloin of beef with horseradish sauce.

A retail area showcased the full line of Meow Mix products. For sale: dry cat food and a host of Meow Mix licensed products, including cat toys, bowls, stuffed animals, T-shirts, and hats. A game area offered customers cat-themed games, such as “Feeding Time” and “Hairball Toss.” During the two weeks it was open, the Meow Mix Café sold or distributed more than 14,000 wet-food pouches, and took in more than $20,000 in sales, which was donated to the ASPCA.

The Meow Mix Café made headlines on six continents, including stories in The New York Times, Business 2.0, the National Enquirer, and In Touch Weekly. Overall, it generated 325 broadcast stories, 331 print stories, and more than 1,000 radio mentions. Now those are results worth purring about.

Best Software Inc., a customer-relationship management (CRM) software company based in Scottsdale, AZ, wanted to branch out from its existing business-to-business market and reach consumers with the release of its new version of ACT! 2005. The software helps customers manage relationships and schedules and maintain business contacts.

Best Software, with Atlanta-based InterActive PR and New York-based event planner Velocity Productions, developed a product launch to capture the attention of the mainstream business media, not just the typical trade press. To emphasize that its software links business contacts together, Best enlisted the help of actor Kevin Bacon.

Playing off the “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon” party game, where players link other actors to Kevin Bacon in six steps or less, the team booked him and his band, the Bacon Brothers, to perform at New York’s Times Square Studios.

The event attracted 21 targeted members of the press, 40-percent more than its goal of 15. Several media outlets with national audiences set up interviews in advance of the event, including BusinessWeek, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and Bloomberg radio. Within four months after the launch, the company exceeded its goal of 20 media mentions with 26, including hits in Fortune and Inc.