By Damon Carson

media friendlyHow many different problems will your invention solve? How many different ways are there to use your invention?

I’m sure the answers to questions like these have reverberated in your head since before you created your first prototype. You’ll now have a chance to use these answers in your publicity efforts.

Once you have a bunch of applications for your invention, the next step is to make your invention and the problems it solves relevant for each specific type of media. While Better Homes & Gardens may end up writing about the same product as Men’s Health, you can bet it will be from a vastly different perspective.

Remember, different media will choose to cover you from the angle that will be of interest to their particular audience.

Newspapers will probably want a local angle or topical, timely reason for writing about your invention. A fashion TV show will, naturally, be focused on fashion. Outdoor Life will target the hunting and fishing crowd.

It’s your job to make your invention relevant to different reporters and editors.  The more ways you can make your invention relevant, the more press coverage you’ll receive.

Let me give you an example of how I made something relevant to a bunch of dissimilar media outlets. While the product is not an invention, I think you’ll get the concept of how I made my product relevant and in turn got a lot of free media coverage because of it.

Several years after we purchased Kiddie Rides USA, we started to restore classic soda machines. While the machines were retro cool, there was no variety. They could pretty much just say Coke, Pepsi, Barq’s or Dr. Pepper on them. They are ubiquitous and, frankly, there are many companies restoring these machines – in some cases longer than I have been alive.

This appeared to be a story telling cul-de-sac. Why or how would a soda machine be relevant to any news outlet? There was certainly nothing unique or different about a new company restoring an old beverage machine. How could I make a vintage soda machine interesting or relevant to the news media?

In the course of doing business, I ran across an old soda machine that a guy had decorated with the logo and the colors of the Nebraska Cornhuskers. Wow, I thought, a customized soda machine. How cool is that? My marketing mind kicked in.

We could customize these machines into all sorts of themes – Corvettes, horses, a P-51 Mustang, rock n’ roll, Democratic and Republican styled machines … anything.  About as quickly as themes came to mind, so did the offbeat places to install a customized soda machine.

The airplane enthusiast could place a machine in his or her hanger. A movie themed machine would make a great addition to a home theater. A machine, complete with the ranch brand, would be a perfect way to keep the beverages cold in a barn or stable. The car collector could keep the beer cold in the garage with a machine that complimented his favorite make and model of automobile.

Suddenly, I had not just one story, but many ways to tell the same story. I could make our product relevant to a whole bunch of dissimilar media outlets. Similarly, you want to come up with as many ways to tell the story of your invention as possible.

I could pitch the equine machines to horse magazines; the car-themed machines to auto trade journals; the airplane-themed rides to magazines read by pilots, and on and on.  Within a year, our soda machines had appeared in such unrelated magazines as Sound & Vision, Horse Illustrated, Plane & Pilot, and Power & Motoryacht. The customization angle was one way I could take the very same product and make it relevant to editors with very different audiences.

You could do the same with your invention.

As you think about your invention, how many different uses or applications are there for what you’ve created? Think outside the box. Stretch. Brainstorm.

The more ways you can utilize your invention, the more ways you’ll have to tell your story. The more ways you can tell your story, the more relevant you’ll become. The more relevant you become, the more press coverage you’ll receive.

For more helpful PR tips, visit Damon Carson’s Web site, www.publicityassociates.com

Editor’s note: This article appears in the April 2010 print edition.