PR Firms Will Get Our NBG Biking Report Cards Known about
If we can get a public relations firm to get our many programs known about by saturating the media with human interest stories and the like, our mission will be well on his way to the prize we seek. Here are some of the way a Public Relations firm can do that/help us. They will have the leverage they need to convince print, web, TV and radio venues to accept their promotions because of the advertising buys we will have made it possible for them to make. We will have built this cost into the budget we build for their service.
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From 2003 until 2017, as the time and resources allowed, for our California cities we produced NBG Biking Report Cards. They, however, nowhere near achieved any measure of prevalence. This was so because with our energy spread over many different fronts, we were greatly limited in the data we were then able to collect. If the people responsible for generating this information for us knew that these reports would be widely circulated, it would not have been such a struggle to pull together the ones that we did.
As we worked to promote our Anchor Cities from one Mayors’ Ride season to the next with these registers, we often ran out of time getting the information we needed to create and/or update them. With limited manpower or other resources, what we did accumulate often fell off the back. In the end, that is a tragic development because merchandised appropriately (with also the addition of strong graphics), they have tremendous power. They have so much potential, in fact, that we devoted a whole chapter to them here this book. Getting these reports known about would be huge. If we had a PR firm extolling their worth, the bike-ability in the cities they showcase would get national and international attention.
If city transportation officials knew, for example, that what we were asking of them would appear in publications large in scope, they would have been on the lookout for our request. It would have been a priority item for them. They would have felt compelled to get the facts, details, particulars, statistics and other figures we needed together (these appear in our chapter on Biking Report Cards) in a timely manner.
With the help of a PR Firm promoting these reports, not only will those responsible feel pushed to get the information we need together, but the data they assemble will be of huge value to a wide variety of interests. People wanting to know what these municipalities are like, will study our biking report cards with great interest. They will draw scrutiny from far more than cyclists alone. Employers looking to locate in these cities, car drivers planning to visit, even Event Planners, etc., will all want to be made aware of the information these reports contain.
Once their value is understood, they will become a year and year out public document that our Anchor Cities will strive to be seen in in the best possible light. In pushing them, it will be our PR firm that will have been responsible for their presence as a Wikipedia type resource for all tourists considering a visit.
Because our PR firm will make them an annual topic in magazines both on and off the web, cities will have a scorecard they can show off nationally. This will have the effect of fostering friendly competition with other Anchor Cities. This as it instills pride in the Public Works departments of each of these population centers.
When, because of our PR firm, they start appearing in travel guides such as “Fodors” and the “Let’s Go” series, advertisers will take notice. They will want to be seen in them with display ads. With such support, our biking report cards will also become moneymakers for us.