Two Million MinutesSeeing your client on national TV – and knowing you worked to get them there – is a pretty neat feeling. I got to experience this last week when my client Bob Compton was on ABC’s Good Morning America talking about his documentary film Two Million Minutes.


It all started with Dittoe PR securing coverage for Bob in several national publications in the first few weeks of the month. USA Today, U.S. News & World Report, and TIME Magazine all covered Two Million Minutes – and discussed the implications of the issues raised by the film. We were already very excited to have such well-known media outlets spreading the word about the work Bob has been doing. Later in the day on which these stories all ran in print, we were contacted by Good Morning America, which is when the real excitement began.


Usually, securing such great coverage comes only after spending a great deal of time “behind the scenes” engaging members of the media in conversations about our clients. In PR, we have to mark our progress with “little victories” such as simply getting a writer to respond to an email pitch we send them or having someone ask us for more information on a topic. In this case, the print coverage we had already secured led TV stations to contact us about interviewing Bob.


I usually never watch TV in the morning before work – but last Wednesday morning, February 20th, I turned on ABC as I was getting ready in the morning and watched for Bob’s segment to run. When I heard the anchor announce that “next up is Bob Compton, documentary filmmaker,” I rushed in front of the TV to see Bob and one of the students featured in Two Million Minutes broadcasted live across the nation.


Since the Good Morning America interview, we’ve received a flurry of interest from other media outlets – Bob has interviewed with FOX Business TV and NPR, and he’s scheduled to interview with Voice of America radio and C-SPAN next week. He has also screened portions of the film to Senators Obama and McCain, and he hopes to get in front of Senator Clinton as well.


With the amount of attention Two Million Minutes has received lately, it’s hard to predict the extent of media coverage we’ll be able to secure in the future. If it’s anything like what’s been generated in the past two weeks, it’s sure to be exciting!