In today’s DIY-Publicity Case Study, Kendra Kroll from PortaPocket tells us how she landed her PortaPocket carrying cases on The Today Show and the Tonight Show with Jay Leno. Here’s how she did it:

Kendra: Both placements actually happened after I’d e-mailed the Travel Editor at the Chicago Tribune with a pitch titled “Just on Mt. Everest.” A customer had taken PortaPocket there to climb the Mountain, so I wanted to share this up front with an interesting subject line. The editor got right back to me and asked for photos. I e-mailed them over, and the piece was printed in the Dec 28, 2008 “GearBox” feature in the travel section. This was a syndicate, so it fed newspapers across the country, including those in Albuquerque, New Mexico and Newsday in Long Island, NY.

In the meantime, I had mailed 150 Hollywood A-listers free PortaPocket samples as ways to possibly help them help themselves during Oscar season.

In early March, my mother-in-law was watching “Headlines” on Jay Leno’s show when he showed the PortaPocket clip from the Albuquerque newspaper and poked a little fun at the juxtaposition of the photo and the headline “discreet way to carry valuables,” as the word “discreet” was right above the photo showing the phone coming up from under the gal’s skirt. (My mother-in-law almost fell off her chair, she was so surprised!) I’m not sure if Leno’s people found the clip independently, someone had sent it in to him (I hadn’t), or one of his Hollywood friends had clued him in to the product. Either way, I was grateful for the “exposure” (as it were!) and sent him a sample as my thanks.

The Today Show piece came about as the pickup of the Chicago Tribune article in Newsday. It was found by an US Magazine contributor in NYC, and she e-mailed me asking to include PortaPocket on the segment “Cures for your Fashion Emergencies”. The segment aired April 6, 2009.

As far as finding contacts, I have purchased a media list in the past. The “hits” listed above were my biggest to date! I have also had interest from a few Harpo producers. For contacting celebrities, I have used Contactsontap.com and ContactAnyCelebrity.com.

Using Kendra’s advice, here is what you can apply to your own campaign:

• Look to customers for “pitch” ideas. Kendra promoting her customer that climbed Mount Everest spiraled into major national coverage for her brand.

• Don’t forget newspapers! Television producers and magazine editors DO read the newspaper and, as you can see above, a national syndication will catch the attention of the media!

• Magazine editors are often called on to do “round-up” segments for national morning shows. Building relationships and getting products to these editors not only helps you get coverage in magazines, but also on network shows.