Media Vault - Print & TV

Print, Radio & TV

We have been very blessed with strong support by the Media over the past 20+ years.

With the support of trusting clients we've had reporters "go behind the scenes" - to see, hear and feel what it's like to invent bold ideas for growing companies.

News organizations who have done "day in the life" feature stories on Eureka! Inventing include:

DATELINE NBC (twice) CBC (Canada) - (4 times)

CNN - (twice) Wall Street Journal - (Twice)

Inc. Magazine - (twice) CNBC

CIO Magazine NPR

A&E Top 10 New York Magazine

A key to our support from the media has been our willingness to be 100% open and our sense of humor. The media likes to do stories about fun people. Deranged ones, too.

Early on, I tried to put a provocative, memorable, clippable spin on myself with eccentric media mailings. At one point, I introduced a board game with a packet announcing a company I called HaHa!, complete with the new game and a sampling of my other games, a card proclaiming myself the King of the Elves and a photo of myself dressed in forest green tights and shoes with pointy toes that curled upward. “Entertainment Tonight” turned it into a story that paid dividends long afterward.

After leaving Procter & Gamble, I ran across a reporter at The Wall Street Journal who remembered the King of the Elves mailing. She was so amused by the photo that she’d kept it.

“I thought, this guy has some spirit. Not many people mail out pictures of themselves in tights. And there were the games. But the thing I admired was that the cover letter said that if I wasn’t interested in writing about HaHa!, I should donate the games to a hospital or a charity, and that hit a positive chord, too. Because I thought, OK, this guy’s out there hawking his goods. But he also has a soul.”

I began mailing Alecia, along with other journalists at various publications our newsletter on customer reactions to new products. At the same time, I offered to provide reporters a spirited, humerous quote whenever they needed one. Whenever I spoke with reporters, I had some sort of funny insight into marketplace trends or the state of new products. Among the subjects that I pitched to reporters: the trend towards ugly foods & blue foods and new products that I didn’t understand, including Oil-Free Oil of Olay, Low Salt Mr. Salty Pretzels, Caffeine-Free Mountain Dew, Aspirin Free Bayer, non-Ivory-colored Ivory Clear dish detergent.
A few months later, a brief item about our services appeared in the Wall Street Journal‘s marketing column, written by Alecia. My telephone lines nearly melted from the heat of the hundreds of calls I received in response.
Alecia seemed to have a well-developed sense of humor. To thank her, I took a chance and sent her an old wooden bedpost with a notch carved in it for every phone call I’d received during the first week after the story appeared. When Alecia called to tell me it had arrived, she was still laughing. Six months later, she wrote a lengthy feature story on us. The way I see it, fun was fundamental in gaining that exposure.