A fastidious wedding planner worked for months under the radar planning the now famous lavish wedding for 500 at the former Astor Estate. Part of that work included creating an almost airtight veil of secrecy surrounding the event. Never in my 25 years in newsgathering and PR I have I seen this kind of message or story control.
A local newspaper publisher broke the story of the rumored event. Rumors of the summer event snowballed. Soon satellite trucks and camera crews from national news organizations rolled into the village. News hounds came hungry for news bites and the potential of a scoop on an international story.
The bad news: No one was talking with facts that could be confirmed. A firm “no comment” became commonplace response from shop owner to restaurant owner. It was like an entire town and village of 10,000 got high-level media relations training overnight.
Rhinebeck has a history of low-key treatment of celebrity-types. Or, maybe it was the rumored $1 million non-disclosure agreement allegedly given to contractors, vendors and companies working on the wedding. Even this plausible rumor was later proven to be false.
Village of Rhinebeck Mayor Jim Reardon couldn't even confirm that the wedding would take place the weekend of July 31. He did confirm doing nearly a dozen interviews with international media outlets leading to what he called multimillion dollars worth of exposure for Rhinebeck. "We could not afford what Madison Avenue would have charged us for this exposure," the Mayor told local YNN reporter Beth Croughan.
I joined the army of members of the media covering the event and shot footage for Entertainment Tonight’s show The Insider.
Without facts, the buzz grew bigger and bigger. The story went from being called “wedding of century” to “wedding of the decade” and finally “Wedding of the Season”. Some media outlets treated each classification downgrade like The Weather Channel reports on downgrading a large storm.
A vacuum of facts presented a fascinating scenario to me. The media had to follow the event not like a news story, but more like an unfolding reality show. The key difference had to do with the Clinton’s indifference to media coverage.
The media was not in the drivers seat.
Chelsea and Hillary Clinton kept a low profile--as they are certainly entitled. It was an historic event--the wedding of a first daughter where the mother of the bride is a sitting secretary of state.
A new band of citizen journalist armed with high quality cameras and smart phones amplified the family’s silence. Media outlets found themselves competing with locals for key shots and interviews.
This became evident when President Bill Clinton got out of a Secret Service motorcade to munch on lunch at Gigi’s Restaurant. Crowds grew as residents texted friends, posted photos on Facebook and posted tweets on Twitter.
For the first time, residents could distribute local news (text, photos and video) via smart phone faster than well-funded media outlets with giant satellite trucks. The difference--the information was sent to friends, family and co-workers inside social circles and not to large broadcast audiences.
Some news organizations and websites now rely on this ad-hoc band of citizen journalists often referred to as crowd sourcing. Even I fell into the gray area of citizen journalist when I posted footage to CNN’s iReport for which I was not paid. http://ireport.cnn.com/docs/DOC-469442 and http://ireport.cnn.com/docs/DOC-474592
Now anyone can capture an event. The ability to tell a memorable story separates pros from amateurs. This interesting scenario poses opportunities and threats for businesses and PR pros. More people can create content, but there is more content that is uncontrollable. Another angle: if national media crews won’t cover your story perhaps there are ways to create content to build buzz on your own.
Media relations strategy now must include content development and harnessing the power of consumers and customers.
On July 31st, the village of Rhinebeck became the most watched community in the world. The story and how it was told are now history.
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