Buffalo By Choice

We are right in the middle of our Bring Home the Herd Campaign, the brainchild of Sara Emhoff. It’s not enough to launch (as wonderful as the launch was at the Pearl Street Grill on March 26)…the campaign is the important part. We need 5,000 passionate Buffalonians to be Ambassadors and invite 4 or 5 family members and friends to come to Buffalo for our wonderful long weekend in June. And we need to shout if from the rooftops! So here are some great media appearances that continue the Campaign. Tune in, and tell others to do so, as well: ·         Saturday, May 11 – WBEN 930 AM – 12:00-2:00Thanks to Deb Mogavero for contacting Kathy Weppner, a WBEN talk show host, about Buffalo Homecoming. Kathy was so inspired by Debby’s idea that she put an entire show together this week about coming home and the Homecoming – and it will be on the air live TODAY. The show is from  Noon – 2:00 on WBEN 930 AM. Kathy will be featuring Repats during the first part of the program, and will segue into Buffalo Homecoming during the second half. Her demographic is PERFECT for us, so we are thrilled with this media opportunity. Thanks, Deb!·         Monday, May 12 – Entercom – taped program that will air numerous times on various stations over the next weekJudge Penny Wolfgang has invited us on again this year. Sara Emhoff and I will tape this program at 5:00 p.m., right before we speed back to the Casa Di Pizza for the Steering Committee meeting at 6:30-9:30 that evening. We’ll provide a full report at that time and post the air times on the website as soon as they are available.·         Tuesday, May 13 — WYRK 106.5 AM –Breakfast Club with Clay and Dale at 8:00 a.m.Thanks to Quizmaster Dennis George for setting up this excellent opportunity. WYRK is apparently the top AM morning show in the area! We will go on the show together, so the Sunday Brunch at the Zoo and the Buffalo Trivia Show by Dennis will get lots of play… Tune in!·         Thursday, May 15 — WBEN 930 AM – The Sandy Beach Show at 3:00 p.m.Once again, thanks to Dennis George, who knows Sandy personally. We hope that today’s WBEN appearance does not jeopardize this opportunity…but it may. This is a tough audience – it will be great to have Dennis there as a buffer. Wish us luck!  Already in the can:Phil Haberstro dedicated an entire program on the Government channel to Buffalo Homecoming. We taped on April 21, and it has been airing repeatedly since. Lots of positive feedback. Phil promised us a digital file to post on BuffaloHomecoming.com – hope to receive this soon. And last Saturday (May 3), I did a call in  program in Spanish at Noon on 1120 AM, thanks to Sandra Devargas. Unfortunately, there is no tape available of this program. This was a great way to reach out to the Hispanic community, and has produced numerous additional contacts and opportunities. I am contacting WUFO to see if we can do the same type of call to the African-American community. On the national media front, we have some truly stellar news:·         Wayne Geist pitched our story to New York Magazine and got a positive response. They want to send a crew to the event with some of our attendees from New York City and follow them through the event. Now, if that’s not pressure for proactively recruiting excellent NYC attendees, I don’t know what is. Please reach out to your most enthusiastic and qualified contacts in the City and urge them to attend!!The article would, of course, appear after our 2008 event, but will certainly provide a great foundation for 2009 and give Buffalo a huge boost. Thanks, Wayne!

·         Jason Schwinger has reached out to Tim Russert via a colleague at Meet the Press. No response yet, but the invitation to attend is in.We hope that Buffalo’s most famous news expat (sorry, Wolf…) will provide us with at least an on air mention. We could also still use a taped 15-sec spot to air locally and to post. This was an amazingly effective way to get the word out locally last year!

 

I challenge everyone to be creative and generate as many additional media and promotional opportunities as possible. Our spectacular Buffalo Homecoming 2008 event is just SEVEN weeks out — we don’t want anyone to miss it because they didn’t know about it…!