A Georgia funeral home owner “urned” millions of dollar in media attention by offering a free funeral to anyone who signed up for an unusual promotion.

Barry Miller of McGuire, Jennings & Miller Funeral Home came up with a legally binding agreement.

If you signed the contract admitting you planned to get behind the wheel while intoxicated on New Year’s Eve, crash and kill yourself while impaired, Miller would give you a casket, flowers and a burial all for free.

It’s a freebie that no one signed up to accept.

“In today’s society, sometimes you have to go to the extreme to get attention and that’s what we were trying to do,” says Miller.

Long before he opened his first funeral home, Miller lost a loved one who was killed by a drunk driver. He says the pain of that memory is what inspired the offer.

When asked whether it was just a publicity stunt, Miller told reporters, “If I had not lost a family member, you could call it that, but since I have been on that side of the fence, the answer is ‘No.’ I’m doing this to motivate people to make the right decisions.”

Miller has made this same offer every year for the last decade. Only one person has ever expressed any interest, and that didn’t last.

If anyone ever does sign up, Miller says his first call will be to local authorities to provide them with the name of the New Year’s Eve celebrant officers will need to watch.

Mr. Miller says he’s actually received letters from alcoholics saying that they had fallen off the wagon but the free funeral offer really shook them up.

Watch the MSNBC report

My calculator would explode if I tried to add up the value of all the free PR Miller has received over the years with this simple offer that he’s never had to honor.

Miller makes my personal PR Hall of Fame with this idea. He markets his funeral business without spending any money and sends a chilling message to would-be drunk drivers at the same time.

How about you? What can you dream up that will accomplish the same thing for your business? Smart public relations isn’t about what’s in your press kit or how clever the headline is on a news release. It begins and ends with the story idea itself.

The old ways of doing PR are dead and buried. Writing meaningless press releases and sending them into newsrooms simply doesn’t work. They’re inundated with them. Of course, you’re welcome to keep doing it that way, but in the words of Barry Miller, “It’s your funeral.”

Here are some simple tips to make a name for yourself in the blogosphere:

1) Read a bunch of blogs

If you’re new to the game, you have to know what’s out there. Every blogger has his or her own style, but I would say what the most successful blogs have in common is that they conversational, provocative and worth forwarding to a friend.

2) Demonstrate passion and authority

If you’re not passionate about what you’re writing about then who else will be? Pick topics that come from your heart and don’t be afraid to have an opinion. Your knowledge and views on a subject are what will have people coming back for more.

3) Share your work with other bloggers

One of the beautiful things about the Internet is how viral your blog can become. Bloggers quote each other all the time. Don’t be afraid to pass your post on to other bloggers who can share your words with their audience. Never spam a fellow blogger. Read their work first and make sure that you’re passing along something they would actually use.

4) Always spell check

There’s no better way to turn off your readers than to have a bunch of typos and spelling errors. Remember the old carpenter’s motto—measure twice, cut once. I always try to read my posts at least a couple of times before I press “submit” and even then I’ll occasionally misspell something or have a grammatical error. If a newspaper consistently mangles the language, subscribers eventually get fed up and leave. The same is true for the blogosphere.

5) Get professional recognition for your blog

A friend of mine is in the running to be named the “Best Real Estate Blog in Texas.” There’s no cash prize. Candy Evans knows that if she wins the title, the  readership will grow for her Dallas Dirt blog and she’ll become even more influential. You can vote for her by clicking here. I hope you’ll do that and study her past posts. She’s a shining example of how to do it right.

Just imagine that you’re a newspaper columnist trying to develop a following. You have to find your voice. There are many things you can do to grow your readership: be passionate, opinionated, thought-provoking and even controversial. The Internet is a democracy. Readers will vote with return visits to your blog.

If you’ve been putting off starting a blog, it’s time to get busy. It’s free to create through websites like Blogger.com and journalists are constantly reading blogs to come up with fresh story ideas. What do you have to lose other than your anonymity?

After 25 years in TV news, Emmy winning reporter Jeff Crilley left the news business to start the country’s first PR firm staffed exclusively with former journalists. For an example of how his firm helped position one Dallas attorney as a legal expert, just watch the video on their homepage:

So as long as we’re making resolutions, how about resolving to make 2010 your best PR year ever?

Here are 5 ways you can take your publicity efforts to the next level without spending a dime:

1) Do Your Homework

Who is most likely to tell your story? Google around and find a reporter who gets you.

If you’re a Realtor and want to be quoted as an expert in the paper about home sales, find out who wrote the last article.

Reporters have beats. Chances are, the last journalist to write a story about home sales is the real estate reporter. Search the newspaper’s archives online. How often do they write about the housing market? What was their angle? What did they miss? What’s new since the last time they wrote about real estate? Have interest rates changed? Are homes in a certain price range moving?

2) Don’t be Afraid to Use the Phone

I run into PR professionals all the time who have a fear of the phone. They do all their story pitching to journalists by email.

The problem is, when a journalist ignores your emails, you never get an answer. Was it a bad story idea? Did you pitch the wrong angle? Did the journalist even see your email?

When you’re on the phone with a reporter, you get an answer. It may not always be the answer you want, but at least you know whether the journalist is going to do the story or not.

3) Don’t Wait for Tomorrow

If you’re driving in your car listening to the news and they begin talking about something that you’re an expert in, don’t wait.

Lawyers know a lot more about the law than the talk show host who’s blabbering on and on and urging people to call in with their opinion. Stop talking to yourself and call in. Tell the phone screener that you’re a lawyer and that the host is missing the point. I promise you, you’ll be moved to the front of the line and the next thing you know, you’re on the air getting free publicity for your practice.

4) Start a Facebook and Twitter Page

Even if you’re one of those people who still believes that social media is a waste of time, start a page.

Your next generation of customer is Tweeting and posting pictures on Facebook. If you don’t join the revolution, you’ll look like a dinosaur when those 20-somethings come to your website.

The radio was once center stage, it was replaced by TV. Now the Internet is pushing TV out of the spotlight. Social media isn’t a faze people are going through. It’s the way people communicate. Get a page. Period.

5) Take Some Chances

Stop spending all your time in the safe zone. Take a chance. Do something to get noticed by the media. You don’t have to become a carnival barker. Just pick up the phone and call a reporter.

Ralph Waldo Emerson said “Build a better mousetrap, and the world will beat a path to your door.” Well, I’m sorry, Ralphie, that may have been true in the 1800s. But today there are millions of amazing mousetraps that no one will ever know about because the inventor never had the courage to tell anyone. Stop waiting to get discovered.

In fact, in 2010, simply tooting your own horn may not be enough to get noticed anymore, you may just have to start an orchestra!

After 25 years in TV news, Emmy winning reporter Jeff Crilley left the news business to start the country’s first PR firm staffed exclusively with former journalists. To learn more about hiring Jeff’s team: www.RealNewsPR.com

Are Limiting Beliefs Keeping You From Becoming a PR Star?

I came across a great story on the Internet that I want to share with you this week:

An adult elephant can easily uproot huge trees with its trunk; it can knock down a house without much trouble. When an elephant living in captivity is still a baby, it is tied to a tree with a strong rope or a chain every night. Because it is the nature of elephants to roam free, the baby elephant instinctively tries with all its might to break the rope. But it isn’t yet strong enough to do so.

Realizing its efforts are of no use, it finally gives up and stops struggling. After the baby elephant tries and fails many times, it will never try again for the rest of its life.

Later, when the elephant is fully grown, it can be tied to a small tree with a thin rope. It could then easily free itself by uprooting the tree or breaking the rope. But because its mind has been conditioned by its prior experiences, it doesn’t make the slightest attempt to break free. The powerfully gigantic elephant has limited its present abilities based on the limitations of the past- Baby Elephant Syndrome.

Human being are exactly like the elephant except for one thing-we can choose not to accept the false boundaries and limitations of our past.

How many of us have done this? We talk ourselves out of success. We’re too afraid to pick up the phone and call a reporter because a voice in our head tells us, “The media won’t like this. They’ll probably laugh at me. I’m not even sure if it’s newsworthy.”

Often you end up turning on the news later and watching someone else being featured in a story that you came up with first.

You could have a story that’s ready for Oprah. What’s stopping you? The last time I checked they had phones in Chicago. Call up the show and start pitching your segment idea. The worst thing they can do is say “no.”

Isn’t it time you stopped acting like a trained elephant? The next time you find yourself at the end of your rope, break the rope, uproot the tree and be free!

I like to listen to music as much as the next guy, but when I’m in my car, I’m constantly surfing stations listening to talk radio. Why? It’s one of the easiest ways to get my clients on the air.

There are many times when I’ll be driving somewhere and listening to a topic that I know one of my clients is an expert on. I’ll grab my cell, call my client and 5-minutes later, they’re on the air.

You don’t need a PR person to do that for you. You can do it yourself. The first step is to overcome self-doubt.  How many times have you been listening to the radio and said to yourself, “I know more about that subject than they do!”

What stopped you from calling in? It was probably that little voice inside your head that said, “Who am I to give an expert opinion? I’m no expert.”

Trust me, if you do it for a living, you’re an expert. When I’m listening to the radio and they’re talking about something legal, I can guarantee you my lawyer clients are getting a phone call from me. It may not be the area of law that they specialize in, but I’m certain my attorney clients will know more about the law than the host or some of the “Joe 6-packs” who are calling in.

I have a challenge for you this week. If you’re listening to music or CDs, try listening to some talk radio for a change. In order to be your own publicist, you have to know what’s going on in the news.

And if they get into a topic that you happen to know something about, call in. Don’t be afraid. It may end up being the first step in a beautiful journey.

Dr. Laura began her very successful radio career as a call-in guest. And Dr. Phil began his multi-million dollar TV career as a guest on Oprah. It’s just a matter of putting yourself out there. What do you have to lose except your anonymity?

He’s often given credit for having said “There’s a sucker born every minute,” but the truth is P.T. Barnum probably never said those words. He was one of the most successful entrepreneurs of the 1800s and you don’t get there by disrespecting your customers. What he probably said was something like “There’s an opportunity born every minute.”

That’s the way I look at publicity and you should too if you want to market without spending money.

Barnum was always looking for ways to capture people’s attention. At one point he had an elephant plowing the field on his property. The reason? The field was near the train that took people into New York City. Instead of seeing passengers, Barnum saw potential customers. He knew an elephant would grab their attention and act as an unforgettable publicity stunt. It worked. “Newspaper reporters came from far and near, and wrote glowing accounts of the elephantine performances,” Barnum wrote. “The six acres were plowed over at least sixty times before I thought the advertisement sufficiently circulated.”

Barnum was a genius at generating publicity. He became globally famous and incredibly wealthy by knowing how to befriend the media. In his last known letter, written five days before he died in 1891, he wrote, “I am indebted to the press of the United States for almost every dollar which I possess.”

The Barnum & Bailey Circus still carries his name. Of course, a lot has changed since Barnum traveled the world with his outlandish curiosities, but his passion for publicity should be an inspiration to anyone who wants to be extraordinary. My favorite Barnum quote is still as true today as it was a century and a half ago: “Without promotion something terrible happens… Nothing!”

Does your brand need an extreme makeover? Not necessarily–just ask the folks at Tropicana Orange Juice. After deciding that the look they’d been using for years was past the expiration date, in January they launched redesigned cartons. The look was so fresh that Tropicana’s loyal customers didn’t even recognize it. They thought it was a store brand and passed it by. The orange juice giant had never been so squeezed. After a 20% sales drop in one month, the executives at Tropicana decided to take a fresh look at the old logo and scrapped the redesign altogether.

What can we learn from this? Be careful when you mess with success. Remember New Coke? In 1985 Coke switched to a new formula to win the cola war with Pepsi. Instead of fizzing up sales, the switch fell flat with Coke fans and after just 79 days on the market, the idea was canned for good.

That’s not to say you should never change with the times. Aunt Jemima is good example. The well known brand was simply out of step. But rather than do a complete image overhaul, they gave the maple syrup lady an updated look and sales have never been sweeter.

After 25 years in TV news, Emmy winning reporter Jeff Crilley left the news business to start the country’s first PR firm staffed exclusively with former journalists: www.RealNewsPR.com

Sounds simple enough, right? But what does it mean? When I retired from TV news last summer to launch my own PR firm, I promised myself to always grab the easy stuff for my clients first—in other words, the stuff the media is already giving you.

Feeding Frenzies

When reporters are going crazy about one topic, you can’t beat ‘em…so you might as well join them. For instance, this is the anniversary week of the government’s raid on the polygamist sect in West Texas. Oprah got an exclusive behind-the-scenes tour and is dedicating a whole hour to the topic on Monday. It begins a week of anniversary pieces that you’ll see on the news.

My PR firm represents a couple of attorneys who dropped what they were doing one year ago and headed to San Angelo to represent children they didn’t know—and they didn’t make a dime. They were among 400 attorneys who did the same. It may be the largest pro bono effort in history. We’re getting my clients out in front of the media this week to reflect on the lessons learned.

Problems that Need Solving

When a reporter does a story about a problem that needs fixing, be the solution.

Right now there are lots of news stories about the flooding in the Upper Midwest…but I’m also starting to see local stories of volunteer groups packing up and headed to help. When the media points out a problem, it’s almost obligated to cover the story when you call up and announce that you’re coming to the rescue.

Holiday Stories

Tying into a holiday is easy. Yesterday the Dallas Junior Chamber of Commerce held an Easter egg hunt for visually impaired children and received widespread coverage.

The images of children searching for eggs that make a “beeping” noise was too irresistible for the media to pass up. The DJCC’s story on Saturday is just the first of a wave of Easter stories that you’ll see over the next couple of weeks.

Expert Advice

The next time you find yourself talking back to the TV set when the news is discussing something that you have expertise in, reach out to the media and suggest a followup.

What makes you an expert? If you do it for a living, you’re an expert. If you’re a Realtor, you’re a real estate expert. If you’re a lawyer, you’re a legal expert.

Trust me, this low hanging fruit is all around you. The next time you find a story that’s ripe, have the courage to call a journalist and harvest some free publicity.

After 25 years in TV news, Emmy winning reporter Jeff Crilley left the news business to start the country’s first PR firm staffed exclusively with former journalists: www.RealNewsPR.com