Karan Dannenberg, founder of Karan Dannenberg Clothier, got an early holiday gift when the Seattle Times featured a color photo of her beautifully decorated holiday windows on the front page of the business section.
I worked with Karan in 2005 to earn a similar profile in the Seattle Post Intelligencer. Since it’s hard to revisit the same story twice and get a similar result — based on my experience — I told Karan not to get her hopes up and suggested she make the attempt to earn free publicity on a DIY basis. She asked me for media contacts. I didn’t supply them, but I did direct her to the “contact us” sections of the local papers to find the proper names. Having worked together prior, Karan knew the importance of making it easy for reporters to see the value in her story, so she snapped a few compelling digital photographs of her window displays and sent them along to the right reporters with an email describing her commitment to give Seattle a gift of visual fantasy, just in time for holiday shopping. Karan’s efforts were rewarded with a feature and two photos in the Seattle Times. Right about now, Seattle is covered in snow, and that means that it is challenging for many people to navigate the streets to enjoy the windows and the shopping. Still, I celebrate Karan’s passionate pitch to earn prominent do-it-yourself publicity to make the investment she made in holiday decor pay off. Now, that story will live on indefinitely, along with the goodwill of giving the city such a lovely gift during what has turned out to be a very challenging retail season.
