NASA and facility tours as great public relations

Last month I had an opportunity to tour the NASA Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio with David M. DeFelice, Community Relations Team Lead. We checked out some way cool space research facilities and got to hold the first baseball used as the World Series ceremonial first pitch from space.

Fortunately I was able to film some highlights of the tour.

Direct link to A tour of the NASA Glenn Research Center on YouTube.

This got me thinking about how great a PR tool facility tours can be.

In our world of electronic communications and social media, sometimes we can forget that the best asset to get the media interested in what we do is a tour of where we do our work. NASA certainly knows this.

But you don't have to have an out-of-this-world facility to conduct an interesting tour.

I've been on some terrific tours (and wrote about them on my blog or for other publications) such as the New Zealand All Blacks rugby team HQ, the Pentagon (I even went into the park in the middle!), and General Motors world headquarters where I saw the new Chevrolet Volt being made. Cool stuff all.

When an interested member of the media is treated to an experience at your facility, it can often generate great press.

If you have something interesting to show, do it. The world does not live by social media alone!

Comments

[twitter.com/marketingisus]

Great advice David. Thanks. Perhaps along the lines of 'show, don't tell'? Hey, did you catch the 2011 World Cup Rugby Final Haka? Here's the link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5hP0kBQxB0

Great! Have a good weekend!

[Kenneth Northcutt]

Wow.. Thanks for sharing that story David. A lot of info.. It looks like I'm on an exhibit. Such a nice post of yours.