I’m not sure if you’ve heard but Osama is dead. Then again unless you live in a hole, you’ve heard… and even then I think you may have gotten a tweet.
In fact, “Last night saw the highest sustained rate of Tweets ever,” Twitter tweeted on Sunday night. “From 10:45pm – 2:20am ET, there was an average of 3,000 Tweets per second.” That’s 27,900,000 tweets in just two hours and 35 minutes. Even for a medium that can generate a million tweets on Glee’s Finchel vs. Fuinn, 27 million is impressive.
And print media was no exception to the Osama coverage, not surprisingly hustling to post the latest updates to the story. As zcomm’s own Nicole Soufi noted, “The Newseum’s daily paper display was overwhelming. With papers from around the country, it was interesting to see that all but three states had basically the same headline, a rare sight.”
While all PR professionals know that news is in the eye of the beholder, there is no way around it this week. No pitch will make it through the Osama wall. One and all can agree Osama’s death is the top headline no matter where you are, and this story shows no sign of slowing down, especially given all the twists and turns since the raid. Was he armed? Pics or no pics? A conspiracy theorist picnic.
So what does this mean to PR professionals the world over?
Our advice: stand back and let it happen. Next week (we hope) will be back to the hustle and bustle of fighting for your client, but this week belongs to Osama. Now is a good time to see if you can be of assistance to reporters, but please don’t ask them to write an article on your client… unless they are the Seals Team Six.
In other news, as many reporters discovered, the name Osama is easily confused with Obama. Here are some of the best examples courtesy of PR Daily. http://www.prdaily.com/Main/Articles/8128.aspx
