MarketingInsideOut.com

In the world of PR, planning is everything. We sweat the details — the best day, the best hour, the best place to host a news conference, march, or outdoor event or extravaganza. But name me a PR pro who hasn’t on occasion had his or her best laid plans dashed by the weather, and I’ll name you someone who’s been in the business less than five years. Take my colleague’s campaign launch in Chicago this fall. It involved a national nonprofit whose spokesman was set to start walking from Chicago to Los Angeles along Route 66. The timing was perfect. 10 a.m. A Monday. At Chicago’s highly visible Water Tower Place on Michigan Avenue. It was all systems “go.” Even the weather forecast was accommodating— no serious rain in Chicago since late summer. No rain, that is, until that Monday. At 10 a.m. On Michigan Avenue. And not just a sprinkle, either. We’re talking torrential sheets of water slamming into our event, and soaking everyone to the skin. When it came to this particular event, taking a “rain check” wasn’t an option, so the walk began despite the downpour. And despite the lack of news media that had said they’d be there. (What ever happened to intrepid reporters?)

This ill-fated campaign launch came rushing to mind a few weeks ago while I was in New York for a mid-February media tour. I knew something was in the air that Friday night as I shopped for dinner at the local Fairway market. The lines were wrapped around the block — at 9 p.m. I’d seen those lines before. In Denver when the threat of a weekend blizzard would provoke a stampede to the nearest supermarket to stock up on enough canned goods, frozen pizza and beer to last to summer. An hour later—toting my sack of survival goods (bagels, lox, a tub of Ben & Jerry’s Cherry Garcia)—I was met in the hotel elevator by a Chinese tourist who cheerfully assured me that we were in for a “momentous” weekend.

And momentous it was. By Saturday afternoon, light flurries had given way to a full-blown white out. By morning, the city was buried under four feet of snow—the most that had fallen in a single day since the 1880s. Airports were closed. Traffic was stopped. The moderately adventuresome, like me, braved the knee-high drifts and arctic blast to snag fresh coffee and a Sunday New York Times. The truly hardy sled down Broadway or headed for Central Park with their cross-country skis. The city looked and felt like a Currier and Ives Christmas card.

But then came Monday—and the realization that I had to make it to my media appointments. Forget taking a cab. Those that weren’t stuck in the ridges of snow churned up by the snowplows, were occupied with tourists hoping to beat it out of town. Forget the dress shoes, too. Between the drifts, the ponds of slush at each crosswalk, and the ice-coated sidewalks, the trek to the subway station felt more like a scene from Dr. Zhivago. And then the calls began. One contact couldn’t make it in for the meeting—he was stuck on Long Island. Another made it to his office, but was in such a foul mood thanks to spending three hours on the train that he didn’t want to see anyone that day (I totally understood!). And so I trudged from Midtown to Soho, from pond to icy pond in search of an appointment. Luckily, there were sock stores along the way, and three changes of black socks later, I met up with the fourth of my scheduled appointments—an independent producer who lives near his studio.

The good thing about weather— rather than other unexpected events—is that barring a category 6 hurricane or a town-leveling tornado — things do eventually return to normal. Our Route 66 sojourner was greeted by blue skies and plenty of media attention just a few days out of Chicago. And in New York, by the following Tuesday, although the ice water at each crosswalk was deeper, my media tour was back on schedule.