1. Target audience
One of the biggest driving factors for the media is serving the needs of its target audience. By understanding what the audience wants, they can build a bigger audience. By building a bigger audience, they can deliver more customers to their advertisers. And that means they can charge them more.
Never be in any doubt as to why the media wants bigger audiences. It's not for vanity reasons; apart from the BBC, it's because bigger audiences translates into bigger profits.
So the media spends a lot of cash understanding its target audience and delivering suitable content to it. You need to do the same to get your free publicity.
Understand what audience the journalist is delivering to, and then give them a story they can pass straight onto that audience.
For example, your average local newspaper wants to know about anything interesting and newsworthy happening locally.
Meantime your average local radio station wants to know about what's happening locally - but local radio stations operate to different demographics. The ones that play cool "wicky wicky waa waa" music are probably targeting people up to the age of 25. So, for example, they're not going to be interested in news about pensions. Whereas your older station that plays real music (whoops, a bit of bias there), is more likely to run that news. That's because their audience is people aged 30+, and they have more of an interest in pensions.
You should be able to figure out what the target audience is by reading the newspaper, listening to the radio station etc. If you can't - no problem - contact the media and ask them. Since they target a specific audience to better serve the advertiser, if a potential advertiser asks what market they're in, they'll soon provide evidence.
Incidently, the most targeted audience is people aged 25 to 34 years old. This is because they spend the most of their disposable income. They don't have the most disposable income (that's the over 50s), but they spend the most of their disposable income.
And it's women that are targeted more than men - because they tend to make more of the household major spending decisions than their partners.
EVERY DVD: A TOTALLY MADE UP EXAMPLE
You were promised a practical example. So lets apply the 5 Unbreakable Rules to a ficticious company called Every DVD. It's a retailer with a small number of shops. The business's unique selling point is that it stocks every single DVD currently on sale in the UK at each of its branches.
Let's apply rule 1 to this business. Every DVD targets people of all age groups interested in non-blockbuster DVDs. It's more expensive than the main retailers, so doesn't sell a lot of the blockbuster DVDs. Instead it finds its main custom base is impulse buyers, who stumble across a TV show or movie they once loved and had forgotten about.
Therefore its business objective is to attract as many people as possible into the store (not unlike most retail stores then).
Every DVD is lucky to be in a mature business that is relevant to all age groups. That means that all the local newspapers and radio stations will be interested in its business in some way. As long as it puts a local spin on it, anyway.
But the business can still apply clever targeting. It could compile a weekly Area Top 10 of its best selling DVDs for the local newspaper. How poweful would that be? It could get even smarter for the local radio stations. Do a weekly top 10 of DVDs sold to under 21s for the local dance music radio station. At the same time it could do a family DVD top ten for the mainstream music station. And maybe even a top 10 of what the over 50s are buying for the local BBC radio station.