Publicity for an American professor visiting NIAS-KNAW
Only death and destruction leads to equality! Do we have your attention? No this is not a vulgar clickbait strategy. It is the vision of Walter Scheidel, professor of history at Stanford University. The Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study (NIAS) had the honor of being the first in the Netherlands to invite the professor for a public lecture in Amsterdam.
Approach: hit the ground running
We were asked if we could motivate a two or three journalists to attend the event and interview Scheidel. Sounds like a simple assignment, but Scheidel had already received ample attention in the Dutch media around his worldwide book release on economic inequality a few months earlier. So there was actually little new to tell in terms of content. Instead of broadcasting, we went looking for journalists who have a great affinity with history and anthropology (and thus with Scheidel’s theme). Under the guise: a chance to speak to and question a renowned professor about a topic you yourself have a great deal of knowledge about.
Result: a spread
Three journalists attended the lecture and were able to hear from Scheidel himself why only war and pandemics can close the gap between rich and poor. The resulting publications, culminating in a two-page interview in the NRC, made our mission a success.
"Achieving a major interview while having no exciting new input, is that possible? We pretend that hitting the mark is our greatest asset, so that's what we started doing. It's then extra cool when you score for your client!"
Jill Bakker, pr-adviseur
