Senator Hillary Clinton

“Rally for President” May 2008

Within seconds of learning that presidential hopeful and Senator Hillary Clinton would make a campaign stop at Maker’s Mark Distillery for a political rally in less than 24 hours, I knew exactly what that would entail and realized that I was the only person associated with Maker’s Mark that had the media background for this kind of event.
       Besides the usual (Secret Service, local media requests, needing recognized pool news photographer for behind scenes photos), I knew that:       

1.       The press corps of about 40 national news crew would follow Hillary Clinton with assorted local Kentucky media wanting to cover.

2.       Once the local media found out about this story, they would pick this event over the later rally in Frankfort as that one could not easily be covered in time for evening news deadlines.

3.       Maker’s site was going to become the bigger and better story for the news to cover because of the prior Crown Royal incident and because being outside versus the standard indoor auditorium venue.

4.       With the Preakness Race in Baltimore that day, none of the Kentucky area stations would have staffing or the satellite equipment to cover.

5.       and that Clinton’s on-site staff was going to be the “B-team”.

      Since I knew the national news media were planning to by-pass this rally for one later that day in Frankfort, and that the local media stations needed those national satellite trucks to cover the event for them, I immediately called CNN to assure them that they could indeed get there on the back country roads and that this would be a more interesting visual story. With CNN agreeing to cover this, another national satellite truck also came, and had both provided media footage to all networks as well as Kentucky stations.
     I created talking points and provided background information to Ms. Clinton and to news media (she talked about Marge Samuels to the media and the national media used my press information in their stories.)
     I provided on-site news media support such as supplies, media packets, Beta SP b-roll footage and answered background questions regarding Maker’s Mark and Bourbon.
     And because I knew the legalities and FEC rules of this political event and the separation of Maker’s from any seeming direct and/or indirect endorsement, I prepped the local Democratic head and then provided him to the local media for interviews while keeping all media away from interviewing Maker’s personnel.