Niche "In the News"

I was sitting in the waiting room of a car dealers lube shop waiting on their sealcoat guy to re-apply whatever sort of gunk they put on that keeps your paint from falling off like it did on my 98 GMC pickup, when I heard the tv blaring about a 4 legged shoplifter. I stopped reading the book I had and paid attention to their tale of the thief with a tail. Here is the link to the video of that cool caper.

Now what I liked about the story was how smart of a PR tool this could be if some smart marketer would latch on to it and the right dog bone manufacturer. Dr. Paul Hartunian was a struggling marketer that was was working on a method of mail order that relied on Press Releases, he heard a story on the news about a contractor restoring The Brooklyn Bridge. Paul immediately called the contractor to see what they were going to do with the old wood he had seen in a pile in the news footage, the contractor said he would haul it to the dump where they would charge him to throw it away. Paul talked the guy into delivering it to him instead and that he would pay for it. The contractor liked that idea better. Now how would you profit from this story?

There are tons of stories like this everyday in the news and if you look at the stories with a marketer's eye you are liable to be able to make money with many of those stories.