12:01 a.m. EST on Jan. 23:Geron’s news release about the FDA’s green light for the world’s first clinical trial of a human embryonic stem cell therapy crosses BusinessWire. At the same time, a micro-site dedicated to the news appears on Geron’s Web site complete with animation and video produced by the Russo Partners/Geron team. Click here to watch the animation and video.
12:02 a.m. EST:AP, Bloomberg, CNBC.com, Financial Times, Times of London, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal post the first in-depth stories online — and the story hits the streets in print in the U.K. These first-mover stories are the results of the Russo Partners/Geron team’s embargoed outreach the day before.
7:31 a.m. EST: Diane Sawyer kicks off the national broadcast coverage of the story on ABC’s Good Morning America with an exclusive segment taped months earlier at Geron’s offices in Menlo Park, Calif. As part of the segment, ABC shows viewers the animation and video of stem cell therapy production. Diane Sawyer rounds out the segment with live interviews of the chairman of the Christopher & Dana Reeve Foundation and a stem cell research program head at the University of Michigan. Both in-studio guests speak of the remarkable accomplishment of Geron.
9 a.m. EST:Geron’s president and CEO, Dr. Tom Okarma, kicks off a conference call and Webcast for members of the investment community and media. Participants view the animation and video segment while listening to voice-overs taped by Dr. Okarma.
9:30 a.m. EST:Geron distributes the animation and video segment via satellite to TV networks and stations as part of a B-roll package.
9:31 a.m. EST: The Russo Partners/Geron team completes its assistance of Webmasters in loading the animation and video segment to publications’ Web sites for connection to articles — or for use as standalone stories. One example is Beckey Bright and Ron Winslow’s segment on The Wall Street Journal’s Web site. Click here to watch the segment.
10 a.m. EST: Tom Okarma begins his first of many live and taped TV news interviews arranged by the Russo Partners/Geron team. From a studio on the campus of Stanford University, Dr. Okarma explains the significance of today’s news to on-air talent — and, ultimately, their viewers — with CNBC, MSNBC, NBC Nightly News, CNN and CBS Evening News. Geron’s animation and video segment are featured prominently in each interview.
Midday:The first of the broadcast monitoring reports rolls into the Russo Partners/Geron “media base camp” at Russo Partners’ New York City office. The numbers: Close to 1,000 airings on 500 networks/stations in more than 150 markets — with a reach of more than 100 million viewers.
Since then, the numbers have exploded, thanks to the well-produced video that the Russo Partners/Geron team had in its toolkit.
WSJ Health Blog's Scott Hensley
As print and broadcast journalists with whom we work have communicated to us regularly, if we have significant news, the journalists want video. Scott Hensley, the editor of The Wall Street Journal’s Health Blog and a longtime healthcare reporter, participated in a roundtable discussion with Russo Partners’ staff members and pointed out the references to wsj.com stories in front-page print articles. Scott’s message was that video was ideal for lifting news from the pages of the newspaper and carrying it far and wide as complementary to what one would see on television. This message was clearly evident in the case of Geron and has led other Russo Partners’ clients to think through and develop — with Russo Partners’ guidance — the video components of their own PR toolkits.
