Saturday Night Live is an awesome show. Its wonderful edgy humor brings much-needed levity to the current state of our world. The show reaches 11 million broadcast viewers weekly as well as millions of people who watch segments via their YouTube channel.
So imagine my delight when I was sitting at the Washington’s National Park Fund (WNPF) Annual Auction on Saturday night (4/7/18) and the executive director, Laurie Ward, steps on stage and says “Where is Gaby Adam?” to the 500 people sitting there. She had just received word that the announcement I led that week, about a $1 million dollar private donation to WNPF, had just been mentioned on Saturday Night Live!
The mention was by actor Michael Che in the famous Saturday Night Live “Weekend Update” Good News report. He says: “Hey, this is a fun story. So, this week a woman donated $1 million to Washington State parks.” It was in an edgy segment about a “Debbie-downer” woman (Angel) and how she, because her own life is so bad, tries to find the bad in even the most exciting news (the upcoming British royal wedding included). Angel starts to rant about climate change and how this money won’t be enough. (She is correct, really, our national parks need many more wonderful donors like Bette Wallace who gave the $1 million to WNPF.) The complete Saturday Night Live segment is here and the mention about the $1 million donation can be found at about 1:48.
So how did this all come about? In some ways we were a bit lucky, but it wasn’t just luck. We carefully crafted the WNPF news release, quoted several relevant people and made it as interesting as possible by talking about the national park rangers and their safety. The news release was actually an abbreviated version of the much more creative vision we initially had for the announcement, but we were running out of time and decided to go with it (and forgo several bells and whistles). I also thought about timing and made sure the “soft” news hit later in the week. And I gave a few media, including Associated Press (AP), a “preview” of the news a few days ahead of time.
As the news became live, things were quiet for a bit and then they really popped. Associated Press and just about every major media outlet in Washington State picked up the news. Many simply reprinted the AP news. It was everywhere and media requests kept coming in! Selected coverage can be seen on the WNPF “In the News” section.
I am guessing that someone at Saturday Night Live was scanning AP stories late last week for the Good News segment of “Weekend Update” and came across this piece. We’ll take it!
Although not perfect, nothing rarely is, the segment is getting lots of attention, including 574k views (as of 4/11/18) on YouTube in addition to the 11 million people who watched it live on Saturday night. That is big. May it help our national parks, even if only indirectly. I am happy. This is a good win.
I also need to go back to watching Saturday Night Live regularly. I had so many hearty laughs while digging through the segments to find this piece. What a fabulous show.
I may not be able to get you onto Saturday Night Live, those opportunities don’t happen often, but we can give it a shot. You can find out more about my marketing communications services at my By the Sea Communications website.
And if you aren’t familiar with Washington’s National Park Fund, take a look. They are a stellar organization that has awarded nearly $4 million to Mount Rainier, North Cascades and Olympic National Parks over the past few years. Funds fill critical gaps in science and research, volunteerism and stewardship, trail maintenance, improving visitors’ experiences, search and rescue, and youth and family programs.
