Nudity and trees -- not in our playbook

One of the tough things about creating a media campaign for a cause is drawing the right attention to it. Press releases can only go so far and spreading the "message" sometimes doesn't always get the key players. Often, you don't have a lot of time to rally people to your cause. That is why many non-profits resort to a "stunt" to get attention. This could be a clever acronym or maybe a funny series of statements.

Or in Charleston, it could be a group of people posing naked around a 1,400-year-old tree in an effort to raise awareness of efforts to stop a proposed development. Yep, a group called Save the Angel Oak sort of worked with a photographer from California to capture the images over the weekend. It drew media attention, of course, as the group, which apparently was made up of a lot of people not from Charleston, was happy to make their point clear.

They say the tree is being "desecrated" because of a nearby development. How close the development is to the tree is not made clear in the store, but the tree is not being touched by the developers. Of course, the group spent a few hours feeling the tree up in public before disrobing. That sounds a tad like desecration to us. It is an interesting way of getting attention.

As a media relations firm that often deals with tough issues, we can say positively: nudity and trees -- not in our playbook.

Brett Banter