Leveraging local media for exposure

Every sailing town is eager, or should be, for exposing its recreation in mainstream media. Critical to growing the sport is to expose it, and there’s no better way than to take the media for a sail… really!

Not unlike Scuttlebutt, local news needs content for sports and lifestyle sections, so it is about coming up with a reason why sailing deserves to be included. A recent story in the Louisville Courier Journal found a reason.

Louisville, Kentucky’s largest city, is known for horse racing and hoops, not sailing, but sitting alongside the Ohio River offers options and boating is one of them. Two brothers who like to sail reached out to Maggie Menderski of the Journal and took her along. Here’s the start of her story:
———————
Brian Hancock never really thought of Louisville as a sailing town. That seems a bit silly now.

Each week he and his brother, Evan Hancock, set sail with about three dozen boats on the Ohio River, but just four years ago the river was something that barely registered with him at all.

These weekly races are a warm weather tradition in Louisville that date back to the mid-1970s, and the Hancocks are largely newcomers compared to the other folks who raise their sails each week.

“It’s the whole other side of the city that’s available to you,” Brian told me. “You don’t really think about sailing on a river.”

Now Brian and his brother think about it all the time, and life on the river has become a huge part of their family. They’ve felt so welcome on the river, it’s something they want to share.

That’s how I ended up on the Hancock family’s boat “Best of Times.” Brian, 30, reached out to me in May, eager to share what he’d learned on the water and how it had changed his view of Louisville.
———————
Menderski knows nothing about sailing but presents this lifestyle report that favorably profiles the sport for Louisville’s 600k population. That’s a lot of exposure!