Pieces like this are a real primer in modern PR.
Porn Show Lands In Miami Beach
There’s no story here. Trade shows happen all the time and reporting on an ‘erotic’ expo is in itself as newsworthy as reporting on a car-chase. It’s part of the news because sex-sells and on a slow-news day sexy stories can pull viewers with Germanic efficiency. Normally they ‘tease’ pieces like this for hours and save them to the very end of the show in order to keep news numbers up.
So what’s there to learn?
Jenna gives good interview. Her style is a mix of summer-dress and glamour wear which manages to sell her sexuality without making her look like the whore of Babylon. She consistently has the best make-up of anyone I’ve ever seen (mainstream or jizz-bizz). She’s not so glamorous that women immediately react against her and when she speaks, she talks about Miami, telling the local-news crews exactly what they want to hear and she’s not trying to sell anything. Once you know Jenna’s name, she knows Google will do all her marketing for her.
By rights Tera should be a media darling. She’s got a better story than Jenna (ex-Ford model, trained nurse, Thai-English heritage) but she’s doing it all wrong. She looks intimidating (who suggested her signing booth put her in the sky like some kind of skin-flick St. Peter?), she doesn’t smile (beautiful women who don’t smile get called bitches), and when she speaks she reels off a list of things she’ll sign. I suspect that the rest of her interview was deemed ‘too commercial’, i.e. she spent all her time discussing upcoming ‘projects’ and thus got edited away to nothing. Her PR people need to be lined up and shot.
Ron’s a natural of course. If there’s any doubt about him being more famous than Jenna it should be assuaged by the fact he’s the only performer who needs no name for the CBS audience - who are in their 50’s - to recognize. There’s no real way to contain a personality like Ron and the rounder he gets, the less threatening and funnier he becomes. Can you imagine a 6′4″, buff Ron Jeremy with Brad Pitt’s physique AND a ten inch cock? He’d be terrifying. The only multimillionaire I know who lives in logo T-Shirts and is therefore in line for a state funeral.
Of course the real winners are the people organizing the show. For the cost of a press-pass they’ve got a three minute ad on their local CBS affiliate from reporters kind enough to include opening times and prices in case anyone’s too busy to look it up. Don’t worry, this doesn’t make sex acceptable, in a week or two these shows will be running some scare-story about the danger bikini-shots on MySpace pose to American youth but, thanks to capitalism as long as it sells ads they’ll put as much porn on air as they can get away with.