While a sex tape is a good way to get media exposure for some; Kim Kardashian, Paris Hilton and alike - it's not the right way to get the type of media exposure to escalate your business's chance of being written about.

When I first started doing PR, I used to write a media release and fax it to a media outlet - all with varying results. The headline, like it is today, is worth it's weight in gold, and if you have a strong first paragraph, you may get that call back you have been waiting for.

That was soon followed up with 'pitching' on the telephone and depending on what mood the journalist was in or your ability to 'sell' a story to them, you either walked away with a published article or your press release was thrown in the trash can.

In 1998, the faxing part changed to emailing which was fantastic because it was a much faster and less tedious way of getting a media release out to journalists. It also was a much more environmentally friendly way to operate and allowed for changes to be made to ensure that each email sent out to a journalist was a one-to-one marketing piece rather than an everything to everyone, hit and miss style approach.

The Wolf of Wall Street was in many people's opinions a celebration of the bad life - drugs, sex, expensive toys, opulent homes and super expensive suits.

As we watched on as Leonardo DiCaprio spruiked, "The way I look at it, their money was better off in my pocket," many of us couldn't believe that world existed quite like that. But it does. And it's right here on our doorstep too.

"Same bed, but it feels a bit bigger now" is the lyrics in the famous Bruno Mars song "When I was your man". An apt description of Marketing Eye's business expansion into the US market. It's the same company, but it's a bit bigger now. 

What started out as a step to expand the international footprint of our brand, has taken on a whole new dimension. Australia and America have long been tied and now more so than ever. The ebbs of the economy has led to an opportunity for Australian companies that are geared for expansion to leverage the strength of the Australian dollar, and affordable set up costs in the US market without breaking the bank. The downside, is US dollars are not worth as much, as the dollar loses its grip on parity.

Recently US Airlines were left embarrassed when an employee responded to a customer with a cryptic tweet – an image of a woman and a very strategically placed toy airplane.  Understandably, this social media marketing error horrified the world and the image went viral.  In addition, the airline’s bizarre apology was retweeted over 12,000 times.

The PR failure from this ill-advised US Airlines post served as a reminder of the power of social media and how it can cause irreparable damage to a company’s brand.

Here are the six lessons to learn from this PR plane crash, as well as other social media disasters:

Marketing Eye was approached by Spanish Doughnuts with the view to promoting the first annual “World Churro Eating Competition” to be held at Melbourne’s Federation Square. With just over two weeks to go before the event date it was full steam ahead from the off-set. Marketing Eye met with Michael Aldemir, Director of Spanish Doughnuts Australia for an initial brain storming session, from here the promotional strategy was developed and implemented.