Kahn Media Brings an Abundance of Media Coverage to the Petersen’s Vault

Kahn Media brings an abundance of media coverage to the Petersen Automotive Museum’s newly opened vault and increased revenue for the Petersen.

The Petersen Automotive Museum, while remaining popular, had been relatively stagnant for years, both in terms of visitors and media coverage. To take the museum to the next level, Executive Director, Terry Karges, opened up the museum’s legendary vault to the public for the first time. While many knew this elusive area existed, viewing it was never an option. People were anxious to experience this never before seen area, and Kahn Media was charged with handling the publicity around the vault opening, making sure the public knew of its opening.

Kahn Media employed a systematic approach to pitching the media, reaching out to a variety of different media types –newspapers, magazines, blogs—in a variety of different genres such as mainstream, automotive enthusiast, B2B, etc. An unprecedented amount of media coverage was received, including local news outlets such as KTLA TV, The Los Angeles Times and the Orange County Register, major automotive websites such as Autoblog, Jalopnik, Edmunds and MSN Autos, and big video placements such as Hot Rod, Motor Trend and GQ.

The results of this campaign on the museum has been astounding—and measurable! Polls were taken at the admissions desk, asking visitors where they had heard of the vault tours and the most frequent answer was a media story, often an Los Angeles Times or Autoblog story. The revenue generated during this 23-day period (December 15, 2012 – January 6, 2013) increased by approximately 310% compared to the same period in the previous year and generated an equivalent of about 23% of the prior fiscal year’s total admissions income. The Petersen’s gift shop saw a 20% increase in its number of sales compared to the same period of the previous year.