I skipped Italy and Iceland to go to Eau Claire, Wisconsin

Here's how a young publicist convinced me to visit his city

Hi friends!

Greetings from my hometown of Milwaukee. I have been traveling around northern Wisconsin for a week and got back to my computer yesterday morning. My sis and her husband are on vacation in Oregon so I spent my first day back to work driving the kids to school and dance classes, visiting my mom in her nursing home, and cleaning dog poop off the carpet in between several private video consultations and recording a podcast episode. Pardon me if I haven’t responded to your email yet. Whew!

A few weeks ago, I got such a great response from the newsletter How This Publicist Became My Best Friend, that I wanted to send another example of a great publicist, Luke Alexopoulos, with Visit Eau Claire. Because Luke is only in his mid-20s, I know he hasn’t been doing this long but he’s doing a standout job so I wanted to shine a light on him and his team today. Someone give this kid a raise! :)

I’m exhausted from traveling (for those that don’t know, on top of work travel, I spend about a week in Wisconsin every month helping care for my mom), so last month, I turned down at least a dozen press trips, including some to bucket list destinations like Italy and Iceland. Even though I committed to not traveling anymore in October, one publicist convinced me to do a super last-minute trip this past weekend, which we tacked onto an existing trip I had scheduled to Wisconsin.

I have so many moving parts in my schedule this month (existing flights to/from Milwaukee, time needed to care for my mom in her nursing home, a week watching my niece and nephews while my sister and her husband go on vacation, and a few days “up north” on my own tech-free vacation). As such, when Luke reached out about the trip, I needed an answer immediately so I could work on other travel/life details in play. Guess what! Within an hour, he confirmed that he could arrange the trip, had my rental car booked within a few hours, and sent a great itinerary a few days later. Boom. What a winner.

More info below on how it all went down and what Luke did right.

Thanks for reading!

Cassandra

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What this publicist did right

This summer, my good friend and fellow writer, Jacqueline Kehoe, put me in touch with Luke Alexopoulos, the PR manager for Eau Claire, Wisconsin, who had recently told her about a wheelchair-accessible apple orchard in Eau Claire. My mother suffers from advanced Parkinson’s and dementia and I fly to Wisconsin to help care for her every month. Accessibility is hugely important to me and I write about it a lot, so I knew I wanted to visit Eau Claire at some point but it wasn’t at all a priority.

Over the next few months, Luke did a lot of things right that ultimately led to me agreeing to a last-minute press trip. Here’s what went down.

Quick, helpful responses

Luke signed up for my Substack newsletter and, like many publicists, he began responding to my calls for pitches. I appreciated that his responses were thorough and on-point and every time I requested additional information, he went back to his team and his community and came back with exactly what I requested.

Repping a destination he doesn’t actually rep

Luke saw my recent pitch call for a Midwest Living piece I’m writing on State Parks in Wisconsin. While he didn’t have any State Parks within Eau Claire to contribute, he reached out to some parks in a nearby area to get me what I was looking for. He then followed up with me with exactly what I requested in the pitch call, including links to park images and quotes from local park managers. Wow. Nicely done.

Not only was he supporting his fellow nearby tourism boards, but he was helping to build a relationship with me by not just promoting what he was hired to promote, but by taking the time to help get me the information that I needed for this article. The pic above is from one of these parks and I could easily use it for an article on camping, which I write about a lot.

Being extremely creative and flexible

As mentioned, my October schedule is nuts and I have very little flexibility. I only had a four-day window to visit Eau Claire, which happened to fall on a weekend during peak fall foliage season in this part of Wisconsin, so most accommodations were already booked. Here is what we came up with before the trip:

1. Because driving all the way back to Milwaukee with my sister from our up north trip would add an extra 5 hours of driving for me, Luke arranged for me to pick up a rental car in the middle of the state in a city that wasn’t far off my sister’s route. From here, I drove to Eau Claire last Friday then returned the rental car in Milwaukee on Monday night so I could watch my niece and nephew.

2. Because all the hotels were booked, Luke thought he’d have to put me in an AirBnB he found outside of the city. As he usually likes to put writers in much nicer (and more conveniently located) digs, he first confirmed that I’d be okay with this approach and he even sent a link to the proposed property. I agreed to it but he wound up being able to find me a better option downtown when a hotel room freed up.

3. Before I agreed to the trip, we jumped on a call to discuss. I love that he was fully on board with planning the trip around my interests and needs (basically, areas that I’m most likely to write about), versus trying to steer me in another direction (which often happens with destinations that are dead set on promoting a specific hotel, attraction, or angle.

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An AWESOME and super flexible itinerary

I’m not gonna lie. Eau Claire has never been on my “must-visit” list and I was half worried that I’d be bored in this city of 70,000. I couldn’t have been more wrong. Luke built a PHENOMENAL itinerary for me and he and his team scrambled over the weekend to work in some last-minute changes that I wanted to get in. If I didn’t have to get back to Milwaukee to watch my niece and nephew, I would have absolutely tried to stay a few more days.

Here are five specific, detailed examples of how Luke made this itinerary amazing, how he and his team went above and beyond, and why I already told him I’d like to plan a family trip back to Eau Claire ASAP.