The Great Recession took the wind out of many sails, even sinking some boats. But not at the Jon Charles Salon in Uptown. Seeing the financial carnage, owner Jon Charles devised a strategy to offer people the percentage they lost in their 401k's as the percentage amount they could discount for styling services.

Would the canny promotion play in the media? It didn't take long to find out!

• Twin Cities TV, radio and newspapers all ran with the story.

• The local bureau Associated Press liked it, too, putting it on the wire where it literally generated several hundred hits around the country as other newspapers and other media picked it up.

• Then an anonymous Help A Reporter Out (HARO) query from "a national news source" was posted looking for small businesses who were trying to help out people during a difficult period. Media Savant replied, sending them a link to the local CBS affiliate story that had been done a couple weeks earlier.

• The masked HARO query turned out be The CBS Evening News with Katie Couric: Jon Charles was featured in a 7-minute piece with two other small companies around the country.

The publicity value created a mini-tsunami for the salon and Charles' related business ventures:

• At the time the national CBS piece aired, Charles was on a Florida golf course with other salon owners pitching a new line of imported brushes ideal for Blow Outs. The guys were so impressed they signed on.

• More importantly the new business that the salon generated from the promotion and all the publicity shortly thereafter allowed Charles to open a new salon in Wayzata at a time when many were shuttering -- and very few businesses of any size were expanding.

• Up until the Covid-19 pandemic, the new Jon Charles Salon was doing more business than his first successful salon.