Most brands wait for a reporter to need an expert. Proof Publicity built Recovery Centers of America into the expert a Chicago newsroom already had on file ahead of Lollapalooza 2026.
It’s why Karen Wolownik Albert, CEO of Recovery Centers of America at St. Charles, ended up on two Chicago TV stations, a national CBS pickup, and a combined reach in the tens of millions before the festival gates even opened.
The Research: What the Data Actually Showed
Grant Park was expecting more than 100,000 attendees a day across four days. The Chicago DEA’s field office had already flagged a specific, current threat: counterfeit pills sold as molly or ecstasy that actually contain meth, part of a broader rise in meth seizures across Illinois and the Midwest this year. Northwestern Memorial’s ER, which handles the bulk of Lolla-related admissions, was staffing up in anticipation. Drug and alcohol incidents remain one of the top reasons festivalgoers end up in that ER, alongside heat illness and sprained ankles.
Instead of a recycled “festivals are dangerous” statistic, we sourced local and specific news to the greater Chicago area. A specific substance risk, tied to a specific law enforcement warning, tied to a specific weekend.
That specificity is what made Karen a credible voice instead of a generic talking head. She was there to speak directly to what the DEA had just flagged: people buying pills from someone they don’t know, with no idea what’s actually in them.
The Strategy: Build the Expert, Not the Moment
The goal was to catch a reporter’s attention ahead of the festival week, and position Karen as the go-to expert for anything related to substance abuse.
That meant reaching out to newsrooms with the research already done, the DEA warning already sourced, and Karen positioned as someone with real clinical authority in the Chicago market.
CBS 2 and FOX 32 Chicago both booked Karen for interviews in the days leading up to the festival.
The Coverage: Two Stations, One Trusted Voice
Proof tailored talking points, sound bites, and b-roll logistics to each outlet, giving both stations their own angle on festival safety.
- CBS 2/WBBM aired Karen on July 29, the day before the festival opened. The segment ran across the station’s full broadcast rotation and its Chicago live stream. The accompanying article quoted her on the specific risk of taking substances from people you don’t know.
- FOX 32 Chicago aired its segment on July 30, the day gates opened, running across multiple dayparts. The station’s YouTube post alone reached more than 103k viewers.
The Results
- 9 total broadcast airings across FOX 32 and CBS 2/WBBM
- CBS Chicago segment unique viewer metrics (UVM): 82,393,743
- National pickup on MSN: 89.4M UVM
- FOX 32 segment UVM: 3M
- FOX 32’s YouTube post alone: 103K audience
- CBS 2/WBBM’s YouTube post: an additional 2.2K audience
The goal was one on-camera segment on a top Chicago station. Proof landed two, plus national syndication.
Why Expert Positioning Beats Chasing the Moment
Recurring news hooks, like festival safety, aren’t hard to predict, but being the source a newsroom trusts before the segment gets cast is what gets opportunities.
Three things made this work:
- Doing the research before the pitch. A generic “drugs are dangerous at festivals” angle gets ignored. A specific, current, sourced risk, like the DEA’s counterfeit pill warning, gives a reporter something to build a segment around.
- Positioning the expert, not the event. Karen wasn’t pitched as “someone available to talk about Lollapalooza.” She was pitched as the person with clinical authority on exactly the risk the DEA had flagged and general Lollapalooza safety tips.
- Treating every outlet as its own story. When two stations say yes, resist the urge to hand them the same segment. Build separate angles so each newsroom gets something exclusive.
The takeaway for any client sitting on a recurring moment: the story isn’t the event. It’s whether your client is already positioned as the person who understands the problem before the cameras show up.
