A flipping good February for all!
February has been jam-packed or lemon-packed full of events depending on your taste: Shrove Tuesday (or as the Brits prefer to call it, Pancake Day), marking the beginning of Lent, the Super Bowl, & Valentine’s Day.
This month has been nothing but sweet, a classic maple syrup topping, or lemon and sugar for the purists – there’s some disagreement in our office! But enough of pancakes, let’s get on with February’s monthly round up! The IBA International team has been busy as ever – from tapping into manufacturing trends for quality thought leadership content to gaining fresh insights to keep us and our clients on top of the PR game.
Forward-thinking strategies – the IBA recipe for success
This month, the editorial team at IBA has donned their industrial thinking caps to tap into issues facing B2B organizations. Think supply chain issues, skilled worker shortages, and reshoring operations – we’re on top of it! We’ve used this opportunity to transform client forward-thinking strategies into topical thought leadership pieces.
The automotive industry has seen a demand increase for AI and automation technology across its design, production, manufacturing, and repair processes to tackle issues such as talent shortages and evolving customer demands. We’re working with our automotive retail client through a series of briefings with its in-house subject matter experts, but also customers, and partners to curate a ‘garage of the future’ report that addresses these pressing industry challenges.
While for our data in motion client, the team completed hot topic tracking research to provide an insight into some future trending topics that its competitors have no answer for. The IBA editorial team cracked on– identifying the theme, setting in motion plans for briefing session with our client’s subject matter experts, drafting a high-quality piece of thought leadership, and using our pitch and place strategies to gain top-tier media traction in both Europe and North America – a perfect recipe if you ask me! Oops back to pancakes!
Expanding our horizons across new media channels
Speaking of notable events, February 13 marked World Radio Day. To aptly mark this occasion, the IBA team attended a pitching to radio webinar and pitching to broadcast TV webinar hosted by Roxhill Media to level up on our knowledge of pitching to different media channels.
One of our key takeaways from both webinars was the merging of different platforms. Journalists no longer work in the silo of one type of medium – be it print, broadcast, or social. Journalists work across more channels than ever. So, if you can land a good interview with a TV or radio journalist and provide them with the right material, you can expect more than just a snippet on the six o’clock news!
The team took away plenty of interesting pitching tactics and an IBA upcoming podcast series could be seriously on the cards…
Interviews – the proof is in the pudding …or pancakes!
Interviews for client SMEs are stacking up – not unlike that plate of fresh pancakes! For our automotive retail and AI-based video telematics provider clients, we have secured interviews with top-tier technology and industry publications in the North America. In our last monthly round-up, my colleague Sam wrote about the success of our CIO-driven thought leadership campaign for our automotive retail client that culminated in the WSJ, and this month we’ve secured yet another interview in a top tier IT publication in the U.S. with CIO.com – it doesn’t come more targeted than that!
For our newest client, an AI-based video telematics provider, we’ve created content and internationally pitching and placing articles and news stories in high-level publications across the North America. We have gained over 10 placements since January for this piece – and secured two interviews with highly regarded industry publications. The campaign might be new, but our pitch and place team are flipping pancakes fast!
Crepe-ing ahead of the competition
IBA never knowingly underserves. So, if the stack of prime placements, interviews, and excellent thought leadership wasn’t enough to put a smile on our faces this month – the cherry on top of the pancake stack was a prime placement of our own IBA thought leadership article on building brand awareness in a top-tier U.S. publication!
Caitlin Goldsmith is PR Executive at IBA International.
Leave a comment