How to strike the right balance between reactive and proactive PR during the summer OOOs!
Every year, the summer period, or what is traditionally called the ‘the silly season,’ sees ‘out of office’ emails drop into our inboxes as journalists, PR pros, and of course, our clients enjoy a well-deserved summer break. But this doesn’t mean we lay down our tools and switch off!
IBA has learnt to lean into the lull!
This month we’ve not let the PR momentum slow down. In order to secure upcoming coverage during a period of back-to-back summer holidays in Europe and major statutory holidays across North America, you need a flexible approach to PR programs!
This monthly round-up walks you through the benefits of striking the right balance of proactive and reactive PR, fueled by original human thoughts – the likes of which ChatGPT can never replicate (but more of that later)!
Interviews galore – a PR dream!
Executive profiling is a hugely powerful PR and thought leadership weapon for any B2B organization, and is one of the best ways to generate quality earned media coverage. When a journalist approaches you for a comment from your client, it is a testament to your campaign quality and brand equity – no vanity metrics needed here!
So, when a leading aviation publication contacted us for not one, but two interviews for our Aerospace and Defense client’s SME – we sprang into action! Talk about proactive PR, we utilized existing assets and campaign material to draft question responses, which were published within a short time frame of the original request.
This opportunity resulted in three quality features appearing in a top-tier industry publication with a UVPM of over 316,500! That’s not all, we then amplified these on social media, all preparing our client to springboard into September and the last Q of 2024.
Remember, quality content means happy journalists, happy executives, happy readers and therefore a very happy agency!
Slicing and dicing research with an industry slant
The proactivity doesn’t rest with comment requests! This month our North American enterprise software client published a high-level global report centered around AI adoption across their key industries. As we know, research and data make for great content material, but without a strategy in place to grab the attention of journalists, the data is redundant! Industry publications need content that resonates with their audience, so if you can target the data to be relevant not just by geography, but drill down to be relevant by industry, you can reap the coverage your client deserves.
This report was a goldmine for top-level findings, so we went back to the raw data with a fine-tooth comb and extracted a multitude of industry-specific stats. These industry-level findings were pitched to our trusted trade journalists and secured an impressive amount of top-tier placements across our client’s key industries. How’s that for thinking outside the PR box!
Keep reactive, and seek out relevant PR opportunities
It’s not just proactivity that delivers results in August. During quiet months, journalists are actively seeking copy and are hungry for quality content – so PR pros must be reactive when they spot relevant #JournoRequests for copy!
This month, our Pitch&Place team identified an opportunity to place quality content for our insurance distribution client in a target financial services publication. The journalist was keen for specific customer journey content and without missing a beat, our team knew we had a recent article on file about the importance of data insights and employee feedback in constructing the perfect customer journey that fitted the bill! All that was missing was a few tweaks to add some current newsworthy stats (well what are we there for? Done in a trice!) and our pitched article was snapped right up!
A match made in PR heaven if you ask me!
There’s no sun hats in our office, but plenty of Propeller Heads!
As the IBA team comes to the end of summer in the Northern Hemisphere, we officially hang up our sun hats but our propeller heads are always on! In fact, this month saw the launch of our second ‘IBA Talking Propeller Heads’ webcast – talk about proactivity!
This time we delved into the world of AI – the good, the bad, and the seriously useful. Why not check out our latest Talking Propeller Heads blog to catch up and make sure to sign up here so you don’t miss out on our next one!
Caitlin Goldsmith is PR Executive at IBA International.
Leave a comment