IBA takes on Cupid’s Valentine role this February with the perfect match of press releases, hyper-localization, and hot topics
2025 is now in full swing and so too is the PR activity at IBA! February is commonly associated with “love”, and we’ve certainly spread the love for our clients this month.
So, what have we been up to? Press releases use their charm again to catch the eye of the industry media, but that’s not all! They often say don’t change for anyone in love, but PR doesn’t follow those rules as hyper-localization gains brownie points with journalists, and finally, we’ve been playing Love Doctor as we marry hot topics with client UVPs – WARNING this isn’t the end of the cringy love puns!
Time to make it official
If you look back at any of our previous blogs, you will quickly see that at IBA we are huge proponents of the press release and its powers for a while now. Press releases are the perfect building blocks to building brand equity in your target market, informing journalists about what you do, who your customers are, what industries you operate in, and helping tell your growth story.
This month has been a picture-perfect example of the power of the press release as our aerospace and defense client made a huge new customer announcement at a major Middle Eastern event (who said events don’t work for PR?). There was no need for Cupid here as the industry media quickly picked it up and so far, it has gained eight top industry placements across the U.S., UK, and Asia-Pacific. Meanwhile, our enterprise software client in North America also wanted a piece of the press release pie announcing they had a new president, which had admirers across our client’s top three vertical markets.
No need for a long-distance relationship here
In today’s digital world, the pressure is on PR pros to adapt their content to meet cultural or market needs with localized marketing strategies. Whether it’s adapting a piece into a different language, culture, or market, PR pros must understand the target market to showcase their brand equity
One of the most powerful ways of adapting content for different markets or geographies is through the use of primary data. Take the example of our enterprise software client, who recently shared their own global primary manufacturing research with us. The key takeaways showed the various levels of AI uptake across different geographies and vertical markets. Our editorial team saw a perfect opportunity to use this data to help draft a specific food and beverage article, which would help expand our pool of pitching. Lo and behold, the strategy paid off and the piece landed placements across the food and beverage and manufacturing industry media too – the perfect example of targeted coverage.
The localization love story did not stop there as our connected worker platform client had an opportunity to gain placement in the Canadian manufacturing market with their latest health and safety article. We knew we had to adapt it to catch the eye of the industry journalists, so we took a couple of the high-level stats within the article and tailored them to better suit the Canadian market, and it paid off with a placement in Canada’s biggest Occupational Health & Safety magazine!
Finding the perfect match between the client and the hot topic
We always want to ensure our content pipeline stays fresh and fulfilled for all our clients, especially at the start of a new year. IBA’s editorial team has been hard at work to ensure the topics our clients are talking about are not only the perfect match with what is hot in the industry but also showcases their UVPs. We call this hot topic tracking, the ideal way to help our clients establish and strengthen their market position.
So when our business management software client said they had a new industry focus this year, we sprang into action with a timely hot topic tracking task. It was no surprise to see then that one of the biggest topics in a retail industry report our client had been working on married up to one of the hottest topics we had found in our research – the perfect synergy! Our team now has the focus and source material to draft a byline and pitch it out to the retail media during a time when all eyes are on this topic!
To take hot topic tracking one step further and get ahead of the curve for our aerospace and defense client, we looked through the media kits of the top industry publications within the industry to see what they will be focusing on in 2025. We then discussed these topics with their subject matter experts to get their hot takes on the subjects. This is crucial for building a successful thought-leadership campaign as messaging is finely balanced with key business messages and what’s trending in their target industry, not to mention defining SEO keywords for the year ahead.
No PR cheating round here
From press releases on the charm offensive once again and the powers of localization, to getting ahead of the competition to win the industry’s heart, it’s been a lovely (here I go again!) month of PR activity for IBA and long may the PR love story continue!
Sam Walker is PR Executive at IBA International.
