Moving more of our budget from big planned campaigns into reactive PR, meaning commenting on news stories as they break. Results so far are mixed and I think speed is the issue.
Our current setup: monitor news alerts for the client’s topics (energy bills, home heating), draft a comment from their in-house expert, get approval, send to journalists covering it.
The problem is approval. Legal takes anywhere from 2 to 6 hours. By then the story has moved on. When we get a comment out within 90 minutes of a story breaking, we land coverage maybe 1 in 4 times. After 4 hours, basically never.
What’s worked for us:
– pre-approved comment banks on predictable topics
– one named expert with authority to sign off their own quotes
How fast is your turnaround and how did you get the client’s legal team to trust you with it? Also, roughly what portion of your reactive coverage includes a link?
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