Nearly every industry has been forced to change in some way due to Coronavirus. Whether it’s working from home, being furloughed, or only operating with skeleton staff. At least one of these will be true for anyone working in media, specifically PR and journalism, and even more specifically, how the two relate.
The news cycle and its severity is constantly changing, but one thing that continues to reign true is the need for positive, people led, stories. The everyday hero. The best way to secure coverage now is to search for a good people focused story, even if your client is a business, you can use its staff or customers as the heroes of your story. Be relatable, be bold, be genuine.
Probably the worst thing you could do now is to force your client into a story, weaving in Coronavirus as a newshook, where it’s completely irrelevant and inappropriate. Not only will this lead to no coverage, it could even damage both yours and your clients reputation. Even though the news is dominated byCoronavirus it’s not the only topic being covered.
All of this sounds great in theory, but what about in practice? We wanted to share a quick example from our own experience.One of Full Volume’s clients is Strüik, a Dutch food retailer. Since the outbreak of Coronavirus, we’ve secured over 40 pieces of relevant press coverage while being sensitive to the current situation. How, you ask? Firstly, we didn’t use Coronavirus as a news hook, quite the opposite actually; we stated in the subject of the email that this was a fun, light hearted, non-pandemic related story so instantly people know exactly what they were getting. We found journalists via Twitter who were in need of non-coronavirus related stories, and also found that some journalists saved the piece for a day where they really needed a light-hearted story to break up the severity of the news.
The opportunity for coverage is definitely still out there. There are lots of great ways brands have secured coverage with Coronavirus related news, but it’s not the only way, so don’t feel pressure forcing a client into a narrative where they don’t belong.
