You’ve prepared a fabulous press release, a social media campaign with video content, great interviews and you’ve managed to get the attention of a national newspaper. Fantastic. But then there’s an attempted potential military coup in Russia and suddenly the journalists, who were keen to cover your story, are nowhere to be found.
I remember working as a reporter for ITV driving to one job with the interviewees all lined up only to be diverted to another job deemed more newsworthy. It wasn’t a regular occurrence but it did happen.
The problem is neither you or your PR agency can control the news agenda. Yes, it is annoying, time wasting and probably has cost you too. But remember nothing is ever wasted. Sit down with the agency and rethink. If you want the launch/story to come out now can you make more use of social media? Is the story so linked in with a date that it had to go that day/week or could it be revisited another time? Is there anything about your story which you feel you could do better the second time around? In other words, there are options.
If you’ve got as far as getting interest from a journalist in the first place then the story is probably strong enough to grab their attention. Don’t give up. If you or your agency would like support in revisiting your story then do speak to us and our experienced team of journalists and writers and we’ll see if we can help.