The ex-journo's guide to being a press officer

When you’ve spent years planning hours of TV news output, or having to work with what your planners have supplied for a day's coverage, you learn pretty quickly what makes a story work. But it’s a different kind of thrill being on the other side of the press release. And for our recent Tulip Cycle Wands project, a joyous, recycled-plastic-meets-road-safety trial in Westminster, I found myself in exactly that reversed role: channelling my newsroom instincts into a launch strategy.

An essential part of advancing your business story is by securing coverage from journalists, bloggers and influencers. You may not have a PR agency to hand, so you may have to do it yourself. If that's the case, then here are some tips from someone who spent several years as the very target of business's coverage-seeking exploits:

1. Stakeholders first

Before you get anywhere near press strategy, you need to know who’s in the mix. Our first challenge was mapping the range and cast of characters involved — not just those making the Tulip Cycle Wands happen (Pitman Tozer and  Westminster Council), but also those who might want a stake in the launch moment. It was essential to coordinate messaging and expectations so we could amplify the project through a united front.

2. Be clear on who you’re talking to

Pitman Tozer could reach the architecture world directly, so we focused on everyone else: the general public in Westminster and London, urban cyclists, and civic-minded citizens in cities further afield. We built comms for traditional news outlets, cycling publications, city influencers, and social-first audiences. That clarity helped us tailor the tone and tactics from the outset.

3. Lead with the picture

If it doesn’t look good in a thumbnail, it probably won’t get picked up. The Tulip Wands were a dream: rainbow-coloured, sculptural, and photogenic. We planned the install to coincide with a major cycling event (The London Cycling Campaign’s festival of cycling), got schoolkids involved to add colour and charm, and built an open-access media pack full of stills and video so no journalist or influencer had to chase us. And crucially: we kept that pack updated before, during, and after launch.