Media campaigns for politicians can be some of the most difficult campaigns to run. Journalists are skeptical of politicians, knowing they are pushing an agenda. No reporter wants to be a tool for propaganda.
This is why every political campaign must have a solid news angle. Not a marketing message or campaign narrative, but an editorial angle.
MACIAS PR has run media campaigns for Congressional candidates across New York, Virginia, Arizona, Illinois, Oregon and California. With all of these campaigns, we secured local and national media coverage for these candidates by identifying news angles that were timely and topical.
A health care services consulting firm approached MACIAS PR a few months after they launched their startup. The founder wanted help elevating her brand and introducing her services to social workers and new clients.
Our team developed and executed this publicity campaign from conception to execution. We identified story angles of interest; positioned the CEO as as a leading health care expert; coordinated interviews; prepped the founder for all media interviews; and identified reporter and media outlets of interest.
Goal: To increase brand awareness and generate revenue around the company’s health care services.
Challenges: The health care startup was only a few months old with a founder who was extremely busy building a company. The CEO had no experience dealing with the media, coming from the health care sector.
Strategy: Position the CEO with the media as the health care expert on everything related to Medicaid and Medicare.
Tactics:
Identify solid news angles that resulted in coverage.
Position CEO as strategic thought leader in health care.
Identify key media contacts at relevant publications.
Pitch stories that were timely, newsworthy, and of interest to the targeted audience.
Follow up with reporters, answer their questions, and continue to push relevant new topics for coverage.
Track coverage and measure results
Media Results
This PR campaign resulted in local and national media coverage, including stories with The New York Times, US News & World Report, Forbes, New York Post, CBS 2 and PIX 11 TV in New York. This coverage helped generate growth and services expansion within the first 6 months of working together.
A few months into the campaign, MACIAS PR created a mobile app for the company – The Medicaid app. This new digital tool created a new pipeline for potential clients. MACIAS PR conceptualized the mobile app and created the content that helped families and patients navigate through the complicated government services.
The Medicaid App also enabled us to position the health care services as a tech player, which generated additional media exposure.
Key Takeaways:
Securing stories in the media is an effective way to increase brand awareness and generate positive buzz around a product or service.
To be successful, PR campaigns should be well-planned and executed, with a focus on targeting the right media outlets and pitching stories that are timely, newsworthy, and of interest to the target audience.
Following up with media contacts and tracking coverage is essential to ensure that a PR campaign is successful.
You can see more of the media coverage below. Click here if you’d like to get a PR estimate, or contact us to schedule a call.
Which is a better marketing spend: PR or advertising? A few years ago, MACIAS PR published a cost comparison analysis that took a quantitative look at the cost of earned media versus paid media.
The research specifically looked at the promotional cost of media exposure for an event that helped veterans, and the cost of earned media for a mobile app launch.
We’ve embedded that white paper at the bottom of this post, but if you’re short on time, here are some of the key findings from our research.
Local PR is More Cost Effective than Advertising
MACIAS PR led a local media campaign for the nonprofit organization, VAREP, which needed help promoting their VA Housing Summit in San Antonio. This media campaign’s purpose was to educate the local veteran and military community on VA housing programs available in their area.
Under the media campaign, our team secured four media placements leading up to their VA Housing Summit in television, radio and print.
According to Golden State Media Concepts, the average TV commercial in San Antonio, ranges from $500 to $3000 for only 30-seconds of air time.
Both KENS 5 and KSAT 12 ran their TV segments in the 10pm newscast – the most expensive advertising program of the day. Each TV segment ran longer than two minutes.
Under advertising standards, this nonprofit would have needed to purchase 4 commercials for the equivalent airtime of one TV newscast. At the current market rate, one TV segment would have cost roughly $12,000, or $24,000 for the segments that ran on two TV stations.
This PR campaign also secured media placements with a prominent local magazine, The San Antonio Current and radio station, KYKX. A 30-second radio spot, according to the Golden State Media Concepts, costs $250-$490 for the morning drive time.
The San Antonio Current Magazine doesn’t release its ad rates publicly, but their ad sheet says the magazine reaches 272,000 readers a month and more than 4 million monthly page views. The live segment lasted roughly 90-seconds, bringing the total cost to $1,110.
If you’d like to get a free PR proposal for your company, click here to get a customized quote.
MACIAS PR launched a media, branding and crowd funding campaign for a private equity firm that needed help raising capital for their commercial real estate projects.
The PE firm had specific goals. They needed help funding their real estate projects in Arizona, Long Island and Ohio, and they wanted to target accredited investors. Equally important, the PR firm didn’t have a CMO or marketing team. MACIAS PR worked closely with their CEO to conceptualize story lines, identify media outlets and markets, and pitch reporters.
MACIAS PR has run media and branding campaigns for clients across industries: health care, technology, nonprofits, real estate, politics. In multiple ways, we have taken a generalist and specialist PR to each campaign – based on the need.
Despite the diversity of clients, one common thread remains consistent. We have delivered top tier media placements for our clients with the most influential news organizations.
It doesn’t matter if our clients are promoting the latest tech wearable, pushing a cause or selling health services to businesses. We have relationships with media outlets and reporters in all of these industries.
Generalist or Specialist PR Agency
Potential clients frequently assume that a specialist PR agency from their specific industry will deliver better results.
In my experiences inside the media and as the owner of this PR agency, I’d say the better framed question revolves around how much each PR agency knows about your industry.
I’ve written extensively for Forbes on what to look for when hiring a publicist. You can read that thought leadership here. And whether it is better to hire an East Coast, West Coast or local PR firm. (Read that insight here)
Regardless of your industry, I frequently tell my friends if I had to hire a PR agency for my firm, I’d always go with the generalist who understands my industry.
This generalist approach always gives MACIAS PR an advantage with reporters. Our team speaks with dozens or reporters and producers on any given day. This exposure gives us more opportunities to repackage and sell other clients’ stories on these calls.
But don’t take my word for it. Instead, evaluate our media deliverables.
If you’d like to see a case study for your industry, just message us and we can share more.
ABOUT MACIAS PR
Marketing peers named MACIAS PR the 2017-2020 Strategic PR Firm of the Year. In 2015, 2016 and 2017, Finance Monthly named MACIAS PR the Financial PR Firm of the Year. The founder – Mark Macias – is a former Executive Producer with NBC and Senior Producer with CBS in New York. City & State Magazine named him a PR Political Power Player in New York.
MACIAS PR led the publicity, social media and content marketing for Provident Loan Society from June 2014 to June 2019. Our media strategy introduced their alternative lending services to new and existing clients across the New York metro area.
Over the course of our partnership, MACIAS PR helped grow their customer base among college students, business owners, immigrants and consumers with no credit.
Their former CEO and CMO both credited MACIAS PR with increasing their revenue and growing their customer base by 50 percent among Latinos. You can read their testimonials on Linkedin.
Our media campaigns also introduced their services to consumers who speak Spanish and Mandarin.
I read this confessional last night from a publicist who described the state of the public relations industry. It’s a candid look at how large PR agencies are lowering their standards and putting the dollar above relationships. The writer also lays out an argument for boutique PR agencies, and why they have a larger advantage.
To paraphrase the article, “There’s a lot of desperation. Not only to keep the lights on, but to keep people, to keep employees.
And what are the challenges? She writes, “[B2B tech brands] don’t often have stories. They’re unable to talk about themselves outside of product features and benefits. There’s zero or very little value based messaging. And too many PR firms will take them on as clients. The reason why they take on these clients is to keep the lights on.“
The article got me thinking about MACIAS PR and the value we bring as a boutique PR agency.
It shouldn’t come as a surprise that Airbnb plummeted more than 10 percent today.
Every entrepreneur knows when you lose a whale, you must find a replacement quickly or revenue will fall. In the case with Airbnb, it lost its whale in January when New York City banned short-term rentals, and there is no replacement in sight.
I’ll go on a limb now and predict the company will continue to slide for the rest of the year and beyond based on their strategic messaging mistakes. These are mistakes entrepreneurs, CEOs, business owners and marketers can all learn from.
Imagine what a story in the Real Deal or the international Daily Mail could do for your real estate project. It’s like instantly showing your property or services to millions of new clients in a day.
MACIAS PR has helped realtors across New York and New Jersey get their stories told with the largest news outlets. In the case with Nest Seekers, we helped their broker build momentum for a commercial property that had become stale.
Our targeted campaign secured high profile stories in the Daily News, Daily Mail, Real Deal and others.
But we’ve also run targeted media campaigns for practicing physicians too. I never realized this before working with Columbia University Medical Center, but physicians and hospital groups need to develop new business too.
In July 2021, a physician reached out to MACIAS PR, asking for help promoting his medical practice built around the microbiome. He explained to me over the phone how the gut has healthy and bad bacteria, which has a direct impact on how we feel, and our health.
I hadn’t really heard of the gut microbiome movement before our conversation, but I quickly realized this was an area of practice that was going to spread to the larger population quickly. When I asked the physician why I hadn’t heard of it, he was very candid.
“No one is talking about how the gut impacts our health but it’s real.”
