Why One Media Placement Isn’t a PR Strategy

Posted on September 23, 2026 by Mark Macias

By Mark Macias
Founder of MACIAS PR | Former NBC Executive Producer

Is it worth hiring a PR agency for just one media placement? This is a real question we got from a business today: “I’m looking for help getting our founder one credible TV interview. Do you take on fixed-scope, one-off broadcast projects?”

The value of public relations isn’t simply appearing on television. It’s what happens when credible media coverage begins establishing a pattern around your company, founder or expertise.

One interview can certainly be valuable. It can introduce an executive to a new audience and give the company an important piece of third-party credibility. But by itself, it doesn’t build a brand.

Brands are built through repetition and association. You want journalists, customers, investors and eventually search engines and AI platforms to repeatedly encounter your company in credible contexts.

Maybe a CEO first appears in a trade publication discussing an industry shift. A few weeks later, a national reporter interviews the executive about breaking news. Another outlet cites the company’s proprietary data. Eventually, a television producer sees that body of coverage and recognizes the CEO as someone who has already contributed intelligently to the conversation.

Each placement reinforces the others. That is very different from saying, We need one TV interview. Who can get it for us?

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Why Great PR Finds the Human Story Behind the Brand

Posted on September 21, 2026 by Mark Macias

By Mark Macias
Founder of MACIAS PR | Former NBC Executive Producer

I took the photograph accompanying this article years ago after seeing this framed portrait on the street. I didn’t know where she lived, what she did for a living, what she had experienced or even why her portrait was sitting there. There was just a framed photo on the sidewalk and I had to know more.

Every face has a human story. Great PR finds it. For me, that idea gets to something fundamental about storytelling and earned media. Companies often approach public relations with information. Journalists are looking for stories. The difference between the two frequently comes down to finding the human being who can make the information mean something.

Why Characters Matter in PR Storytelling

During my years as an Executive Producer with NBC and CBS in New York, I saw plenty of pitches supported by impressive statistics, legitimate experts and important issues. But television taught me something that I’ve carried into every PR campaign I’ve worked on since: data can establish a story, but people make us care about it.

Imagine telling viewers that thousands of Americans are being displaced from their jobs. That’s significant information. Now introduce them to one 52-year-old worker who spent 25 years at the same factory, walked into work on a Monday morning and learned that his job was disappearing.

The statistic establishes scale. The person gives the statistic meaning.

A journalist can ask that worker what he told his family when he got home, whether he has enough savings to survive, what he’ll do next and whether he ever imagined starting over at 52. Suddenly an economic statistic has consequences we can see and understand. That’s the power of a character.

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How to Follow Up With Reporters Without Hurting Your PR Strategy

Posted on September 20, 2026 by Mark Macias

By Mark Macias
Founder of MACIAS PR | Former NBC Executive Producer

When I was an Executive Producer with NBC in New York, I was the boss. I helped determine which stories we pursued, but that didn’t mean I walked around the newsroom telling experienced journalists exactly how to report their stories. That would have been a fast way to damage the creative process—and probably my relationship with the people producing the journalism.

Good journalists are independent thinkers. They want to investigate, ask their own questions and reach their own conclusions. You can give them direction. You can point out what they’re missing, and sometimes challenge them to look deeper. But there’s a difference between guiding a journalist and telling a journalist what to do.

That distinction is just as important in public relations, especially if you’re a CEO who typically tells others what to do. Persistence is necessary in PR. Aggression is different. And when you’re dealing with journalists, your approach can be just as important as your strategy.

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How Startups Can Get Media Attention: You Don’t Have to Be the Biggest Dog

Posted on September 18, 2026 by Mark Macias

By Mark Macias
Founder of MACIAS PR | Former NBC Executive Producer

The little dog in this photo is Einstein. He’s my dog, and despite his size, he has never had much trouble getting attention.

There’s a lesson here for startups trying to compete for media coverage against much larger companies: You don’t have to be the biggest dog to get attention. You just need to give people a reason to notice you.

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Why Creativity and Emotion Matter in PR

Posted on September 17, 2026 by Mark Macias

By Mark Macias
Founder of MACIAS PR | Former NBC Executive Producer

Walk into almost any industry and you’ll see the same problem. Companies describe themselves with similar words and repeat similar talking points. From the outside, they blur together. That’s why I believe emotion, ideas and individuality are some of the most important ingredients in public relations. These three elements influence how people experience a story, and ultimately whether they remember the company or person behind it.

Andy Warhol demonstrated this principle in a completely different medium. A can of soup is one of the most ordinary objects imaginable. Millions of people walk past Campbell’s soup cans in grocery stores without giving them a second thought. Warhol didn’t invent the soup can or change what was inside it. He changed the context and, in doing so, made people look at something familiar in an entirely different way.

Great public relations can accomplish something similar. The raw material might be a company, an executive, proprietary data, a customer experience or an idea. Creativity doesn’t require changing the facts. It requires recognizing the unexpected, emotional or individual element within those facts that can make another person see them differently.

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Are Your PR Expectations Realistic? How Long Media Coverage Really Takes

Posted on September 15, 2026 by Mark Macias

By Mark Macias
Founder of MACIAS PR | Former NBC Executive Producer

One of the most important conversations I have with new clients happens before we pitch a single reporter: What should you realistically expect from a PR campaign, and how quickly should you expect it?

Every business wants media coverage quickly. I understand that. Maybe a product is launching next week, a conference is approaching, investors want more visibility or the CEO suddenly decides this is the month the company needs to be in the news.

But there’s an important reality about earned media that businesses need to understand: Just because your company waited until the last minute to start PR doesn’t mean a journalist will suddenly work on your calendar.

Reporters and editors work on their own schedules. And unlike advertising, you can’t buy your way onto their editorial calendar.

That’s why realistic PR expectations aren’t about lowering the bar. They’re about understanding how earned media actually works—and giving your PR strategy enough time to produce the best possible results.

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PR Strategy Behind Finding a Newsworthy Story

Posted on September 13, 2026 by Mark Macias

By Mark Macias
Founder of MACIAS PR | Former NBC Executive Producer

If a tree falls in the forest and nobody hears it, does it make a sound? Public relations has its own version of that philosophical question: If your company makes an announcement and no journalist cares, did you really have a story?

Companies make noise every day. They launch products, hire executives, announce partnerships, open offices, release studies and reach milestones. Those developments may be extremely important inside the organization, but importance to your company and relevance to a journalist are two very different things. Getting media coverage isn’t about making more noise around an announcement. It’s about finding the interesting angle that gives someone outside your company a reason to care.

I learned this firsthand during my years as an Executive Producer with NBC and CBS in New York. I was on the receiving end of story pitches, and one of the most common mistakes was surprisingly simple: companies told us what happened without explaining why our viewers should care. A product launched. An executive was promoted. A company expanded into a new market. Those are facts, but facts aren’t automatically stories.

Inside the newsroom, we were making a different calculation. Why does this matter now? Who does it affect? What does it reveal that we didn’t already know? Is this one isolated event, or evidence of something larger happening in business, healthcare, technology or the economy? Those are the questions that can transform a corporate development into an actual story.

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Why I Approach Public Relations as an Artist, Not an Advertiser

Posted on September 12, 2026 by Mark Macias

By Mark Macias
Founder of MACIAS PR | Former NBC Executive Producer

I took the photo above inside a museum. A woman was standing silently in front of ten paintings of soup cans, studying them as art. Think about that for a moment. She wasn’t looking at soup. She was looking at an idea manifest into a physical object.

That’s what great art does. It changes the way we see something that might otherwise be ordinary. And after spending most of my career in journalism and public relations, I’ve come to believe the best PR does something very similar.

I don’t approach public relations as an advertiser. We approach every campaign as an artist. That distinction has shaped nearly every campaign we’ve launched.

Art Before PR

Long before I launched this PR agency in 2009, I was producing stories for TV. I won five Emmys during my television career across different categories. The awards are great but what matters more today is the creative range across mediums.

There isn’t a formula to motivating consumers. The ingredients change by the year and evolve with the clients. That process is inherently creative. It’s also very different from advertising, where a company purchases the space and controls the message.

In journalism, nobody owes you the audience. You have to earn their attention.

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5 Storytelling Tips I Learned in the Newsroom That Can Help You Get Media Coverage

Posted on September 11, 2026 by Mark Macias

By Mark Macias
Founder of MACIAS PR | Former NBC Executive Producer

Before you can pitch a story to a journalist, you need to understand storytelling.

That sounds obvious, but it’s one of the biggest weaknesses I see in public relations. Companies frequently have something interesting happening inside their business, but they don’t know how to turn that information into a story another person would actually want to hear.

I’ve spent most of my career telling stories in different forms. As an Executive Producer with NBC and Senior Producer with CBS in New York, I helped develop and approve stories for television. My journalism work earned five Emmys across different categories. Outside the newsroom, I’ve written and produced an Off-Broadway play and launched my own digital publication. Today, storytelling is at the center of the media campaigns we develop at MACIAS PR.

The medium changes, but the fundamentals of storytelling don’t.

A great television segment, newspaper article, play and media pitch all need to capture attention and give people a reason to keep following the story. If you can’t do that, the credentials of your spokesperson or size of your media list won’t save the pitch.

Here are five storytelling lessons I’ve carried from the newsroom into public relations.

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Clarity and Focus: The Two Disciplines Behind a Strong PR Story

Posted on September 10, 2026 by Mark Macias

By Mark Macias
Founder of MACIAS PR | Former NBC Executive Producer

You receive two love letters. One takes an entire page to explain an emotion, while the other uses only five words: “I can’t live without you.” Both communicate affection but only one forces you to immediately understand what the writer is trying to say.

That distinction reminds me of something I learned during my years approving stories as an Executive Producer with NBC and CBS: a story can contain great information and still fail because nobody has identified its center.

I see the same problem today in public relations. Companies have plenty to say. They have data, products, executives, customer stories, research, milestones and industry expertise. The challenge is deciding which piece deserves the spotlight and then framing everything else around it. At MACIAS PR, we call that clarity and focus.

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