Most PR campaigns fail at the idea stage and no amount of outreach rescues them. The common error is producing something interesting to the client's industry rather than to a news desk, and pitching it to national press whose reporters need a story their readers care about, not a supplier's survey. Test the angle before you spend on the asset.
digital-pr-angle-selection.md
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name: digital-pr-angle-selection
description: Use before commissioning a data study or campaign, when you need to predict whether journalists will actually cover it.
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# Digital PR Angle Selection
Most PR campaigns fail at the idea stage and no amount of outreach rescues them. The common error is producing something interesting to the client's industry rather than to a news desk, and pitching it to national press whose reporters need a story their readers care about, not a supplier's survey. Test the angle before you spend on the asset.
## What you need first
- a defined target publication list with the specific sections and reporters you want
- proprietary or hard to obtain data, or a way to get it
- a headline you would be willing to see printed
## Method
1. Write the target headline first, before any data is gathered. If you cannot write a headline a stranger would click, the study will not be covered and you have saved the budget.
2. Check the angle passes one of the reliable news tests: it is local and splits by region, it is a ranking or league table someone will be annoyed by, it is counter intuitive, or it attaches to a date already in the news diary.
3. Reject anything whose finding is obviously predictable. A study confirming what everyone assumes has no news value even if the data is impeccable.
4. Search the last two years for the same angle. Repeats do get covered, but only with a clear new cut, and reporters who ran the earlier version will spot it.
5. Design the asset so the linkable page holds the methodology and full data, and the pitch carries the finding - reporters lift the number from the email and only link when they need to send readers to the detail.
6. Pre-pitch the concept to two friendly reporters before production. A no at this stage costs one email and saves the whole campaign.
## What this produces
A validated campaign angle with target headline, publication list and a pre-pitch response on record.
## Where this goes wrong
- building the asset first and looking for an angle afterwards
- pitching a client survey with a small self selecting sample, which good desks check and reject
- burying the finding on a page with no methodology, so reporters cite the number with no reason to link
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From the QuQi skill library - https://www.quqi.io/skills/digital-pr-angle-selection
Free to download · no account, no email
A validated campaign angle with target headline, publication list and a pre-pitch response on record.