Why do some businesses get media coverage while others struggle to get noticed?

In this episode of CRUNCH, HMC Director Heather Claycomb is joined by Senior Account Managers Emma Letessier and Natalie Swart to unpack what “earned media” really means, and why it is much more than free publicity.

The team breaks down the four players involved in earning media attention: the business, the PR team, the journalist and, finally, the business again once the story is live. They talk about what makes a story genuinely newsworthy, why media relationships still matter, how businesses can lose control of a story once a journalist picks it up, and why that editorial independence is exactly what makes earned media so credible.

They also discuss why a single media hit should never be treated as the final result. Used well, media coverage can support reputation, sales conversations, recruitment, stakeholder trust, social media, website content, digital advertising and even AI search visibility.

In this episode, we cover:

• Why earned media is not the same as free publicity
• What makes a business story worth a journalist’s attention
• Why “one and done” media coverage is rarely enough
• How PR teams shape a story before it is pitched
• What businesses need to understand about editorial independence
• How to get more value from a media hit after it appears

If your business wants to build credibility, get found by the right people and use media coverage more strategically, this episode is a practical place to start.

Companies mentioned in this episode:

• HMC
• AUT
• TVNZ
• Waikato Times

You're listening to Crunch from New Zealand PR agency hmc. These are short, sharp conversations for business leaders on strategic communication and reputation management.

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Here we go.

Foreign.

Hi everyone, I'm Heather Click. I'm the director of HMC and I'm leading our discussion today on the topic of earned media.

Now, earned media is a term in the comms industry that gets used a lot. Most people understand it as media coverage you don't pay for like you do an ad.

And that's true, but it's also a pretty narrow way to look at it because earned media is not just free publicity. In fact, we'd probably all argue that it's not free at all.

There's a lot of strategy, judgment, preparation and a fair bit of hard mahi that goes into getting a story in the media. But the word earned is really the interesting part. Who is actually doing the earning?

Well, there are actually four players in the mix and each has a role to play in earning attention. And we're going to break that down today. We're also going to spend some time unpacking earned media.

From a business point of view, why do some organizations get media coverage while others struggle? Why is earned media so credible? And how can a business turn one media hit into something much more valuable than a link in a board report?

So if that sounds good, well, you're in the right place. And joining me today are HMC senior account managers Emma Letissier and Natalie Swart. Welcome, ladies. So let's get started.

And I think the first thing we need to do is really just frame the day, really. If you're listening today, why should you care? Why should businesses care? Why should they care about earned media?

Why should that be part of their sort of marketing and comms mix of tactics?

You can't pay for the sort of attention that you get when you get a media hit. Unfortunately, some people would like that not to be the case.

But when a newsroom decides that a story that positively reflects your brand is worthy of being served up as a genuine news story, you can't achieve that on your own. That says something far more powerful.

What would you say to people that say, well, I don't agree with that. You can't believe anything you see in the media these days?

Well, we actually know that trust in the media is trending upwards. The latest AUT results out of New Zealand show trust in media is ticking up Month on month, which is interesting.

We've kind of gone full circle in recent years, I suppose, where, you know, trust did decline to pretty horrific levels and we felt like all the newsrooms were getting a clear out. But we're at this point now where people are starting to look for stories that they can believe in.

Yeah, yeah. I think we are sort of lucky in New Zealand too. We don't have like, I guess, the media environment that big countries like the US or the UK have.

And I think generally in New Zealand and the surveys and things show this, you know, that we do have more trusted media than in other places around the world, I suppose.

Yeah, we're really lacking that tabloid media.

And we don't do the branded content in as overt a manner as places like the US where it is. We just don't do it. That infers more trust and confidence. We don't like to see product placement.

And I guess for us, we're always telling clients too, it's like it's not one and done, like immediate hit. Like, what is the advantage, I suppose, to having sort of a sustained media approach to the way you work and operate as a business?

Emma, I think even just viewing media coverage on its own is never a good thing either, in my mind. It's always part of a wider comm strategy.

So what falls out of your comms strategy in terms of media coverage is, you know, you've already defined what you want to be known for, what your key messages are and you're really, really clear on who you're trying to talk to. Sometimes the media is not the best channel to deploy a comms activity. But yeah, we're here talking about media.

Coverage, but you're right, it needs to be part of an overall approach that doesn't sit in isolation.

I suppose I feel like I don't even want to talk about this because I've got AI fatigue now. Everything online is saying that these media items are crucial now in satisfying the AI Geo beast and getting your company found through the LLMs.

But as I'm discovering, I did a bit of a deep dive on it. You have to show up consistently on a certain topic for it to recognise you as an expert in that.

So again, it's being really strategic in what you're putting out into the media.

If you're having kind of a scattergun approach, oh, look, we've got a story, and being reactive about it and not thinking carefully about what you want to show up for, that's not going to work. But I Think the key thing is that doing it well and doing it consistently builds that trust.

And then it also leads to what is, in my mind, kind of like PR gold.

When you come to a point where all your media coverage is not coming through your own efforts, it's coming because you've earned a position of leadership and the media start coming to you.

Yeah.

For us working with clients, too, that's like a great day, you know, when a client gets their first sort of media call to give a comment on a story, we're like, yeah, we've done it. I reached a big milestone.

So that's. And maybe not even media.

I mean, I'm just thinking of a recent case where a person we've been doing a lot of media work with in the last couple of years who shall remain nameless right now, but is now getting invited as a speaker because she's earned that invite.

Right.

She's earned that right because her thoughts are so well now, her perspective is valued. And it's not just been on her own LinkedIn page, it's been served up as op eds in media, and she's been a spokesperson.

But it's been a consistent thread.

Right.

The topic is consistent, and that's something that I think a lot of businesses still struggle to get their heads around in terms of. But what would we say in an ongoing way? What does the world want to hear from us?

Because it has to achieve their business objectives, too, and it isn't easy for a lot of people. Like, a lot of people think, oh, yes, we are now PR person when we have this momentous occasion and this big change or jolt to the system.

This is a news event and it genuinely probably is, but a one and done doesn't work anymore, and it won't influence the AI citations in a meaningful way. It may every now and then, but you need to think beyond that.

Yeah. And it won't put trust in the people that you want to get in front of either. If you just. Yeah, that shotgun approach. Yeah, yeah.

I was going to say that actually.

Great minds think alike, Natalie, because I think for a lot of companies, like you say, it's really obvious, oh, we're announcing a new CEO, we're doing a product launch. Sometimes that's not very newsworthy.

Yeah, right.

It's not as newsworthy as you think it is.

No, that's right.

But it takes the PR or the comms person to actually withdraw or extract the stories from the company that people just think, oh, you know, I'm doing my job, but they don't actually see that it's a story because they're maybe not across what the media agenda is or you know, what other things have been said and how you can carry the conversation on. So it's those not obvious stories that the PR person can really help a company to identify.

And then that leads to the wider presence in the media with a more strategic thought around how you're doing it.

I mean we live and breathe every day, so you know, it's our bread and butter.

But thinking about what the media and the public have appetite for, any one point in time, you know, you have to think, oh, how can I be helpful, you know, provocative?

How can I kind of like, I don't know, appeal to or connect with the zeitgeist or something that comments on the cultural tension that's happening at the time. Or you know, it has to be relatable and also has to have a clear, I mean if we're talking TV here but also printed media, it's visual content.

How will this be brought to life? We don't wanna see you talking heads.

It's such a tricky little dance that we have to do, isn't it? Because we have to represent the client or the company well.

We have to really think about the journalists or the media publications position because what are they trying to achieve? They're trying to get eyeballs from their audience.

That's right.

So we're kind of in the middle like trying to keep everyone happ. And that's where I really feel like we earn this media, like we've earned it. By the time a piece gets across the line, it's blood, sweat and tears.

From us for sure. And I like what you've just said there, Emma. Sometimes when I'm doing media training within a company, I talk about getting in.

The media needs to be a win, win, win. It's a win for the business because you're getting your story out there.

It's a win for the journalist because they get a great story and they make they look good at the end of the day. And it's a win for your audience cause they, they've learned something that that's important to them, right? So yeah, that win, win, win.

But it is nerve wracking. You do take a leap of faith because you lose control of the actual words that are printed.

And working with marketing managers, which we often do, it's hard that feeling of. But I want to know exactly how that's scripted and how that's going to appear on the page.

You do lose control of that, but you put enough guardrails in place, occasionally the brand connection feels a little tenuous, but it's always important. It's just a matter of setting the right expectations.

When you have a thought leader that's talking on a topic that is adjacent to your brain, you have to have a strategy, you have to have a plan. But it might not be as overt a sales tactic as I guess a lot of people would like it to be.

Yeah. And we're going to unpack that a little later as well. Okay.

If we can agree that earned media is something that a lot of businesses can gain from doing, then I'd like to just reframe, I guess. What is earned media? What isn't it? People talk about media being free publicity. From your point of view, why is that like a.

Not really the right way to think of it, free publicity? Because we do hear clients coming to us and saying, hey, you know, I want that free publicity. But it's not really free at the end of the day, is it?

Well, I think it goes back to what we were just saying about the expectations that the PR person has for the client, what we're trying to do for the journalist. I like to bring this up because I still feel that there is this tension between PR people and journalists. Like there's this feeling of mistrust.

I've been trained as a journalist and then I moved over to the dark side of pr. But I think in this day and age, we want to help the journalists too. So we're not.

It's not media coverage at all cost and bullying our way into journalists accepting our pitch.

Yeah, well, I mean, yeah, that's our agency values as well. Because I don't think every single PR person is like that out there. But yeah, that's the way we do it.

But it's not free in the sense that it's easy one. It's really hard a lot of the time. It is a delicate little dance that we do with journalists.

I mean, I've been doing this for what, 20 odd years and I've always been on the dark side.

You're like the Darth Vader of PR.

That's Natalie.

But you know, like 10 years ago working at police, you know, I very much was a media gatekeeper. I have all the information and I will. And it was this part of power control thing and it doesn't work like that anymore.

I mean, like our relationships with journalists, they're deeply human. They know why we exist and we can serve Them up incredible opportunities to get genuinely newsworthy stories. It's a win, win, win.

Right, I hear what you guys are saying. It's I guess, yeah, thinking about it as free publicity. It's actually a very resource and time intense thing to do to get something in the media.

Most of the time sometimes it's really easy if it like the most incredible story you've ever heard of and a world first or something like that. But yeah, most of the time it's not so easy.

I think if we talk briefly about what it entails if we're looking at building like a media presence for a company based on a certain topic or subject, quite often it's down to us to assess what's already been spoken about in the media and then try and come up with the different angles like how to continue a conversation. It's not easy to create that and at some point somebody's gonna have to put the time and effort into it. So it's not free publicity.

And I guess the other point that I wanna say is that yeah sure we work with journalists all the time and we have good relationships with some, some, you know, we touch base with now and again but it's never the relationship with the journalists, it's always the story. You know, sometimes you'll get clients coming up to you and going, who do you know at TVNZ or who do you know at the Waikato Times?

And I always say it doesn't matter who I know, I want to know what your story is and if you've got a good story, hopefully I can get that across for you. That's worth more than my relationships with the journalist.

Our relationships are still important though, Emma. I think it's a bit of both. Most of the media outlets that I work with kind of regularly, we're talking on a weekly basis here.

It's the relationship, that established trust that just changes the whole dynamic.

Yes, but that established trust is because you've been delivering good stories, good stories. If you're just going to them with any old slop, they're not going to stay your friend for long.

No, no way. So if we're sitting here, we're going, yep, earned media is something many businesses can benefit from. We understand what it is, what it isn't.

I want talk now about what it means to be earned because yeah, we've been thinking, I guess in the office about what is earned media and there's actually many different players in this whole process and we've sort of alluded to it already but who's doing the earning. I suppose. So I wanted to talk about the four stages of earned media.

Who are the four players who need to work together to earn that media hit and at the end of the day earn trust in your brand. So it all starts with a great story. So it all starts with the business. Right. The business needs to find something genuinely worth talking about.

A good comms advisor can also help shape that story. So from you guys perspective, what does it look like when a client has genuinely earned the right to be in the media? What is a good story?

I suppose they're not spruiking a service or a product. That's a good start. They're genuinely feeling brave in that they have something interesting to say that's gonna resonate with the world right now.

Right.

And that we know that, that it's not a public service they're performing. But you almost have to think a little bit like that.

What are people deeply curious about right now in a way that's gonna complement my business and my objectives and earn me credibility as a professional. Yeah. So it is being helpful, I guess in connecting with. I used the word zeitgeist before, which is a little hard to pin down.

But at any point in time in society there's general topics that are getting people's blood boiled or getting people of worried or now. Right. It's all economy and it's property and it's fuel and it's.

It's not about scaremongering but it's around acknowledging and being attuned to the landscape of the world we're all living in right now. And having that in mind when you approaching a topic. Yeah.

If you're sitting around in your industry and there's some sort of something in the media and you have the thought of. Yeah, but no one's really talking about this part of that conversation.

That's when you think you might have something really interesting to say as well.

Yeah.

You know, there's the standard milestones in your, in your business, sort of things that create stories. But it is, you know what does is a little bit more interesting sometimes is sort of adding to the conversation like we talked about.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean I'm biased because I really love the thought leadership type content. But of course there is the run of the mil.

More business stuff that is still newsworthy whether it's for mainstream media or business media.

Yeah.

I do think a lot of that thought leadership style. Although we need to rebrand thought leadership. That's been about over years these days. Isn't it?

I mean, it gets cut through in a really human way if done well.

Yeah. And I think like the best media stories really are coming from the top. I think when we're working with the leaders in the business, a.

Because they have such a broad concept of what's going on, not only in their business, but in their industry. So I think, you know, having leaders around the table when you're talking about what's our next media story that needs to be. That's pretty important.

Yeah.

Other thing I was thinking of that the thing might be amazing and newsworthy, but a person that is passionate about it will carry that story so much further even if it does become a media story.

Regardless, having a person, you know that is like in a very obvious way, very, very passionate and proud and can talk about that far beyond the thing that's in front of them. It's gold. So when you find those people that confront or, you know, be a spokesperson and are brave enough to do that.

We did talk earlier about get your PR person around the table early. Even if the topic of conversation isn't about a media story in particular.

I know we often just meet with our clients on a monthly or other regular basis and you're just sitting around talking about the business and all of a sudden they'll say something that's happening. We'll be like, excuse me, stop right there. That is a media story right there. So it's hard.

I did that this morning.

Oh, did you? Yeah.

A client who shall remain nameless but is vaguely in a property kind of world, but was like, we had this little epiphan and I'm like, yeah, the world wants to know about that.

Yeah, nice. Right? Okay. So that first job is for the business in partnership with your comms team, finding that story that deserves public attention.

So let's assume that you've got that story and it's going to be interesting to a wide audience, one worthy of attention. So then the second stage I sort of.

In this earned media story, it comes when that PR comms team gets involved and they can turn that business story into something that's immediate, relevant story, I suppose, and then pitching it to the right journalist. So, Emma, what happens when the business turns that over to us?

What sort of things are we doing before we are ready to sort of hand that over to a journalist?

I think I like to do a little bit of research myself and then interview as many people, subject matter experts as I can. Cause it's quite often the throwaway comments that they give Me, what's gonna be the media gold?

That little soundmate? Yeah.

Cause we might have a topic that we think would work, but I'm always looking for the angle, and sometimes there's.

Multiple angles, and sometimes it's like looking at it through the lens of a business reporter versus a lifestyle or wellbeing editor or the local newspaper editor. I mean, you can craft up one story in multiple ways.

Obviously, it depends what it is, but we've had some good examples of that in the office recently, where a story has the potential to appeal to a very wide range of media outlets and journalist types, depending on how you serve it up to them, how you pitch.

And I think if you're working with a PR agency that can do that for you, that's pretty amazing because especially now that the media outlet choices are diminishing for us as well. Having somebody that can get a bang for your buck and identify that it's not just the run of the mill. Here's what this company is doing.

But actually identify multiple angles within the topic.

That's a skill, and I think part of our job, too. First of all, I wanted to say it always comes back to the business goal.

So whether you want to get in the lifestyle section or the business section or what sort of angle you have on the story, it's going to tie back to what you want to achieve as a business. And I also think part of our role, too, is protecting the credibility of our client.

And we're also selfishly thinking about the credibility of our agency, so we're not pitching weak stories. So, you know, we really take that a lot of time to get it right before we're going to the journalists.

Yeah, well, that's tricky too, for us because we have to protect our relationships with the journalists, as you say. And it was something that we were talking about before about earned media. You can't go and tell the journalists what you want them to publish.

So us doing that would look really amateur in the eyes of a journalist, too. Yeah.

When we get to the point of doing that pitch, a good pitch should make the journalist think, yeah, I can see the story, and I can see why my audience should care. Basically because they're always thinking about their audience as well, aren't they? So, okay, so we've got the story.

You've worked with your PR team to get the right pitch. The third phase in the earned media journey is once the journalist confirms they are interested in running it.

And that's when the media takes over and the client and us, the Comms advisor, we relinquish total control and the journalist then shapes the story that appeals to their audience. And that, I guess, editorial independence is what gives our media its power. But it's also frigging scary for a lot of clients, isn't it? Yeah.

So I guess what do businesses need to understand about that step in the process?

That no, they will not have special privileges to see a story before it goes to print. Never.

Yes.

And even once it does go to print, there are only certain things that we can go back and ask to be corrected.

Like if something's factually incorrect, then I feel like it's okay to go back to the journalists because it makes them look better not to be printing things that are incorrect. But if you don't like the headline, too bad, too bad.

We do get a lot of newer clients sort of asking, yeah, can we see the story before it goes to print? And 99.999% of the time, you never can do that. I have had journalists do that when it's a highly, highly technical, maybe scientific sort of story.

They could even say, hey, I'd like to run this by you just to make sure I got my facts straight. But that is very, very, very much not the ordinary way of doing things.

So I guess another thing to understand is the, you know, you might take a long time to.

You've got maybe written a media release, you've supplied all that to the journalist, but often the end result is gonna look a lot different than what you gave the journalists. And sometimes companies don't quite understand that. Eh.

Well, I guess too it goes back to like how I actually start out to develop the story before I deliver it. I'm listening in and I'm interviewing.

If you've had a journalist do their own interviews, they're gonna be listening in the same way that I am looking for the angle. And they may have their own idea on what the angle is on.

And you know, if you've got somebody that's not well seasoned performer in the media, any throwaway comment, like, I've had that in the past when I've worked in house, I trained somebody and it was just this, oh, we don't have enough engineers.

And that's the story, you know, like that suddenly the story that we were delivering has gone off track, disappeared, and we've got this sensational headline just from one little comment.

So many examples, right? And that's the power of getting clear on your messaging and keeping it tight.

As much as you might love the banter you're having with that journalist and your laundry list of, you know, amazing ideas and little tidbits you share.

And they're probably all great fodder, but it makes it harder to pin down what the story's gonna be about in the end because the journalist will then be like, oh, it's like a lolly scramble.

Yeah. And often, like, if we're sort of measuring the success of a media story, we'll talk about, you know, we have four key messages in this story.

You know, if we can get two of them in there, you know, we'll be really happy with the results. So. Yeah.

Another thing that's happening these days with online media coverage is that a lot of the time to help the SEO for the actual media publication itself, it will link through to previous SEO coverage as well, which has been a tricky pill to swallow for a lot of our clients who might not have been best pleased with historic media coverage. They're going to the media again with a good news story and then it's kind of pasted alongside this, the negative.

That was there before. Yeah.

This is the story now. But you might remember that's always a risk. Yeah.

So that just means you need to get more positive stuff out there. Yeah, yeah.

And prepare for an interview with a journalist. Yes.

As good as it is to be casual, friendly and off the cuff, to a certain extent, you need to know exactly what you can and probably shouldn't be saying.

Yeah, that's right. Every single word is fair game, that's for sure.

So I guess, like, one thing too, when you turn that story over to a journalist, is to remember that they're just not going to straightforward run exactly what you've given them.

And I think often we see that journalists, if they're doing a great job of like a feature story, say, they'll bring others into the story, won't they, Emma? You've seen that happen before. Yeah.

And sometimes that can be a little jarring for clients because maybe it might be your competitor or it might just be another company that maybe, I don't know, you might be happy to be associated with, but, you know, or acknowledged in the same story or maybe not. That's always a possibility that they're not gonna just take your word for it.

They're going to go out and find those additional voices to help them build their story.

Yeah. And they might actually talk to someone who feels opposite to you.

Yeah. You know, it's a journalist prerogative. Right. To create a balanced story.

Yeah. So I think it's being strong enough in your beliefs, in what you're saying to be okay with that, I suppose, is important as well.

Yeah.

At the end of the day too, with media stories, it's remembering that the journalist is not there to do your marketing and sales. That's a big one for us, isn't it? And you know, they're there to produce a story that their audience cares about.

We'll listen to, we'll read, we'll watch. So need to remember they're selfish reasons. Reasons for being. I suppose so. Okay, the last phase on the earned media journey we've got.

It starts with the business, with a great story, you turn it over to your PR team and they're working on it and pitching it. The journalist has it and it's been printed in your favorite media channel. You might think, well done and dusted, we've done our job, that's the end.

But it's actually not the end. The clients that we work with, having that story online now is just the beginning of the last phase, their journey, isn't it?

So what should businesses do, I suppose, when they get that media hit, what do they.

Oh, what they shouldn't do is just share it one and done styles on LinkedIn with a ta da. We're in the news. So tempting to do though, and it's so easy but unpredictable. That's not really the words that you should probably use.

You need to sort of show that, wow, you've been incredibly recognised. But you need to say that in an interesting way. And also it's not just you as the mouthpiece and the sharer of this great piece of news.

Share it internally, share it with your staff, like as a matter of. Of course, it's not in a boastful way, but that's important. Package it up in a blog style, perhaps building on the piece.

This is, you know, obviously this is the story. Link to it overtly on your website and your blog.

Build on that story, make it even bigger, like, make it far more compelling, make it the beginning of a far bigger PR push on a set topic. So that becomes like the grounding or the foundational kind of like trust asset. Then it's almost like you have to think about a kit beyond that.

And there's lots of ways to skin that that on social media for sure.

Like in terms of pulling out the best, most pithy quotes and how you can creatively bring those to life, how you can do a retrospectively do a bit of a video summing up the key points. There's Lots of creative ways that you can pull focus in an ongoing way.

So you get multiple hits, mileage out of one media story and know that you've got that media outlet locked and loaded. In terms of if you, you have garnered a lot of readers, a lot of viewers, this could just be the beginning of a themed series of sorts.

Yeah, that's right.

Yeah.

You have that one asset and there's just so much you can do with it. You can make one media hit last for a month or more, but not.

Many people think about it like that.

No.

And I think like, obviously you don't know exactly what that media story is going to look like, but you can say, hey, let's assume it's going to be positive.

You could be planning now for here's all of our channels we own as a, as a company and where, you know, how are we going to make this work once we get that media hit in the media? How have you seen that work for clients, Emma? You're good at doing that with your clients.

Again, it's thinking of that piece of coverage as an asset, as important as a webinar as any kind of marketing asset, and then doing the content marketing plan around that asset. So pretty much what Natalie's just said, but just making that asset work harder.

We talked earlier about the journalists. The media is not there to do your marketing and sales. But now that you have a credible asset, you can be a little bit more marketing ish with it.

Put it in an EDM or, you know, put it out to your customers in a different way. So.

Yeah, well, that's where that line merges from PR into marketing and into advertising. You know, for some of our clients, we've got them really good coverage on a podcast. Yes.

And we've had really good success with our amazing graphic designer turning them into reels and ads. Yeah.

Stories and things. Yeah.

And if you're using, you know, the visual from a piece of media coverage, if you have permission for that, running that as an ad, it works super well. And then you can link, drive the traffic back to the blog post about it.

You've got more visitors to your website, so it starts to build that web of content.

It depends obviously what the story is, but if this cements you, I suppose, your ownership or, or unique perspective on a particular topic and it's a topic people care about. Think about it beyond media too.

Like in terms of the events landscape, could this be potentially the keynote speech you deliver at that massive annual conference? Blah, blah, blah.

Is it your TED Talk Yeah.

There you go.

Perfect.

Is this your Simon Sinek? Why that you're gonna build your whole career around?

Excellent. The possibilities are endless is what you're hearing from us.

Great.

Well, I guess to close off today, I just thought let's leave some listeners with some practical sort of tips for how they move forward. And so I'll start us off. And we've talked about this a bit today.

From our experience with clients, I guess we know that to get the best result, really bring your PR team, whether it's your internal team, your agency, into the story conversation early. I wouldn't wait until, you know, the next announcement that you're working with, you know, your leadership team, your board. It's final.

Get us in before that because then we can help you find that story angle that we talked about earlier today. We can identify any risks. That's a big, important one. We haven't really talked about too much today.

But, you know, we're good at identifying the risks, too, and avoiding them and planning timing, which timing really needs to be discussed so you get it right. Natalie, what's another practical takeaway from time?

Time to, oh, listen to your PR advisor, I guess be willing to be challenged. Yeah. Because sometimes it's simply not a media story.

It might be hard to hear, but knowing that before blindly pursuing and badgering media outlets is just really important. We kind of know. We kind of know what's going to float the boat. And sometimes it's really not ready. It's undercooked, or it's just not the.

Story, or sometimes we have to make it sound a bit sexier. Do you know, like, sometimes we get that pushback from clients.

We'll be like, no, you've got to go in with, like, the story's all there, but this is just like, we just need to tweak it to make it a little bit more provocative or something. And then they're like, oh, no, we couldn't do that. And then the story doesn't land. Yeah, yeah, yeah, true.

Emma, what's another sort of tip for our listeners to.

Well, I think it goes back to, you know, having the plan. And the audience is always going to be the first thought, you know, like, who needs to hear this? And how do we get that to them?

So understanding that determines on which media outlet you're going to pick. And I guess something we haven't talked about is spraying and praying as we like to talk. We've talked very much about being focused and.

And sometimes the story would suit a wider media audience.

It's a big national news story.

But quite often these days we're pitching, you know, we've got a journalist in mind, we've got a publication in mind. So being really clear on the audience and where to find those eyeballs is part of the success of getting a media piece.

Yeah, Nice.

I guess another one that comes to mind too is, and Natalie, I think you talked about it earlier, is making sure that you don't forget the end of the day. Also to prepare whoever is the spokesperson that's going to be speaking on this topic.

Because when we talk to a journalist, we pitch to a journalist, we send a media release. You know, the purpose of that is to get them to hopefully talk to someone inside your company. And so who's that going to be?

And make sure that they know. Yeah, like you were saying earlier, what to say, what not to say, so that their little sound bite doesn't become the story and it gets off track.

Any more practical takeaways, Natalie?

Just prepare to amplify the story. Once it is a story, it doesn't all stop there once you get the headline. So just preparing a little toolkit of sorts. Step one. Share with my staff.

Yes, yes.

Share on LinkedIn. Share on share. Share. Share. Share. Tag, tag, tag, tag. But in an interesting way. And build from there.

Don't see it as done and dusted because it's usually not.

Emma, anything else?

I think for the sake of client relationships, agency relationship and journalism relationships, we just need to remember what media coverage is and what. What it isn't. We're not paying for it. We have to bear in mind what journalists want and we have to make sure that it's important to our audience.

We don't have full control over the message, but if you've got the right partners working with you, you've got a better shot of getting what you want into the media. I'd say.

Great, those are some good takeaways. So I guess the key point we've been talking about today is that earned media is not just getting a news story.

Right.

It's about earning attention in a way that build credibility and trust in your organization. Those four stages of earned media, first, you gotta have a good story. You gotta have a good PR team that can shape it and pitch it.

Pick a great journalist who can turn it into something of value for your audience. And then once it's published, it's not just about a media hit, but using that in a way that it becomes a business asset, I suppose. Right.

So to end our crunch, every One of our crunches. We end our crunch episodes with a question about lunch, which is a bit random if you're the first time joining us.

But crunch, I guess, stands for crucial chats over lunch. So we always end with a lunch question. So my question today for you, Emma and Natalie.

What's a lunch that you love that other people might think Sounds a bit yuck.

I feel like I'm always bringing into the office things that people are like, oh, yeah.

But there's one standout. Emma, what is it?

It's my strawberry yogurt and raw peanuts. Is that it? Yeah, that's what I eat every day. Don't knock it until you try it.

Okay. Yeah, I am a fan of tuna in a can.

All right.

Gross. Not in the office, but, like, it's my.

Thanks. Thanks for not bringing that into the office. When you heat it up in the microwave while you're at it, it's my go to.

I have one that you haven't seen because I won't bring it into the office, but I love a tin of smoked oysters on crackers, and I can eat the entire tin myself. Yeah.

Did not even know that was a thing.

Oh, it's so yummy.

That makes my yogurt and raw peanuts look normal.

Yeah.

Excellent. Okay, well, thanks, everybody, for joining us today, and we will see you next time.

Thanks for joining us today. For Crunch, brought to you by New Zealand PR agency hmc. Be sure to tap the follow button so you don't miss our next episode. See you next time.