Research shows summer is a great time to pitch stories to the media
Research involving more than 3,600 senior executives and leaders conducted by Clearly PR shows that media demand and business leader interest in business-related news continues to be high during the summer months. Want to get more media attention? July and August are primetime.
It is said that the summer is the worst time for B2B organisations to be doing PR. The assumption is that business leaders and executives slow down during July and August and switch off from checking their news feeds whilst on their holidays.
But that’s not the case at all. And we have the data to prove it.
Clearly PR polled 3,619 C-suite executives (including Chief Executive Officer and Chief Marketing Officer), executives (including Managing Director and Founder), Heads of… (including Head of Marketing and Operations Manager), and Managers (including Business Leader and Entrepreneur). We asked them:
Q: During your summer holiday, will you still check business-related news in the media?
Here’s what they told us:
- 27 per cent stated that ‘Yes’, they will continue to keep up to date with the business news
- One in five (21 per cent) agreed they would too although to a lesser extent than normal
- Just under one in 10 (8 per cent) admitted that they ‘Probably’ will do so
So, more than half of all respondents will keep an on business-related stories during the summer period. Less than half, 44 per cent, won’t.
Business leaders still want to consume the news, but what does the media want?
This may be the silly season where the news agenda does tend to dry up, but it presents an incredible opportunity for those stories that might not otherwise break through the usually hectic news agenda during the rest of the year yet still merit coverage.
Indeed, pages and airtime slots still need to be filled and your target audience – as the findings above testify – is still reading, watching and listening. According to one journalist:
The summer is “a great time to “send those little tips, or nuggets, that a journalist will have more time to examine.”
But it is important to ensure these stories are exclusives – pitches made on a one-on-one basis to a specific journalist and not distributed in a scattergun fashion in the hopes that ‘someone’ will run with it. Exclusives, like breaking news stories, have a far higher rate of media coverage success.
So, the next time you are considering holding off on your communications because you think no one will read or publish it at this time of year, think again. If what you have to say is relevant and valuable in the here and now, it will always be seen, read and heard by the right people at the right time.
