10 Yetis Insight Blog - PR Through The Seasons

Working agency side in the crazy world of PR is always an adventure. No two days are the same, which is especially true across different the different seasons of the year. Working in the industry during the winter months is a completely different experience to working in PR during the summer months, and it’s one of the reasons that makes this job so much more varied and awesome!

You’ll find, when you work at a digital PR agency, that you’ll sometimes be working months in advance, which means you might be trying to get your festive thinking on whilst writing or pitching Christmas ideas to clients when it’s still August and boiling hot outside. This takes some getting used to for sure, and can often lead to the team here getting way too excited for something that is still many moons away (we always have a Christmas countdown going on in our office- it starts about mid-September.)

It’s really handy for these big seasonal events to have your stunts, releases, microsites etc. sorted at least a few weeks before, as leaving it to the last minute is a sure fire way to give you and your clients massive, and easily avoidable, headaches.

You’ll also find that some of your clients are suited for some seasons over others. This isn’t an excuse to not do amazingly for said client all year round, just bear in mind that some will shine better during the summer months than others and others may excel during the winter months. An example of this is our lovely client NotGoingToUni.co.uk (NGTU), a website dedicated to offering alternative options to university for school and college leavers. The team at NGTU receives large volumes of coverage around results day due to the nature of their site. In a similar vein, if one of your clients is a toy provider, chances are Christmas will be crazy busy, with coverage flying in from all mediums.

Despite the above statements, this isn’t to say that coverage for a seemingly seasonal client shouldn’t be flying in during their weaker periods, it just means that you will have to work even harder to achieve those goals you set yourself and your client, doing more ring rounds, sell-in and creative thinking.

Angles and the way in which you pitch a story to the media will play a big part in how well a campaign or story performs during a difficult season. If it’s Christmas, think about what it is people will want to be reading about during the festive months. Finance, toys, gifts, family, all of these are great themes to pick up on as the much anticipated day crawls around. For spring, Easter angles are always great to think about e.g. a stunt including chocolate, rabbits or a giant Easter egg hunt could do well.

When summer comes round, weather becomes a main talking point, with heat, BBQ’s and holidays taking precedence. It’s important to remember all of the main holidays within these seasons; Christmas, Easter, Halloween, Black Friday (a big un’ for any financial clients!) but it’s also imperative you keep an eye out for any lesser known national days that your client could react to. For example if you had a foodie client, national hot dog or burger day could be something you may be able to whip up a nice reactive quote for or even do a mini stunt (like free hot dogs?)

There seems to be a national holiday for everything these days and we have a nifty calendar so you don’t miss a thing and you don’t miss any potential coverage. To view this extremely handy calendar, sign up to our amazing newsletter and get it as a downloadable.

Although some clients will struggle to achieve vast amounts of coverage during some parts of the year as compared to others, all year round there will be something you can be doing to solidify some SEO smashing links.

Some still blame ‘silly season’ for a lack of coverage trickling through for their clients but us Yetis think silly season is just an excuse for the most part. For those of you who are reading this, scratching your heads and asking what is this silly season you speak of, let me explain. Silly season was a phrase coined in 1861 which described a few months during the summer season where news would be slow. The idea was that, because of school holidays, less newspapers were being brought and therefore publications often ran stories with bold headlines that caused moral panic so that more people would be compelled to buy and read them. The reason that we Yetis believe this notion to be poppycock and not one you can blame a lack of coverage on is that with the invention and growing popularity of the internet, news is everywhere and publications no longer have to focus on selling papers exclusively.

Coverage is now more than ever something that is achievable all year round, so pull your fingers out, take advantage of seasonal holidays and get creative!

@HarrietDalwood