Good PR Is a Team Sport
If you work in PR long enough, you learn that the hardest part of media coverage is not always getting a journalist to respond.
Sometimes the harder part is getting the story clear enough to pitch in the first place.
Last month, I was reminded of that in a very practical way. One of my clients wanted members of their C-suite quoted as subject matter experts. Fair ask. They had smart people with real experience. They had opinions worth sharing. They had strong credentials.
The problem was that none of the angles we were pitching felt sharp enough for the journalists we were targeting.
We sent thoughtful pitches. We tied them to relevant industry conversations. We looked for timely hooks.
No bites.
That is not unusual. Media relations is full of quiet stretches, especially when you are building a new client relationship. But this felt like something more specific. The ingredients were there, yet the message still was not landing.
So I kept asking questions.
What is your ideal headline?
What is your contrarian take?
What would your customers actually find interesting?
What do you believe that your competitors would be unlikely to say out loud?
We made progress. The answers helped. But something still was not clicking.
Then I tried a different prompt.
I asked the client to send me three articles they wished they had been quoted in, along with a few bullet points on how they would have responded.
That changed everything.
The missing piece was not effort
Before that prompt, I was trying to infer what the client wanted to say.
I had background documents. I had positioning notes. I had executive bios. I had product context. I had messaging. All of that was useful, but it still left room for interpretation.
When the client sent over articles they admired, the conversation changed. Suddenly, I could see the exact type of media moment they had in mind.
The examples showed me:
The publications they cared about
The level of industry detail they were comfortable with
The kind of quotes they thought were strong
The topics they felt qualified to speak on
The tone they wanted their leaders to strike
Just as important, their bullet points showed me how they would have entered the conversation.
Some responses were practical. Some were more opinionated. Some pointed to patterns their customers were seeing. A few challenged the premise of the article itself.
That was the useful part.
The exercise did not just tell me, “We want coverage.” It showed me what kind of coverage felt valuable to them and why.
The articles ranged from three to 12 months old. In a traditional pitching sense, that is not perfect timing. A journalist who wrote about a topic nine months ago may have moved on. The news cycle may have changed. Their beat may have shifted.
I reached out anyway.
One journalist responded with an interview request.
The tactic itself was not groundbreaking. PR people ask for sample articles all the time. What made it work was the way it turned a vague goal into a shared reference point.
Instead of guessing at the client’s expectations, we could look at the same article and ask better questions.
What would we add to this?
Where is the missing point of view?
What would make this executive a useful source next time?
That is where the work started to get sharper.
“Go get us PR” is rarely enough
There is a common idea that PR works like a delivery service.
A company hires an agency or consultant, hands over a few talking points, and waits for coverage to appear. If nothing runs quickly, frustration builds. The client wonders why the outreach is not working. The PR team wonders whether they have enough substance to pitch.
That dynamic helps no one.
Media coverage is not something a PR person can simply manufacture on demand. A strong PR person can identify angles, build relationships, shape a pitch, and put the right idea in front of the right journalist. But they cannot invent a meaningful point of view out of thin air, at least not one that will hold up in a real interview.
Journalists do not need another executive available for comment. They need sources who can help them tell a better story.
That means the source needs to offer something useful, such as:
A clear read on a trend
A specific example from the field
A counterpoint to the obvious narrative
A practical explanation of what is changing
A quote that sounds like a real person, not a press release
Most companies have this material somewhere. It may sit in sales calls, customer conversations, product discussions, internal debates, or executive opinions that have never been written down.
The PR team’s job is to find it and shape it.
The client’s job is to help surface it.
That is why Good PR is a team sport. The best results come when both sides stay curious and keep building the story together.
Early client relationships need translation time
The first few months of a PR relationship are usually a mutual learning curve.
Clients are learning how to work with you. They are figuring out what kinds of input are useful, how quickly media opportunities move, and why a pitch may need more edge than a general marketing message.
At the same time, you are learning how they think.
You are listening for what they actually believe. You are watching which topics make them more animated. You are figuring out where they have real authority and where they may only have surface-level commentary. You are learning the difference between approved messaging and a meaningful opinion.
Those are not always the same thing.
Approved messaging often says what the company wants to be known for. A meaningful opinion says what the company sees, believes, or predicts based on experience.
Journalists are usually more interested in the second one.
That does not mean messaging has no role. It matters. A PR team needs to understand the business, the audience, and the risks. But if every pitch sounds like it was sanded down by five approval layers, it will struggle.
The early phase of a client relationship is where a PR team starts to learn the edges.
Where can the client be bold?
Where do they need to be careful?
Which executives are strongest on which topics?
Who gives crisp, quotable answers?
Who needs more prep before speaking with media?
This takes time. It also takes honest feedback on both sides.
If a pitch is not working, the answer is not always “send more emails.” Sometimes the answer is to revisit the angle. Sometimes it is to sharpen the point of view. Sometimes it is to ask whether the company is trying to comment on a conversation where it does not yet have enough authority.
Those are valuable conversations, even when they are uncomfortable.
The right prompt can unlock better thinking
One of the simplest ways to improve a PR conversation is to stop asking abstract questions.
Some questions sound useful but are hard for clients to answer in practice.
“What is your thought leadership strategy?”
“What do you want to be known for?”
“What are your key differentiators?”
Those questions can lead somewhere, but they often produce broad answers. Many companies will say they want to be known as trusted, forward-thinking, customer-focused, or expert-led. None of that gives a journalist a reason to care.
The better prompt is often more concrete.
“Send me three articles you wish you had been quoted in.”
That works because it gives everyone something real to react to.
A client may not be able to describe their ideal media strategy in a clean paragraph. But they can usually point to an article and say, “This is the kind of conversation we should be part of.”
From there, the PR team can ask:
What would you have added?
What did the article miss?
Do you agree with the main argument?
What would your customers say about this?
What would you be willing to say on the record?
What evidence or examples could support your view?
The answers reveal far more than a generic messaging document.
They also help prevent a common PR problem, where the client and PR team use the same words but mean different things.
For example, a client might ask for “thought leadership.” To one person, that means expert commentary in trade publications. To another, it means bylined articles. To someone else, it means executive visibility in national business media.
Sample articles make the target clearer.
They do not guarantee coverage, but they improve the odds that everyone is aiming at the same thing.
Journalists respond to relevance, not internal urgency
Clients often come to PR with real business urgency.
A funding announcement is coming. A new executive has joined. A product is launching. A competitor is getting attention. The CEO wants more visibility.
Those things matter inside the company. They may also matter to customers, investors, partners, and employees.
But journalists judge the opportunity differently.
They are asking whether the idea fits their beat, whether it is timely, whether it adds something new, and whether their readers will care.
That gap creates tension.
A company may feel that its news is important because it took months of work. A journalist may see it as one of many similar updates in their inbox. A PR team has to bridge that gap without misleading either side.
That is where collaboration matters.
The client brings the raw material. The PR team brings media judgment. Together, they figure out what can travel outside the company’s walls.
Sometimes the strongest pitch is not the announcement itself. It may be the trend behind it. It may be a customer problem the announcement reflects. It may be an executive’s view on where the market is going. It may be a timely response to a larger story already unfolding.
This is also why old articles can still be useful.
The three articles my client sent were not breaking news anymore. But they revealed the journalists, topics, and story shapes that mattered. They helped us understand where the client had something to contribute.
That made the outreach more informed, even if the original moment had passed.
Collaboration does not mean endless homework
There is a practical concern here. Clients are busy. Executives are busy. No one wants PR to become a constant assignment machine.
The goal is not to create extra work for the sake of process. The goal is to get better inputs so the PR team can do stronger work with less guessing.
A few small habits can make a big difference.
Share article examples when something catches your eye.
Forward customer questions that keep coming up.
Flag internal debates that seem tied to larger industry shifts.
Tell the PR team when a pitch feels off and explain why.
Make executives available for short prep calls before major outreach.
These actions do not need to be complicated. A five-minute voice memo can be more useful than a polished document. A quick note saying, “We disagree with this article’s premise, and here is why,” can turn into a strong pitch angle.
The best client input is often specific, not polished.
A PR team can work with rough thoughts. They can shape, edit, pressure-test, and translate. What they cannot do as well is read minds.
That is the real lesson from the three-article exercise. It gave the PR process something concrete to work from. It replaced assumptions with examples. It helped the client show what they meant instead of trying to explain it in theory.
Strong PR requires shared curiosity
Media relations works best when both sides stay curious.
The PR team should be curious about the client’s business, customers, opinions, and blind spots. They should ask better questions and push past safe generalities.
The client should be curious about how journalists think. They should be willing to learn why some angles work and others do not. They should be open to feedback when a pitch needs more tension, more proof, or a clearer reader benefit.
This kind of collaboration builds trust.
Over time, the PR team gets better at spotting ideas that fit. The client gets better at recognizing what makes a strong media angle. Executives get more comfortable expressing views in ways that are useful to reporters.
The process becomes less reactive.
Instead of waiting for a coverage request, the team starts building a pipeline of ideas. Instead of chasing every possible mention, they focus on the conversations where the company can add real value.
That does not mean every pitch lands. Many will not. Timing, news cycles, editorial priorities, and reporter bandwidth all matter.
But even when a pitch does not land, the process can still get smarter.
A quiet pitch can teach you that the angle is too broad. A journalist’s pass can show you that the timing is wrong. A lack of response can push the team to find a more specific point of view.
That learning compounds if both sides pay attention.
The best results rarely come from a handoff
The lesson from that client moment has stayed with me because it was simple.
I did not need a massive strategy reset. I needed a better way to see what the client saw.
Once I had that, the pitch improved. The target list made more sense. The outreach had more texture. The conversation with the journalist had a clearer reason to exist.
That is the work.
Good PR is not just sending pitches. It is drawing out the ideas that deserve attention, shaping them for the right audience, and building enough trust that the process gets better over time.
A client cannot simply say, “Go get us PR,” then disappear.
A PR team cannot expect clients to hand over perfect angles without guidance.
The strongest media results usually come from the middle, where both sides are engaged, honest, and willing to refine the approach together.
So the next time a pitch is not landing, try asking for examples instead of more messaging.
Ask for the articles they wish they had been part of.
Ask what they would have said.
Ask what the journalist missed.
The answer may not produce instant coverage. But it will almost always produce a better conversation.
And better conversations are where better PR starts.
For more info: BestPRguy@gmail.com 310 920-2424 www.PublicityandMarketing.com
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