The top ten companies gracing this year’s CNBC’s Disruptor 50 list received scant Tier 1 coverage during the previous 12 months. Based on SWMS research, the coverage that companies did receive was overwhelmingly from verticals. We did see three flattering profiles, worth deconstructing to see the elements they required.
Agencies and clients face a reckoning with contributed content. The latter still assumes that opportunities abound. More than 100 entries in the SWMS contributed content gatekeepers list proves them right. Then again, when it comes to Tier 1, it just might be best to pay whoever lifts the velvet rope.
— Updated Mar. 2, 2021 — Here is our latest and best list of titles and authors known to produce CEO profiles. The possibilities on one hand have shrunk considerably. On the other, literally dozens of publications will consider CEO pitches — but the context has to be there.
Bloomberg today launched Bloomberg CityLab, the editorial property it acquired last December from The Atlantic. Its mission is to bring readers “reporting, maps and data about local stories that make a global impact.” All Bloomberg CityLab content will be free to read through the rest of 2020.
Science coverage is everywhere these days. This should be good news for PR pros with science stories to tell, but it’s not that simple. Much of the coverage, obviously, goes to Covid-19. Less obviously, it goes to space. And beginning this month, other newsy topics have staked their claim. What shelf space is left? We studied 14 media brands and found out.
SWMS is proud to present a GDoc with comprehensive lists — with links — for memorial funds that support violence victims, BLM orgs and bail funds, police and jail reforms, and orgs that support Black LGBTQ. Huge thanks to contributor Anton Molodetskiy for his in-depth research.
We spent time this week completing a recently-fielded Fortune subscriber study and it was revealing indeed. A good way to ascertain what’s important to a publication is to complete a subscriber survey. The questions are designed to deliver basic info about subscribers but also are framed to test future concepts.
No airplanes? No problem! We’ve moved our coverage-challenge brainstorming fully online, and we’ve learned (and re-learned) many a lesson, in prepping for the sessions and in conversation. Here’s a Q&A summarizing problems and solutions relating to pandemic responses and social unrest — and some general pitching do’s and don’ts.
Looking to break through not only the noise but the doom? The Washington Post and Forbes each have launched newsletters that package news meant to inspire. We spotted several recurring story types. Maybe you can adapt one.
Fast Company last week unveiled The Queer 50, a first-ever list of LGBTQ women and nonbinary innovators in business and tech. The idea germinated in Fall 2019, when Fast Company editors and members of Lesbians Who Tech decided informally that “it was about time a list like this existed,” recalls FC editor Julia Herbst.
YOUR ACCOUNT
FRIDGE NOTES
Registration is now open for the ‘Bloomberg Tech’ F2F event, being held Jun. 4-5 in San Francisco. With the current early-bird discount, a ticket runs $1,500. There is no better way to build relationships with Bloomberg’s notoriously elusive tech reporters.
Well, for now it’s Jim Jordan… but such news illustrates the kind of world we seem to be headed for. Adweek has the details, subscription required.
No “predictions” post will appear on this site. That said, quite a number of subscribers have asked for a Zoom/MS Teams presentation on what 2025 will bring. A conversation is precisely the right tool for the job. After the election — and with AI transforming publishing and life — “2025” is best discussed among peers, not predicted. So if you’d like to have a confidential group exchange on what stands to unfold, and why, and how comms pros can come out on top in spite of it all, drop a line and we shall schedule something.
According to Adweek, Omnicom CEO John Wren and IPG CEO Philippe Krakowsky were in merger talks for eleven and a half months before the transaction was announced this week. Amazing that it didn’t leak.
Should PR pros stop visiting X, with all its lies and hate? It’s only going to get worse. Or are tidbits from targets too important to walk away from? Click here to watch tech edit vet David Strom and I disagree (at high speed) about this, as one compelling visual after another pops up on your screen. In 2025, SWMS will officially launch “SWMS Sound Thinking,” designed to be “argumentative insight in six minutes or less.” Each segment will explore a timely and controversial topic of interest to tech comms pros. This prototype runs 5:25. Hope you enjoy it — feedback vital and welcome! –Sam
New EIC Jamie Heller has asked her reporters to start going on camera — for the BI TikTok channel — to explain the big, deep-divey story they just published. Other publications do this — especially archival Fortune. BI is now on that too. Game on.
