Spark Coverage Cup
Media relations is at the heart of a successful campaign and our team take great pride in beating their colleagues to win the weekly Spark Coverage Cup vote.
The winning piece of coverage isn’t just about circulation or credibility. A great business national or broadcast piece doesn’t always beat trade coverage – outcomes are key. How effectively was the client’s message communicated? What was the engagement like? Did it result in leads?
While earned coverage is now only part of what we do, the impact of what we deliver is often why clients choose to work with us in the first place. It’s why 80% of our clients come through referral and why some of our clients have stayed with us for over ten years.
Below are some of our previous highlights:
Coverage Cup 20/03/2020
This week’s Coverage Cup blog is coming from outside Central London – with the Spark team all working from our offices/kitchen tables/whatever space is available due to the coronavirus situation. We’re all having to adapt, but the team has continued to secure some great coverage over the past few weeks. This Coverage Cup blog post features all the pieces we secured pre-social distancing – there’s even a video interview in the list for good measure – so take a look at what’s been making news recently.
Kicking off this week is the Ivalua team, with some topical national coverage. Ivalua offered its thoughts about how supply chains may be affected by COVID-19 securing coverage in the Financial Times as a result. But it wasn’t all coronavirus, with the team also securing coverage in Raconteur’s Low Carbon Supply Chain supplement, discussing the need to develop a more sustainable supply chain.
But Ivalua hasn’t been the only client discussing sustainability recently – with Insight discussing the need for high-quality algorithms needed to deliver true AI insights into sustainability in The Times/Raconteur’s Sustainable Business special report. Also securing national coverage was the Pistoia Alliance team after some research stats on AI were included in a Forbes feature on ROI for AI.
Joining in with the coverage was the IOActive team which spotted a pre-coronavirus news hijacking opportunity after Cathay Pacific’s data breach fine was announced by the ICO. IOActive warned the fine was lower than it would be under GDPR regulations and secured coverage with New Statesman Tech, Computer Business Review, TEISS, SC Media and Professional Security as a result.
The RSA team also spotted a news hijacking opportunity, after the government released a report on diversity and skills in the security industry, highlighting significant gaps. RSA shared thoughts on the importance of retention and new technology to overcome the disparity, helping to secure coverage in SC Media, Computer Weekly, New Statesman Tech and Information Security Buzz.
Dotmatics managed to get a face-to-face interview arranged at an event earlier this year (pre-social distancing). CEO of Dotmatics Andrew LeBeau spoke to LabTube at SLAS2020 about some of the data challenges faced in biologics and the team was rewarded this week with video coverage. The Spark team also secured the first pieces of coverage for new client Marqeta. After announcing Afterpay has chosen the company as its payment issuing partner in the US, the team secured coverage in Cards International, IBS Journal and Financial IT.
Despite the PR landscape shifting in the past few days and weeks, we’ll be back with the next Coverage Cup blog soon. In the meantime, you can have a little snoop around Spark’s working from home set-ups on our social media.