Why data is the secret to lasting PR, and where to find it

Prepare for data, or prepare to die. Okay, that's dramatic. But plenty of firms make a big splash in the press and then struggle to capitalize on the momentum. All their good work withers on the vine of the news cycle, which is a metaphor I've now committed to and will have to stand behind, even though I don't know whether the news cycle can have a vine, or whether the news cycle is the vine and the brand is the grape. Anyway, the withering usually starts the week after a company’s biggest launch and media placement. 

The companies that do sustained public relations well are the ones with something new to say, and the most reliable source of something new is data you already own. Unearth, collect, refine, and feed data into a PR strategy alongside milestone updates, founder commentary and interviews, and what started as a product launch can creep up the trellis of the news cycle. (Yes, I'm still doing the vine thing; I did warn you.) 

Data is what makes everything else worth covering

Milestone updates are the obvious follow-up to a launch, and most of them are dull as dishwater. "We hit 1,000,000 users" is a number about you, and unfortunately, nobody outside your company cares. What those 1,000,000 users are buying, solving, annoyed by, or searching for is information a journalist can really sink their teeth into. Remember, if your data only tells people something about your company, it's marketing. If it tells them something about an industry, the way money moves, or the world we live in, it's news.

Founder commentary works the same way. There's no shortage of founders happy to give an opinion, and editors cut most of them. A founder who can back that opinion with trusted data gets quoted because not everyone has those numbers.

And then there's the compounding effect. Publish your numbers on a schedule and reporters learn to expect them. After a while they start calling you before they file, which is the closest thing the PR industry has to a religious experience.

How to build your own data PR engine

The good news is that none of this needs a data science department, although it helps. An expert PR strategist could run it with support from marketing, operations, and sales. Here’s how:

1. Audit your data for PR: List every dataset the company touches, from transactions to support tickets, and how far back the numbers run. Then research where reporters covering your industry are crying out for fresh insights and data. The goal is to figure out what questions journalists are asking that only your data can answer, again and again.
2. Understand your methodology: If you don’t understand how you compiled your data, then a journalist won’t either. So before analysis begins, write down how each metric is calculated and what's excluded, then date and save it. From there, compare every figure against a fixed baseline and log any change. Then run everything past legal before it leaves the building, because a stat that exposes customer data or breaches a contract will get you a very different kind of news coverage.
3. Plan data around the news calendar: Work out when your data is going to matter, whether that's Black Friday or the Christmas holiday rush, and have the numbers and a spokesperson lined up for a media pitch well before that date.
4. Package your findings for journalists: You need at least one headline finding that really surprises people, like Spotify telling millions of twenty-somethings their listening age was 75, or Uber's Lost & Found Index charting the rise of Ozempic and Labubus left in the back seats of its cars. From there, add industry trend stats for trade press, trust and safety numbers for consumer reporters, and hook stats like rankings that give broader news outlets a reason to cover your brand. Pets4Homes does this well with its UK Pet Market Report, which tracks the rise of mixed breeds for trade press, the premium buyers pay for licensed and ID-verified breeders for consumer reporters, and the UK's most popular dog and cat breeds for general news.
5. Distribute your data to the media: Exclusivity is your friend. Give a tier-one outlet first refusal, then when that lands, send your news to a targeted list of reporters who cover your beat, and not, for example, the man who reviews lawnmowers. Unless, of course, your data is about lawnmowers, in which case he's your man. Fire your data at everyone indiscriminately, though, and they will remember your name, and it will go on a list, and it is not a good list, because it is a list that says “Do not respond.”
6. Localize stories: Once the methodology proves itself in one market, you can replicate it across every country you operate in. Not every country will be interested in UK data, for example, so each market should get its own local story.

There you have it. Build the data engine properly, and keep feeding it, and the grape withering on the vine becomes the one journalists come back for every harvest, which I'm fairly sure is how vineyards work. Yup, I committed to the bit, and committing, if you've been paying attention, is the whole point of PR and data.