Story-First PR: Make The Product Newsworthy
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time to result
- ~weeks to results
- Steps
- 6
- Confidence
- —
Carrie Rose's core PR method inverts the usual order: you don't start with the product launch and look for coverage, you start with what the media is already talking about and build a story the product can legitimately own. Journalists don't care that a brand released a thing — they care about traffic, shares and hitting their own KPIs. So the job is to take a product or service (however boring — finance, cars, cloud security, maternity clothes) and turn it into something people find useful, engaging, funny or resourceful, usually by attaching it to a live cultural tension. The campaign asset (a study, a report, a photo shoot) is built to prove that angle, and it ships while the news cycle is still hot enough for editors to want a follow-up piece.
Origin
Extracted from Deep Dive with Ali Abdaal
How to run it
- 1
Start with the media, not the product
Before writing anything, audit what is actually being talked about right now in the press, on Twitter and in your category. The trend is the entry point; the product is what you attach to it.
Pro tip Look for a story published in the last week or two — recency is what makes an editor bite.
- 2
Find the tension your brand can answer
Identify the friction, complaint or uproar inside that trend — the thing consumers are 'screaming out' for. That tension is the story; your product becomes the response to it.
Watch out If your product cannot honestly answer the tension, pick a different trend rather than forcing a link.
- 3
Rewrite the launch as a story people care about
Reframe the product or service into something useful, engaging, funny or resourceful — a daily lead piece, a study, a stunt, or a piece that positions the client as the expert.
Pro tip Ask 'would I share this if it wasn't my client?' before proceeding.
- 4
Build the proof asset
Produce the tangible thing the coverage can point to: an original data study, an online report, a ranked comparison, or a photo shoot that visibly breaks the category norm.
Pro tip Original data you commission yourself is hard for competitors to copy and easy for journalists to cite.
- 5
Judge the idea on the journalist's metrics
Score the angle by whether it will earn the publication traffic and social shares, not by how flattering it is to the brand. That is the filter that decides whether it gets covered.
Watch out Celebrity collaborations and big-brand names are not automatically newsworthy — editors still ask 'why would my readers click this?'
- 6
Ship while the cycle is live
Release the story as a direct response to the trend, so the writers who covered the original moment can run the follow-up. Speed beats polish here.
Pro tip Have the assets pre-cleared internally so legal or brand sign-off doesn't kill the window.
In the wild
Missguided asked Rise at Seven to PR a new maternity range in a market already full of maternity brands. Instead of announcing the range, the team looked at what the media was covering: a Love Island contestant had been spotted modelling maternity clothes on ASOS wearing a fake bump, and consumers were demanding realism. Rise at Seven booked heavily pregnant models for an actual shoot, showing real bumps and stretch marks, and positioned Missguided as the first fashion brand to run a realistic maternity range.
→ Coverage went across the national press, framing a routine product launch as a fashion-industry first.
With a technology client working in data security and cloud, the obvious pitch — a new cloud security product — was something no journalist would run. The live conversation at the time was whether Facebook was listening to users, and wider anxiety about privacy. So the team ran a study comparing how much data Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and TikTok each hold on users, ranked the apps, and packaged it as an online report pushed out to press.
→ Mass press coverage that positioned the client as the category expert instead of announcing an unnewsworthy product.
Common mistakes
Pitching the launch itself as the story
Internal teams love their product and assume the press will too. Carrie's line to clients is blunt: they say 'we need to launch this to press', she says 'but no one cares about it'. A launch is an occasion, not an angle — the angle has to be built on top of it.
Assuming a big brand name does the work
Even fashion and beauty brands doing collections with the Kardashians don't get automatic pickup. Editors still need traffic and shares, so the campaign has to create an angle they can build a clickable piece around.
Relying on relationships instead of the idea
Traditional PR advice says relationships get you coverage. Carrie's counter is that if the story is weak, people will not cover it regardless of who you know.
From the transcript
“But you've basically got to come up with something that people will find either useful, engaging, funny, or resourceful.”
“and mostly you just have to take the product or service and create a story out of it that people actually care about”
“you've really got to think about their metrics and what they care about and how you can help them hit their KPIs, too”
From the episode
How To Build A Million Dollar Marketing Agency In 1 Year - Carrie Rose (Rise at Seven)
Carrie Rose (Rise at Seven)