The most effective media campaigns are rarely built from scratch on the day of an announcement. Just as a GP shouldn’t approach an LP for the first time when it is well into the swing of fundraising, the same is true for journalists.
By Jack Sheppard
PR & Marketing Senior Associate
Life can be quite intense if you’re a fund manager. There are investment processes to run, LPs to manage, deals to originate, portfolio issues to deal with and no shortage of competing demands on senior people’s time. Against that backdrop, media engagement can easily slip down the list of priorities, particularly when there is no immediate announcement to make.
That is understandable. If a journalist meeting is not going to generate coverage next week, it can feel like time can be better spent elsewhere. In private markets especially, many firms still engage with the media only at key moments: a fund launch, a first close, a final close, a major hire. When there is news, a press release goes out. When there is not, the conversation stops.
But in our experience, that is often a missed opportunity.
The most effective media campaigns are rarely built from scratch on the day of an announcement. Just as a GP shouldn’t approach an LP for the first time when it is well into the swing of fundraising, the same is true for journalists. More often than not, these relationships are the product of groundwork laid months earlier. A single interview may not produce instant results and in some cases, it will not lead to any immediate coverage. But it does something just as valuable – it means that when a genuinely important moment comes along, you are not approaching the market cold.
We saw this first-hand recently when we worked on a first-close announcement. Our client did not want a broad, untargeted announcement. They wanted to share the milestone with the journalists most likely to understand it, report it properly and speak to the right audience.
We knew we could do this and it was likely to lead to coverage, but our success in this campaign was only possible because most of the work had already been done.
Over the course of the previous year, the client had spent time meeting relevant journalists and introducing the fund, its philosophy, its investment thesis and its future plans. Those conversations did not lead to immediate coverage, but they made the firm known. Journalists understood who the client was, what they were trying to do and why they were worth featuring.
Just as importantly, those early conversations helped establish the client as a useful source for commentary. Over time, some of those journalists began coming back to them for comment, market colour, thought leadership pieces and broader industry reaction. That kind of familiarity is hard to create in a hurry, and it matters when the time comes to ask a journalist to pay attention to a milestone announcement. After all, if you scratch their back when they need help, they’ll scratch yours when you have something to say.
Therefore, when it came time to announce the first close, we chose not to issue a traditional press release and instead shared the news under embargo with a select group of trusted journalists who already knew the client and the story behind the fund.
The result was 25 pieces of coverage, including an exclusive with Bloomberg.
We were able to achieve this because the outreach was targeted, informed and built on existing relationships.
As most of the legwork was done in advance, we were able to dedicate time to speak to journalists individually, answer questions and help shape angles that would be relevant to their particular audience, before the news was even public. Not every title wanted exactly the same story. Some were most interested in the significance of the first close in the context of the wider fundraising market. Others were more focused on the strategy itself, the investor base or what the milestone said about appetite in that part of the market.
It also gave us more control over how the story was released. We were able to coordinate coverage so that when the embargo lifted, 20 pieces were published simultaneously, creating immediate momentum around the announcement and presenting the news in the controlled, deliberate way preferred by the client. That initial wave then led to a further five pieces of coverage.
A mass release makes that harder. A press release still has its place and remains the right tool in many situations, but it can encourage a one-size-fits-all approach. This is particularly true in a sector as nuanced as private markets, where different publications often need different things from the same story.
That is why ongoing relationship-building matters. Not because every coffee or introductory call will lead directly to coverage, but because over time it makes a firm more familiar, more credible and more useful to the media. In a market where many firms are competing for attention around similar milestones, that familiarity can make a real difference, and can prove just as useful to you in the future as it will to the journalist themselves.
Media strategy should not begin on announcement day, and it should not begin and end with a press release. Some announcements call for broad distribution; others are better served by a more selective approach. The quality of the outcome often depends on what happened long before the news was ready to announce.
In private markets, the strongest campaigns are often not the loudest. They are the ones built on preparation, trust and an understanding of which journalists are most likely to tell the story well
