Yesterday, we witnessed the inauguration of the second Trump administration amid the wildfires scorching Southern California, it has become increasingly more challenging for candidates and individuals to get on regular programming both on television and radio. But let’s remember, this isn’t anything new. This always happens whenever there is major, breaking news impacting our country on the local, national, or international level.
Just look at the last year in cable news. Some of the top stories of 2024 that seized the moment and dominated the news cycle for days on end aside from the 2024 presidential election included the attempted assassination of President Donald Trump in Butler, the murder of the UnitedHealthcare CEO in Manhattan, the devastation from Hurricane Milton on Florida, and the collapse of the Baltimore Key Bridge. That’s just a few of them.
So, if you are looking to break through the noise, remember that in political communications – timing and strategy is key!
When working with political candidates or principals, there’s a few ways to break through the noise. Sometimes we strategize and determine a unique angle or perspective to an existing story. Alternatively, we work to prove why our candidate or principal’s story is compelling enough to be featured. How do we do that? There’s a few methods we typically use.
Oftentimes, we prepare an opinion piece from a candidate or principal on a specific subject that a newspaper may consider running, which can in turn be used to help us get principals on television or radio to talk about a topic more in depth. Alternatively, we prepare persuasive pitches for both television and radio bookers and producers explaining either why a story is an important subject that they should consider including in their upcoming coverage or why a principal has a unique perspective to a story that would help their coverage on a particular subject in the news.
It’s important to strategize and think about timing for major announcements and rollouts.. You must always be looking ahead to identify when there could be potential gaps or lulls in the busy news cycle. If there’s not a gap coming up, perhaps you can tie your announcement into something larger that’s happening to garner attention.
Let’s be honest, given how busy the news cycle was in 2024, we have a hard time believing it’s going to slow down anytime soon, so it’s important that we utilize these various methods to help our clients in the new year. We also hope this insight into our day-to-day work helps you better understand how we operate in political communications to gain as much earned media as we can for our clients even when it’s hard to break through the noise.
– Brittany Yanick, Senior Communications Director