You do not have a visibility problem. You have a credibility problem, and the fastest way to fix it is to have someone else say it. We place your story with the reporters your buyers already read, and measure it against the pipeline rather than the clip count.
Most PR is sold by volume. You get a number of placements, a reach figure, and a PDF at the end of the month. None of that tells you whether a buyer changed their mind.
We work the other way around. We start from the decision you need someone to make, find the outlets that person already trusts, and place the story there. The measure is whether the coverage moved someone one rung up the ladder, not how many links it produced.
For culture-rooted brands the gap is rarely quality. It is access. The editors who cover your category are reachable, and most of them have never been walked through why your brand matters. That introduction is the work.
Playbook MG is led by Jean Jones, twenty years in entertainment and consumer PR including a run as VP Records brand manager, and executive producer of Hot Ones: Caribbean Edition with Tempo TV. The editors this work needs are editors we have already placed with.
Placement in the outlets your buyers already read. We build the target list backwards from your customer: where they get their information, which writers they trust, and which desk at that outlet covers your category. Then we pitch the story that desk actually wants, rather than the announcement you want to make. National, trade and broadcast, with one standard applied to each. Would this run if we had no relationship with the writer.
Most media lists are bought. Ours are built and maintained, because a list is only worth the last time someone checked whether that reporter still holds that beat.
33 logged placements for Kranium on Atlantic Records. Ten placements in a single week for Sprayground, six of them live before a Times Square pop-up opened.
A plan written before you need it, and a response the same day when you do. We draft the holding statement, decide who speaks and in what order, brief the people who will be asked, and handle reporters directly so your team is not improvising on the phone. Most of the work happens in advance: the protocol, the approvals chain and the lines, all agreed while nothing is on fire.
The response window on a public challenge is hours, not days. What decides the outcome is whether the decisions were made before the clock started.
Led by Sarah Freiseis, who runs crisis management and media training for the agency.
Positioning the founder as the person worth quoting in the category. We find the point of view you can defend in public, then place it: bylines, panels, podcasts, broadcast segments. The test is whether a journalist would call you for comment on a story you are not in. That is the difference between a founder who gets covered and a founder who gets consulted.
A brand can buy attention. A founder with a position earns the phone call, and the phone call is the part that compounds.
Placement led by Vianca Bentley, over ten years of media relationships.
Warming a market before you enter it. We build relationships with the editors, buyers, organizers and creators who decide what gets attention there, months ahead of a launch rather than during it. By the time you announce, the people who matter already know who you are. That is the difference between a cold pitch and a returned call.
Our relationships run from Brooklyn to Canada to Thailand. Entering a market you have no standing in is the most expensive way to launch.
Chuks Collins: Forbes, WWD and the home textile trades, plus 19 SKUs at Nordstrom and a Lush Decor licensing deal.
This is not for you if you need coverage by a fixed date for an announcement that is not yet newsworthy. Earned media is earned. If the deadline is the priority and the story is not ready, paid placement will serve you better and we will say so rather than take the retainer.
Over ten years building media relationships. Runs media coverage and thought leadership placement, and builds the media lists that put clients in front of editors who actually cover them.
Leads crisis management and media training.
Six to twelve weeks for a first placement is normal, and the range is wide because it depends on your news. Trade press moves faster than national. We tell you which tier is realistic in the first two weeks rather than at the end of the quarter.
No, and you should be careful with anyone who does. Guaranteed placement is paid placement wearing a different name. What we commit to is the target list, the outreach volume, and a weekly account of what came back.
Monthly retainers, on a three-month minimum, scoped to the number of markets and the tier of outlet you are going after. Three months is the floor because a shorter run cannot clear a national lead time, not because of the contract.
They are who we know best and where our relationships run deepest, from Brooklyn to Canada to Thailand. We work with brands outside that, but the reason clients come to us is usually that their story is cultural and their current agency treats it as a demographic.
Attention, awareness, relevance, consideration. Most brands lose it at one of the four.
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