Material Handling Media Relations
About The Project
Fifty years ago, this material handling company entered the North American forklift market and has since become an industry leader. In 2017, they hired us to provide public relations and media relations support for ProMat, the material handling and logistics industry’s premier global event where 45,000 manufacturing and supply chain professionals from across the world come to see the latest innovations in material handling and logistics.
We conducted an audit which included a review of earned media coverage at the 2015 ProMat event: interview opportunities, attributed quotes, stories earned, and more. The research was used to develop an earned media strategy for the 2017 event and set goals. We set a goal to earn the material handling company media coverage in trade media outlets from 10 of the journalists invited to interview.
The planning was disrupted by a major acquisition just a couple of weeks before the trade show. Our team’s job was to secure interviews for the president of the new organization with the objective of communicating the strategy and goal of the newly owned company. We made additions to the pitch list and included interviews with the new CEO as an offering to journalists.
We wrote talking points for each company's expert and then provided on-site media training and preparation for every interview scheduled during the show.
THE FINAL
Result
ComGroup’s PR team scheduled 16 interviews during the two-day media availability window allotted by the client. We earned one cover story, which was published a month after the trade show in Modern Materials Handling. Every journalist confirmed and completed his/her interview at the show. We earned coverage from every interview, which was a record for this material handling company and its media relations efforts at ProMat. The coverage included every horizontal and vertical trade media that we targeted. However, journalists were placed on an embargo to write about any industry company that chose not to exhibit at the trade show.
We anticipated the challenge of an off-site conference room and provided a map and written directions when confirming every meeting. A few journalists had challenges navigating their way to our space across the street, but we intentionally built buffer timing into the schedule. This allowed us to keep every appointment and, in some cases, give extra time for conversation between the journalists and the client's executives.