This article is based on a conversation from Voices & Visions, a podcast produced in partnership with Tutto Passa Agency and TechCabal, that explores the people and ideas shaping Africa’s innovation economy.
Kenyan brands, including large companies, can understand that their customers are online, yet still want their big announcements in print.
It may use Instagram to sell products, LinkedIn to reach professionals, and specialist technology publications to explain its business. But when it hires a public relations agency, the preferred placements include familiar outlets, such as the Daily Nation, Business Daily, or Citizen TV.
Mary, who runs Glass House PR, describes this in episode nine of Voices & Visions. Clients want digital coverage, she says, but some still regard it as an addition to the newspaper or television appearance they came looking for.
“I still want to be on Daily Nation, on Business Daily,” she says, recalling clients’ instructions. “I want to be featured tomorrow on Citizen TV.”
The preference reveals something about how companies value publicity. They want access to digital audiences, but they also want recognition from institutions whose standing they already understand.
Those are different objectives. A campaign can achieve both, but it needs to know which one matters most.
Mary describes working on a technology company’s campaign in which the client welcomed coverage from online outlets while insisting on appearing in established media. While the specialist publications could help spread the message, the newspaper remained the priority.
Asked about publications covering startups and technology, she acknowledges that agencies and clients sometimes describe them as “bloggers”.
The label can put very different operations into the same category. An individual publishing commentary, a product review website, and a newsroom employing reporters and editors may all be treated as part of an indistinct digital audience.
If a publication is regarded mainly as another distribution channel, its reporting expertise and relationship with readers can become secondary to how widely it circulates an announcement.
Therefore, an outlet may be considered useful enough to receive a press release but not important enough to receive the first interview.
Part of this hierarchy comes from habit. Mary describes executives who still expect a physical newspaper when they arrive at the office. They have spent years reading it, following the businesses it covers, and recognising the people who appear in its pages.
Pursuing legitimacy
A specialist digital outlet, such as a tech publication, may require a longer conversation. Who reads it? Why does that audience matter? What influence does it have within the industry? The agency has to establish the publication’s value before it can determine the value of securing coverage there.
That can be difficult when the person approving the campaign is more familiar with the newspaper than with the customers the campaign is supposed to reach.
Consider a company selling software to banks. Its potential buyers might be technology executives, procurement teams, and heads of particular business divisions. A publication that consistently covers banking technology could provide a relevant audience.
But a national newspaper offers recognition beyond the immediate industry. Both can serve the company, but they solve different problems, and pursuing one does not guarantee the other.
A business seeking sales enquiries needs to know whether its coverage reaches potential buyers. A business seeking partners may care more about whether the reporting establishes its capabilities. A young company trying to become familiar with lenders or prospective employees may find value in a widely recognised publication.
The difficulty begins when the client’s brief simply asks for “visibility”.
That leaves the agency with no clear basis for judging the usefulness of their appearances. A familiar masthead becomes an easy indicator of success because the client recognises it.
There is a reasonable commercial argument for that familiarity. Businesses depend on trust, particularly when they are young or selling something customers do not yet understand. Independent reporting can help people examine a company’s claims and decide whether to engage with it.
But appearing in a respected publication is not an endorsement, nor does the publication’s reputation establish how many relevant people read a particular story.
The podcast’s discussion of measurement exposes this problem.
Online coverage does provide more opportunities to observe readership and engagement. But those figures do not necessarily reach the agency or its client. A publisher may know how many people opened a story, yet have little reason to share that information with the company it covered.
The distinction between newspaper prestige and digital reach is also less tidy than it first appears.
Established newspapers publish online, and their stories circulate through search engines, messaging services, and social platforms. A company asking for newspaper coverage may be seeking the authority of the publication’s name even when readers encounter the article on a phone.
Specialist digital publications build their authority through sustained attention to an industry. Their value comes from understanding their businesses, scrutinising their claims, and attracting readers who need that information.
Mary recognises their contribution when the conversation turns to how Kenya is represented.
“We’re getting there, but then it’s a digital media that is telling the story,” she says.
That creates a dilemma for agencies. Publications that help explain an industry may still need to prove their standing to the companies operating within it.
Resolving that dilemma starts with a better brief. Who does the business need to reach? What should those people understand? What would count as a useful result?
Those questions make it possible to choose publications for a reason beyond familiarity. They also make it easier to explain why a specialist story might deserve as much attention as a newspaper appearance.
Until then, an agency can deliver the digital coverage a company needs and still face the question of when it can get TV or newspaper coverage.
Listen to the full podcast on Spotify.
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