Turning Events Into PR Wins

Event season is back, and for many marketers, it feels like a high-stakes gamble. You’ve invested in the floor space, the logistics, and the senior team's travel, but breaking through the noise of a crowded conference center is harder than ever. On this episode of FiredUp!, we dive into the strategic playbook for maximizing your time at events. We address the common pain point of booth invisibility and show you how to transform a physical presence into a powerful media moment. From pitching early to the art of the off-site media breakfast, we unpack how to wring every drop of PR value out of your event investment. This week, episode 134 of the FiredUp! podcast is about turning events into PR wins! 

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In this episode of the FiredUp! podcast, the Firebrand team shares the importance of planning your event strategy well in advance and actionable steps you can take right now to create meaningful visibility for your brand and products. 

Morgan and Chris discuss:

• The Six-Week Sprint: Don't wait until you're on the event floor to start talking to reporters. Success is built in the 4-6 weeks before the event. Identify your product launch or key news early to secure a spot on a busy journalist's calendar.
• Master the Media List: The official event media list is your starting point, not your destination. Use it to identify which beats are being covered and cross-reference with your own targeted outreach to ensure you're reaching the right people.
• Demos Over Discussions: If you have a booth, use it as a stage. Reporters want to see the "how" and "why" of your product. A high-quality, physical demo is often a more compelling hook than a standard executive interview.
• Win the Off-Floor Game: Sometimes the best PR happens away from the noise. Consider hosting media breakfasts or using dedicated media lounges to provide a quiet space for deeper, more meaningful conversations with key reporters.
• The Follow-Up is the Finish Line: Coverage often depends on the assets you provide after the conversation. Ensure you have graphics, screenshots, and summary notes ready to send immediately so your story doesn't fall through the cracks.

If you have an event coming up in the next two months, identify one "concrete deliverable" (a graphic, a data point, or a demo) that you can offer a reporter today to start the conversation early. 

Thank you for listening! Tune in to all the episodes for practical tips on crushing your startup marketing goals. Don’t forget to follow, rate, and review the podcast, and tell us your key takeaways!

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5.5.2026

Transcript

Morgan McLintic: 0:00

Event season, which is obviously a significant marketing moment. But how do you get the most out of events from a PR perspective, that's the topic we're going to talk about today. Hello everyone. Welcome to fired up the podcast for marketers working in early and late stage startups. Hello there, everyone. My name is Morgan mcclintic, and welcome to fired up today. I'm joined by Chris Albrecht, Hey,

Chris Ulbrich: 0:26

Chris, how are you doing?

Morgan McLintic: 0:28

Great. Good to be here. So we're going to talk about events, Chris, because there are so many conferences going on at the moment. Obviously represents a huge chance to launch a product. Get face to face with the media, and you want to take advantage of that. So what we thought we would just do is to dive deeply into that and to start, I think you start, obviously, quite a long time before the event. So you know, if a company is investing in a booth and they've got all the senior people there, what should they really be thinking about before the event from a PR perspective, we should

Chris Ulbrich: 1:05

start off by noting that we frame this as if you've obtained a booth at an event. That is the usual way we see clients participate in events occasionally, especially at larger events like AWS reinvent or something like that, we'll see clients just attend. A lot of the advice that we're giving will be applicable to those kinds of appearances as well. Obviously, having a booth gives you a home base. It gives you a sort of a focus for interviews and demos and that sort of thing. But just to note that a lot of what we'll be discussing will be relevant even if you just have a spokesperson attending. So let's go back to the original point. You have a booth. What should you be thinking about? Because a booth is a big investment. Events are big investments, and anyone who in marketing will know the weight of expectations that comes from an investment like that. And if we're looking at the media side of it, we want to get the most media attention out of it, and we want to make the most connections. We want to build relationships. How do we do that? So I want to preface all of this advice by noting that we're going to be leaning heavily here on tips passed along to us by our colleague, Maura Lafferty, who is a veteran event pitcher and just got through pitching a massive event for one of our clients to great success. So we were sure to get her input before recording this, one of the points she made is that it's harder than it sounds, but you have to know, as with any pitch, it's really important that you be clear about the assets you're bringing to the table for journalists, and it's typically a lot more complicated with events than with What you might consider an everyday sort of virtual pitch, because there is that in person component to an event where you might have invitations to a cocktail hour or a dinner that you're putting on, you might have an opportunity for an in person demo. You're going to need to be clear on what spokespeople are going to be attending. Because sometimes, if you've been building a relationship with a reporter for some time and you've been looking for an opportunity to get that reporter connected with a particular spokesperson, and then it's always been, yeah, next time so and so is in town. We should get together. We should have coffee. This is the moment. You don't want to let it you don't want to pass it up. So do your sort of audit ahead of time. Your assets are people, your assets are events, and of course, your assets are news. So figure out what you all have, and then get to work. Pitching events takes a lot of research. This is partly because you are trying to sync up the media, you would like to get in front of with the media who are actually attending. And finding out who is actually attending is a bit of the art of pitching events, because it's not always obvious when you sign up for a booth you typically are given at some point in the process, and this is something we'll we'll dig into a bit. You'll get a media list from the conference. Now, it's important to know that those lists are highly unreliable. Typically, they're composed by the conference from people who've signed up to attend, who have indicated that they are in the media and they are willing. They've checked the box. It says they're willing to be included on the MEDIA list, so they're open to outreach. However, a lot of media will sign up for events like defensively, in a way, because especially for major events. Yes, they're getting on the list. They don't know for sure if they'll be able to attend, but they sign up anyway. So it's always a good idea to check the social media of reporters who are attending, see if they have indicated this is assuming you don't have a strong ongoing relationship with them, and if you do, then you can just ask, obviously, but you need to make the point of asking a lot of times at big conferences like ces reporters will be absolutely drowning in pitches, and they'll be on social if they're not going, they'll be on social media just calling for help. They'll be saying, please stop the pitches. I'm not going. And you'll just be wasting your time if you're sending in another pitch of the reporter, and then you're going to be just incrementally harming your relationship with that reporter if you pitch them, because it shows that you're not really paying attention to them, I always recommend, before you start the pitch effort, scrub your media list, see if you can figure out who is actually attending. This is another important point. A lot of times you'll see someone from a particular publication sign up, but they're signing up on behalf of the whole publication. So you'll find out often they're not attending, but their colleague is, and their colleague isn't on the list. And so if you're just emailing down the list with your pre pitches or your invitations to a media dinner or something, you're not going to necessarily get anywhere unless you can actually get into a back and forth of them, where they indicate who from their Pub is going. Then another aspect of the research is really practical. So this is another way that pitching an event is different from just pitching news generally, because there's geography to consider what you're looking for, typically are in person, meetings and again, part of the art of pitching an event like this is understanding the layout, understanding the geography of the show floor. How big is the floor? How much time do you need to give reporters to get from their previous engagement to you, because typically, reporters who attend are just chockablock with activity. They have very little downtime. They're going from session to session, from meeting to meeting. Often and increasingly these days, you're seeing reporters who attend events there to moderate a panel or conduct an interview on stage, and that's another thing you want to research, what public engagements can you see that the reporter has at the show? So that you when you're making your offer to them, you can work around it, and you could also just get a sense for what days they're most busy, what days they might be most available for an interview, understand the geography of the place, and understand how the reporters might be navigating that geography over the course of a couple days, typically with conferences, the first day is a dead day. It's It's the day that everybody's arriving, and typically, the conference will hold workshops or practical trainings for people who arrive early, but nothing really like typically, the keynotes and the expo open the second day of the conference. So a lot of times, what we've seen is that reporters will be too busy the first day, because that's when all the big sort of set piece events are happening, and then they'll be freer the second day, if they're still attending, to have less news driven meetings.

Morgan McLintic: 8:25

Yeah, and I think this topic about, are reporters going to come to the booth and, like, schedule meetings? It really varies from person to person, because some people like to have it all booked out, and they like to have the itinerary so they can really work the floor in the way, in a planned way. Others are going to be like, Sure, let me know where you are. I'll drop by if I can, because they want to go with whatever the news is breaking, and they don't want to commit to that. And like some events, I think about CES and back in the day with CBIT, where in Hanover had 26 different halls, it can take you an hour to walk across the they just don't. They don't want to sign up for all of that. The logistics are too hard. It's always a question, I guess, from a client's perspective, like, I would like to have meetings booked at their booth so that people can come, and I want them to turn up on time. And sure, some will, but a lot really won't, because it's just very difficult for logistics. And they're just personal preference. And I like the fact that you talk about them. You talk about the MEDIA list, which, if you've been to the event before a year, before you know who came last year. So probably those publications, maybe even those reporters, will come again. So you can get onto it before the list comes out. Once a list comes out, there are brands and agencies are just going to spam that list to death, and that point, you're in the pool with the maximum competition. And it's useful if it's a event you've never been to before, right? Or it's a small event and you're unsure for a lot, it's better to understand whether your friendlies are going and ask them or and sort of have a sense of it upfront, because. As competition

Chris Ulbrich: 10:00

is real. That's right, that's a really good point. Another sort of pro tip for the MEDIA list. If you've never worked with a conference media list before, this might not be self evident, but even if they're attending, not every person on the list is going to be a pitchable contact, because they're probably, in some cases, three quarters of a list at some trade conferences. Some three quarters of a list consist of people who are technically in the media industry, but they're not reporters. So anyone who is in sales, anyone who is in marketing, is not typically a pitchable contact. And anyone who has the word publisher by their name is, unless they are maybe a solo blogger or something like a sub Stacker, they might list themselves as a publisher, but chances are, if they're there to gather news, they're going to give themselves a different title. And if they are down there as a publisher, they are they're there more to take business meetings, not to take news gap. They're not there to gather news. Yeah. So what that often means, and this is another aspect of it, like you have to this is why the research is so important that a lot of times, the MEDIA list is less valuable than you want it to be because there are only a handful of pitchable contacts on it. That doesn't necessarily mean those are all the people that you can get in front of while you're at the event. It's possible. It's less common these days, but if the events being held downtown in the middle of a relatively media rich environment, like a New York, or like a San Francisco, it is possible that you could arrange a meeting with someone who's not even attending the conference. Yeah, so it's important just to think about the sort of broader range of potential contacts you might be able to get in front of, because you're not just coming to the conference, you're coming into town, And who might you want to see while you're in town. And so the MEDIA list is that you get from the conference is often just a starting point for your all the research that

Morgan McLintic: 12:08

you need to do. And I've repped conferences on the other side of it and helped with that list. And I want that list to be as long as possible, because we want to sell tickets and we want to sell the booth space. We want to say, hey, that's 200 media signed up for this thing. This is great. So you know that your incentives are not necessarily aligned there. Chris, we've talked a little bit about some of the assets that you need to prepare, but let's just talk about when you should start pitching the press and getting ready for an event.

Chris Ulbrich: 12:38

Yeah, as a rule, way sooner than you think. This is notoriously true for the big events like CES. If you are pitching meetings even two weeks before CES, forget it. Reporters are booked. So for the giant events, gosh, I would think a month at least ahead of time. Oh yeah. I mean, for

Morgan McLintic: 13:05

CES where, if you're pitching after Thanksgiving, you're late, you're pitching late October for a January event. So maybe even before, I you know, early October, that one is a big run up, but you're dead, right? For most big shows, identifying who we just talked about, identifying who's on the MEDIA list, but then you've got to you've got to be pitching them

Chris Ulbrich: 13:27

early, and in those cases, it's important to bear in mind you're probably not going to have the new media list. So a lot of times what PR people will do, and you have to be careful with this, but they'll look at the media list if they can get it from the previous year, and then they'll cross reference it with who actually wrote, so which gives them some idea of who actually attended, which is some indication of whether they're going to be there this coming year. But if the MEDIA list isn't out yet, you can't know, but it can give you some idea whether it makes sense to reach out to a reporter and see if they're going to be attending this coming year. If they didn't the previous year, and you have no reason to think they're going to be doing anything different this year, then you might leave them off the first round of pitches. But yeah, so that's for the mega events two months ahead. But basically, this is something we're seeing as a trend across all pitching, and I know we've referenced it in other episodes of fired up about the need to get started early. How for funding news, you really need about a month of time to lock in an announcement. The same is increasingly true about all pitches. We just saw the veteran tech reporter Ron Miller, he just posted on LinkedIn. He said, you know, PR pros, you got to understand, if you're not giving individual reporters like me who are working on their own publication, if you don't give us a week and a half, two weeks, there's no way we're going to have time to take in the pitch. Decide to do it. Do the research. Do. Do the interview, put it all together and come out with a piece. So I would say that just for any set piece pitch now of any kind, two weeks is pretty much the minimum if you're looking for a full feature with interviews and a proper, substantial treatment of the subject. So now think about what that means for an event where you can be pretty sure that anyone who is going is getting absolutely bombarded with pitches. If you're going to be out in front of that, yeah, you probably need to be reaching out at least a month ahead of time, particularly

Morgan McLintic: 15:33

if you want your news to drop before the event. My events at the beginning of June. So I want this to come out at the end of May. I got to give two weeks for the reporter to write it. So I'm at the beginning of May. I got to get my messaging like, what are we announcing, what's in the product and what isn't, and what are we saying about that? Got it done, certainly by the beginning of May, maybe the end of April. That's quite a long time out the speed of development, of product development at the moment for a June event, having your product messaging locked in at the mid end of April is hard, but that's where we that's the world we're in at the moment.

Chris Ulbrich: 16:10

That's right, and it's a difficult exercise. We see a lot of our clients go through it because, in a way, the marketing team is trying to impose some launch discipline on the product team, which in this era AI and SaaS is increasingly rare, because companies are sort of used to swapping features in and out of the release version up until the last minute. But you know, if you're trying to publicize especially a product at an event, you need to be really clear on what is being announced a good month ahead, and that is not the habit a lot of companies are in right now. So look, I feel for the marketing teams that are faced with this, but it is a real challenge, and you can't wish it away.

Morgan McLintic: 16:54

So let's talk about announcements. Chris, because I got my senior team, it's a big marketing moment we want to be buzzy at the event. Is a classic question. Should I announce at the conference itself? Should I announce it before? And how do I make that decision?

Chris Ulbrich: 17:13

Yeah, that is a perennial question or perennial problem that you have to work out when pitching news at an event like this, I would say my rule of thumb is that you don't typically want to be announcing at the event, because you tend to get lost in the noise. Your News tends to get lost in the noise. Any reporters who are covering at the event are going to be fielding so many announcements that they're not going to have time to pay attention to any one. The exception might be, if you're making news at, say, a sponsored session, and you've managed to get a reporter to attend the session, then there's a decent chance they'll they, because they've invested in being at the session, they'll cover the news. But that's not usual. Typically, if this is a sort of a volume play, and you don't have any sort of focus, like invitations with some kind of media event at the show, typically, I think you're better off putting your news out about a week before the conference, pre pitching it. And this is especially true if you're trying to reach reporters who will be attending the event, right? Because they're going to be in the week leading up to the event. If it's, especially if it's a major event, it's they're just going to be so overwhelmed that they're not likely to be able to get the news out the day of the announcement. Now, the other advantage to doing the I mean, there is a version of this where you could pre pitch or pre brief someone ahead of it and hope that they pre write the story, and then it comes out the day of. And that is maybe the perfect version. But the problem is that a lot of times, reporters get so overwhelmed in the lead up to the event that even if they were planning to write a full piece, they just don't get around to it. And then you end up getting folded into the roundup from the floor anyway, or they're a small

Morgan McLintic: 19:15

operation and they just can't coordinate. You know, there's no one else there at the event. There's no one else to hit publish, or really just make sure if there are last minute issues or they need different imagery, like, it's harder to make that work successfully than go the week before, isn't it?

Chris Ulbrich: 19:29

Yeah, and it takes some of the pressure, I think that you have a better chance of getting robust coverage for your product announcement. You still get to talk about the news as much a demo the product, if that's applicable, as much as you would if you just sprang it on the world at the beginning of the event. To some extent, this is an evaluation you need to make on a case by case basis. There are certain I can think of like the legal field. It's a relatively small use. Universe of publications and companies, and in my experience, there is some value in that sector to like making a splash at one of the big legal conferences of the year if you are trying to tactically head off some news from a competitor, because it's such a tight universe of people and contacts and the reporters know all the companies, and the companies know all the reporters, that the potential for Buzz putting out your news at a show, if it's really significant news, that's another important point is higher than it would be normally at a big manufacturing robotics conference, for instance. So I'm not saying never, but again, as a rule of thumb, I think that most of the time, you get the best results by arranging to have a feature come out about a week ahead of the conference, and then writing in on that news, doing demos for people who decided not to cover it right at the beginning, but they said, Well, I'm going to be at the event, why don't you show me what you've got while I'm there, and then they will sometimes write a follow up piece. So you can actually Coast off the momentum that you got from the announcement into the conference and beyond, and you can turn it into a two or three week media cycle.

Morgan McLintic: 21:15

Let's talk about media events at the show, right? So sometimes people will say, Hey, we should have a press conference, or let's have a media dinner, or I'd like to do something at the booth, or, I don't know, a party. These are all viable tactics in specific instances. What is What are your thoughts about them? Is it a good use of time? How do I decide?

Chris Ulbrich: 21:39

Yeah. Again, marketing professionals know, in person events are in the best cases, like a high wire act, right? Yeah, if you're putting on this event yourself, you're spending a lot of money. Say you're doing a media dinner, or you are doing a dinner to honor a partner, which is something that one of our clients recently did, and you might sweeten that with telling reporters you have some news at the event, but point being, you're putting a lot of energy and planning and money into this event, so it's a high risk high reward tactic. It is a great way to build relationship with a reporter who comes to an in person event of yours. I have found that those events tend to strengthen or establish relationships better than just about any other tactic you can use. I hate to even use the word tactic in this regard, but activity, let's say, but much more so than just pitching an interesting story to reporter and they say, Hey, great, I've covered it, and then you go your separate ways until the next piece of news comes along. But there is something about having a reporter come to your cocktail hour or sit down with you at dinner that creates a bond that is just qualitatively more. It's just qualitatively stronger. But you do have to understand there's a risk. And this is just the PR nightmare pitching. It is the risk that nobody shows and for the PR team, these are playoff level moments in a campaign, because expectations are really high, and you have to deliver. Because if nobody shows up, the client will be understandably unhappy. They will have sunk a lot into it. And I mentioned as an aside earlier on, that one thing you can do to try to grease the skids a bit in getting reporters to attend is to have some viable news. Is to make some news at the event. You have to sort of imagine that any reporter at any conference of note is going to be absolutely deluged with invitations to come to this like, I guess it's usually a dinner or a cocktail hour, right? And they'll have their pick. And when they're making their decision, obviously their existing relationships are going to come into it. What stories they're already working on research. There's a lot that goes into that decision that plays out even before the event. But if you're trying to edge your yourself a little above the pack, it does help to be able to say to a reporter, in addition to having a good meal and making some connections, you will actually be making some real news here that you can write up like there's an immediate professional payoff for attending and that can help with this sort of pitch. People drop out at the last minute. They show up unexpectedly. Every little advantage you can give yourself is worth trying.

Morgan McLintic: 24:35

Yeah, and I like the sort of party a little bit more than the sort of sit down dinner for this regard, because if you're sitting there and you've booked a nice restaurant, and there's you've got a tent top, and two of the people can't come because there's something else going on, those two, those two chairs are sitting there, you can always bring in some of your members of the team. That's a different kind of thing than more high wire, as you say. Yeah, than, hey, it's an event. We've got our partners here. We've got some prospects here. We've invited some analysts, we've invited some media, and you can break some news there that is just gonna you're hitting multiple goals with that activity, so you're more likely to be successful than we are gonna have a media dinner. And it's only the media. And to an extent, some of these reporters are competitive with one another.

Chris Ulbrich: 25:23

That can be a bit awkward. No, that is an excellent point. Yeah, you're right. That a more casual, social occasion, especially if you have partners there to make up the room so that the event is a success, if the partners are happy, if you've paid attention to them and given them a good show them a good time. And the press being there is a bonus that is the lowest stress version of this kind of event,

Morgan McLintic: 25:49

and that adds some glamor, right? You know, there are reporters here that covering this event. We're all doing something and, you know, and it's better for the reporters as well. Okay, if you're a large public company, sure, you might do a press conference and corral people in, and you're using the relationships that you've got in advance, but for most sort of emerging brands that I think they're unlikely to do a big, formal press conference, unless you can kind of get in on a partners conference, a bigger thing there to try and be part of their announcement. That's a great opportunity. And they're also Chris, these sort of other formalized media events. They're sort of paid for around some of the conferences. I mean, look, the big one is unveiled at CES, right? It's not the conference, but it is the pre conference, and in fact, where almost all the news breaks. If you don't go to unveil, you have to go. You have to be exhibiting at CES to go to unveiled. Really, yeah,

Chris Ulbrich: 26:45

for people who aren't familiar with it, why don't you, well, like, it

Morgan McLintic: 26:48

is a paid for event before the show. Normally, I think it's on the Sunday. What? So everything's still getting set up, and you can pay to get a table, very small. It's a table to exhibit whatever your product news is. And the reporters will come, and they'll often ces will often choose honorees, and if you are one of those honorees, a lot of reporters and news crews will come and make a beeline for those to make sure they're knocking out the ones that they must. But this is where you would launch your product, and then the first day of the conference, the next day, but then all the reporters have already seen everything. They've maybe taken their own B roll. They've maybe taken their own shots. I say media. It's bloggers, it's podcasters. It's a big mix, but that is really where most of the news for CES and that you read in January comes from. There's no one called pepcom, but it's a paid for separate event. But you absolutely, if you're going to launch a product at CES you've got to be there to get in the mix. But so that's the big one, right? There are hundreds of reporters that go and hundreds of exhibitors, but there are smaller events that the events conference organizers will put on, or there are these third parties who will do like a little media day thing that you can tap into. So I don't know whether we've had success with those, but I feel like that's another opportunity that you can piggyback on something else that reporters are going to Yeah, I

Chris Ulbrich: 28:12

think that's right. That's what I've seen for the most part the last several years, is that especially earlier stage, companies are taking advantage of these pay for play opportunities to get in front of the media, which are really efficient. You are guaranteed, unlike with your own press conference, you are guaranteed to get some face time with a decent cross section of the reporters who are attending. Sometimes the great majority of the reporters who are attending, I think it's some large trade conferences those pay for play events. And again, it's going to differ event by event, industry by industry, but I think in a lot of cases, for media, this is the main news gathering moment product news gathering moment of the event. So it is these events are not cheap to buy your way into, but they are highly efficient in a lot of cases, so certainly worth looking into.

Morgan McLintic: 29:14

Okay, so let's just talk about booth logistics and how to handle media who drop by. We've got a lot of our senior people there. We've also got a lot of sales people and people who are maybe not used to talking to the media as well. What advice do we have

Chris Ulbrich: 29:32

so the booth is where typically, most of your conversations with the press will happen, and inevitably, reporters will drop by when you're not expecting them. And so often what will happen is that the designated spokesperson for an interview is just not there. And so it's really important to have that backup plan, that plan B and under. Stand, who's going to be running the booth, and what happens if a reporter drops by? Typically, we see that clients are happy for that person to give a demo, because that's what they're there to do, and they can do it as well as anyone. And it's also important for that person, indeed the larger team. But let's just talk about that person at the booth right now, that backup spokesperson, so to speak, demo person. They need to understand at least the basics of your messaging around the product and around the company. What are the four or five things it's totally safe to say about the company? What are the four or five things it's totally safe to say about the product, your key messages, and then train them a little in how to avoid or bridge away from questions that they aren't in a position to answer. It's not usually a problem, but it also makes them feel more comfortable working with reporters, because, if you're not used to it, talking to a reporter on the record is terrifying

Morgan McLintic: 31:04

and face to face,

Chris Ulbrich: 31:06

technically, yeah, face to face, it is so much scarier than you expect it to be if you've never done it. And so it gives everybody peace of mind, the PR team, the leadership team and the demo person themselves, if they've been trained on what it's okay to say and what are some phrases to use to detach themselves from a conversation that's going places they don't feel comfortable with. And again, typically, reporters at a trade show are not there to play gotcha, but psychologically, just knowing that if things do go sideways, you know what to do, I think it just helps make those interactions run more smoothly. The other thing to bear in mind is that there is a sort of negative scenario where someone with insider knowledge of, say, upcoming news, who's not used to dealing with press, or might not be aware that the cat's still in the bag about this news, they might let it slip to the reporter, and at that point it's out. So you want to make sure, and this is where this goes beyond just the person staffing the booth. This is everyone who's attending. Needs to understand. The sales people, the marketing people, the assistants. Everyone needs to understand like, what are no goes. Anyone who could conceivably be an earshot of a reporter should know that. Like, we're not talking about X, Y and Z at the show, because that's not been announced. So let it not pass your lips, obviously, spokespeople carefully guided by Pr can, under the right circumstances, deliver news to reporters that has not been announced widely, but that's part of your PR strategy, right? What you're trying to avoid here is an inadvertent slip up that messes with your long term or your medium term PR

Morgan McLintic: 33:01

strategy, yeah. And typically, when I've been on a booth, you know it's going to be a reporter, because their badge is a different color or a different ribbon on it, or something you've told the other people, all right, if a reporter steps onto the booth, direct them to me. I will then find out who they are and will vector them to the right spokesperson. Of course, your CEO, senior people are often in meetings, a lot doing partner meetings and other product demos, etc, and meeting with investors. There's lots of stuff that goes on at these events. You'll need a few spokespeople. Make sure you're you know who's turned up, and you're taking the details of this reporter, if it's a product reporter, then often, I'm going back to CES here, they'll want to review product, and you have to write down even follow them up. That can be for any type of news. Okay, they're not going to want to carry all this stuff around. You're going to need to follow up afterwards, and you're going to need to know who can who came. You can scan their badge make sure that you're understanding their needs and vectoring them in quickly, because they got to go around and they won't wait. Lots of prospects will quietly wait whilst the next person comes ready for a demo. The reporters, they have to get their stories, and so they're coming around. If you're not ready, I'll move on to the next somebody else has got something, and maybe I'll loop back to you later. Or maybe I won't have time. So there's a certain amount of speed that's important on this too. So Chris, just as we wrap here, we've done our event, we've had our interviews, we've got our news. We're a buzzy at the show, reporters, analysts came to our party. Was great. What should companies do to extend that PR value and keep the momentum going?

Chris Ulbrich: 34:40

There's no magic to it. It really is just about following through with your follow up. And it's understandable and yet somehow still surprising, how often follow up falls between the cracks, especially if the marketing team is relatively small. It doesn't have a dedicated PR function, events. Are exhausting, and a lot of times the priority is following up on sales leads from the event, and so media follow up can get triaged out, and eventually you just forget about it falls between the cracks. So like I said, there's nothing complicated about it, but you need to make sure that someone is ticking off the follow up items, sending notes to everybody that you encountered, thanks for stopping by some indications about when they can expect future news, or if you promised them graphics, or any kind of concrete deliverable or concrete assets that they asked for to help with their coverage. Get them those assets, because coverage may depend on it, and certainly the quality of the coverage will depend on it. So that's really the main advice, is, don't let the follow up on the PR side fall between the cracks. Yeah, and then

Morgan McLintic: 35:53

plan what's coming next. You've just broken a whole bunch of new relationships with reporters. Hopefully, you got to feed that relationship with something new. You can't just collapse over the line after the event. You got to think, okay, what are we going to give these people next and keep that going? Because that will fuel those relationships and extend the coverage along. Chris, thanks for this really good event. Season is just super hectic for everyone, but if you're going to put the investment in to go from a marketing perspective, you really do want to wring as much PR potential out of it. So hopefully these tips and some of this sort of advice is useful for you. Thank you all for listening. If you like that, please. Would love it. If you would follow us and drop us a comment. You can also subscribe to other types of news and advice on our newsletter called The Forge at firebrand dot marketing, and we will see you all again next time you.