What's Got the World Talking?

PR and Regional Media: What Works Now

• WPR • Season 1 • Episode 3

Share episode

Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.

0:00 | 36:12

The regional news landscape in the UK has changed dramatically over the last decade and how people are consuming their local news has changed too. What is the opportunity here for brands and are enough brands recognising and capitalising on the potential?

In this episode of What’s Got the World Talking? Jane is joined by senior PR director Rachael Heise and PR director Celine Bisson – both experts in regional strategy – to discuss why brands need to stop viewing regional activity as a backup to national, what the regional journalist/PR relationship looks like now, and how the picture differs around the UK. 

They also share insight about what makes a good local news story, why repurposing national content doesn’t work, and why – at a time when trust in the media is decreasing – local and regional offers potential to buck that trend. Tune in for all this and much more.

If you're fascinated by the topics that get the marketing world talking, make sure you don't miss an episode of What's Got the World Talking?

Web: www.wpragency.co.uk/podcast

YouTube: WPR Podcast - YouTube

LinkedIn: WPR Overview | LinkedIn

SPEAKER_00

And everybody thinks, oh, it looks so much better to be in a big paper, but actually, it's not always right for every brand. There was a donkey and an Elvis impersonator, which is the recipe for a great party, if you ask me.

SPEAKER_01

And they're two different things. A donkey wasn't the Elvis impersonator. It wasn't.

SPEAKER_00

You've got to be local first if you want to reach the local media. And that's feedback we get from journalists a lot. They don't want a repurposed national story.

SPEAKER_02

So we always joke that getting into Boeingham Live is harder than the Daily Mail. I think it is. I don't disagree with you. The care home provider we work with had a resident who wanted to be arrested.

SPEAKER_00

She was put in handcuffs. The police took a few photos with her. She was arrested for speeding in her wheelchair. You know, from an SEO perspective, from a GEO perspective, you have hundreds of regional publications, way more than you have nationals. And I think we're starting to see the value that having large volumes of coverage can have when it comes to appearing in the AI summaries, when it comes to ranking higher on Google. And that's something you can't replicate without regional media.

SPEAKER_01

Welcome to What's Got the World Talking, the podcast at Dell's into what's on the minds of the marketing, PR, and social media world. In this episode, What's Got Us Talking is the UK's regional media landscape in 2026. Over the last few years, we've seen some significant changes. Newsrooms are smaller, resources are stretched thinly, and how people consume their local news is changing. So what's really happening in regional newsrooms? Is it an appetite for local stories? What are regional journalists looking for? And what does all this mean for brands wanting to secure meaningful local and regional coverage? I'm talking to senior PR Director Rachel and PR Director Selene about how effective local PR can build brand trust, why brands need a dedicated regional strategy, not repurpose national content, and why one of Celine's favourite ever local stories begins with the line: There was a donkey and an Elvis impersonator. So, Celine, Rach, do you want to start by introducing yourselves and explaining your role at WPR?

SPEAKER_02

I'm Rach and I am a thinging PR director here at WPR, and I look after our regional media and stakeholder activation team.

SPEAKER_00

And I'm Celine, I'm a PR director at WPR, and I also work as part of our regional media and stakeholder activation team, overseeing some of our biggest regional clients. Fab.

SPEAKER_01

So let's start with a big question. Is regional and local media coverage still beneficial to brands?

SPEAKER_00

So beneficial. It's a juicy question. It's so, so important. I think people underestimate regional media a little bit because some people kind of go after the shine of nationals and the daily mail. Oh, yeah, exactly. And everybody thinks, oh, it looks so much better to be in a big paper. But actually, it's not always right for every brand. I think lots of brands, especially a lot of the clients we work with, have got that big national brand with lots of little regional hubs. And it is so important for these hubs to be in those local outlets because they're they're ultimately where their customer base is. It's not necessarily the Sun or the Daily Mail reader, although it might be, but sometimes it's just the people who are going to read the Cambridge Independent, who are going to read the Birmingham Live. They're all the people that you want to reach because they want you want to know that they know where you are, and you want to know that they know you're here.

SPEAKER_02

And actually, if you want to get people into regional outlets, whether that is a development or a pub or a care home, you're not necessarily, you might get that brand awareness at a national level, but actually, again, like Celine said, it's going to be getting in the Oxford Mail or at a very hyper-local level, maybe what's going on in Oxford, to find out what events are happening in your local area, and that's how you're going to drive footfall to whichever outlet, whatever client we're working on.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, I've always found that national media is great for raising brand awareness. Regional media is great for converting that brand awareness into action, whatever brand needs that action, that action to be.

SPEAKER_02

Getting people through the doors, you're not going to necessarily do that with the amazing national coverage that looks shining, but it might won't always work.

SPEAKER_01

So, what advice would you give to brands who want to better connect with the communities they serve? And what's the best way to do that in an ever-changing media landscape?

SPEAKER_00

You've got to be local first if you want to reach the local media. I think, and that's feedback we get from journalists a lot. They don't want a repurposed national story, they want something that's got a genuine local angle that local people are going to ultimately resonate with because that's what makes them stand out. If we just give them a national story, there's no interest, there's literally no purpose or no point of regional outlook publishing it. Because that's what people will read in the Daily Mail anyway. So they want something that's gonna make them stand out and really, really target that regional audience by giving them really relevant content that allows the audience to connect with a brand on a local level.

SPEAKER_01

So, what makes a great regional or local story? Is regional and local stories the same thing, or again, would you have different approaches for regional and local?

SPEAKER_02

Different, probably, because you've got the likes of Reach PLC who are like humongous and actually behave so much more like a national than say, what's the smaller example? Someone by news from Scrooge Standards. From Scroove Standards, who are the news information, that's what we like to hear. So if you compare the likes of Bristol Live, Birmingham Live, Reach PLC titles, they are gonna have plenty of syndicated content that comes down from the nationals. They haven't got that many journalists who are on the ground who are gonna be looking into what's going on in the local community, and then you've got the likes of Bromsgrove Standard, and they have a completely different culture in their newsrooms. They have journalists who are a little bit more on the ground. Obviously, their time their time is still tight, but they've got journalists who really care about what's going on in their local communities, what events are happening, what's important to the local area, and that means that the way we tailor our stories has to be different for those different kinds of titles.

SPEAKER_01

So you have a very different approach according to the title. Yeah, and that's what you'd encourage brands to as well.

SPEAKER_02

Absolutely. I think if you're going after that huge awareness across regional titles, then Reach PLC is great, but you're gonna want a really quirky creative story, it's still gonna have to have that regional hit, that regional like link. If you want to go after the News Quest or National World titles, then you probably want a bit more of a community focus, whether it be a charity donation or a school partnership.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I think the best example is with those big stat stories. Sometimes at the national level, you get a lot of success from releasing findings from a survey, and sometimes you have some regional data, spark that survey. The smaller regionals won't want regional data on its own because it's just not too broad, it's still too broad. I think you only really get data from broader regions anyway. So if you get West Midlands data, Brom Score Advertisers not going to care about the broader West Midlands, and I think you just really need that local element to ground it. So we've had a lot of success from having this kind of mixed approach to sharing local stats along with a local event or a local activity that's happening to really ground it in the local landscape.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, yeah, perfect. So you've obviously got you've obviously got heaps and heaps of uh knowledge. Can you talk us through what the regional and local media landscape looks now? How have mergers and acquisitions changed that? How many sites, how many publications have closed, and what does it look like?

SPEAKER_00

Well, first of all, I think our geographical knowledge is through the roof. I can I could name all the small towns in England to all of those tiny publications we work with.

SPEAKER_01

Is your knowledge of English geography better than French geography now?

SPEAKER_00

Uh I think it's getting quite close, though. It's getting pretty close. I feel like I can be really good at geogasser on it on England only. But um, we've got teams essentially that specialise in certain in specific regions, which means that they really really have a lot of time to develop these relationships with all the smaller outlets. They will know exactly which tiny hyperlocals you have. And sometimes it's smaller newsletters, sometimes it's a tiny news site for a 300-person village of some sort where we have really, really nice relationships with the editor, and we can just send them events that our local branches are doing. So that'd be that'd be the way we'd approach it first. I think what we're seeing with the regional landscape at the moment is that you only have a really handful of really, really big publishers. I think even five years ago, it used to be really, really different. When I started here eight years ago, was there tons of different publishers, tons of different news organizations that we could go after, and you could really felt feel that point of difference between different titles. Whereas now the smaller publishers are getting absorbed by the big ones. I think Reach at the moment probably owns about three-quarters of media landscape. You you really have four major players. You've got DC Thompson in Scotland, you've got Reach PLC, which is a big one across the UK, you've got New Squares that we've talked about, we've got National World who's getting bigger and bigger. Yeah. Uh Astangwin, who's bought a lot of the old, smaller local papers. And that really, that really, really shows there's not a lot of room for independent, truly independent media to think about. I don't think there's many left at all. Not at all. And I think if you take the real independent media like the Birmingham Dispatch to take a really local example, they're not the kind of outlets that are gonna take PR stories because they really want to stand out from what those major publishers are doing, which is a mix of stories from PRs like us, which are still relevant, um, and big syndicated stories.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, they're almost not even trying to compete with the likes of Reach PLC because they have to be different. So if you look at Reach PLC, it is very much they have big national stories, they're syndicated across all of their regional outlets and actually behave so much more like a national than the likes of the News Quest titles in the national world. National World is different again, where you've got a submission model. So you're going to be submitting stories that are then approved by the editorial team, and that's how I think they're trying to probably shave off valuable hours for the journalists because obviously there just aren't that many journalists anymore, there's no budget for them. So they all work quite differently, and then it's about how we look at the brands we work with and how we target them differently with different types of content.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, they're stretched so thin on the ground. I think there's been something like 300 journalists, 300 outlets closing in the last five years and thousands of journalists being made redundant. Even REACH recently announced that they're going to completely restructure their operation and really focus on telling video first stories. So the it's not just the number of journalists that we've got access to from a regional level, it's also the way they operate. Like we're seeing a real shift from the major publisher towards video first content, whereas the smaller one tends to continue doing what we've seen more traditionally since the start of regional media, really.

SPEAKER_01

Well, I was going to ask um what are the biggest changes we're seeing in uh regional newsrooms, but I think you've covered that. What do you think is driving those changes that you're you're seeing?

SPEAKER_00

Just the way the way we consume media thing. Yeah, you know, we we talked a lot five, six years ago about social first PR. Yeah. And I think that's very much true. It just looks a little different at the moment. We're not the aim's no longer to create content optimized for shares on Facebook, it's to create content that's optimized for shares on Instagram and on TikTok and on all those video first platforms, like the BBC and Reach, and I think because they're so big, they're probably a really nice way of getting a feel for where the industry as a whole is heading. And they're investing so much in their social channels, in videos, in in video journalism team, and that's that's where this is heading at the moment. More video content, more engaging stuff, more short form, and less textonally content. I think that's exactly how Reach PLC put it, actually. They wanted to move away from textonally.

SPEAKER_01

I guess one of the issues that region and local titles have is competition, even from the likes of WhatsApp groups. Something happens in your street, your village, your town. Yeah, the neighbours are all sharing it on WhatsApp, aren't they? Before you know what's going on. And the same with the Facebook groups, for example.

SPEAKER_02

I think that's where we can tap into this really lovely hyperlocal media, which again, our teams are so good at knowing. Their geographical knowledge is incredible. And it's not when we're putting together a media list, if there is ever a patch that we don't already work on, we're looking at yeah, the big titles like the Reach LC guys, but then we're also looking at what hyperlocal media is available to us. So it might not be a WhatsApp group, but it might be what's on Brom's Grove, or it might be the local mum's group, and which is Soly Hull Updates where I live. Yeah, Solely Hull Updates is a great example.

SPEAKER_01

Such high engagement, even you know, with the days when it's Facebook seeing the engagement numbers it used to.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

No, people are still ever missing dog on Soly Hull updates.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, and I think that's where people are probably getting their first line of news from. Certainly the local community news, it's gonna be from the likes of Soli Hull updates, not necessarily going, and I mean no one's gonna be going directly to the publishers anymore, no one's logging onto you know Birmingham Live to see what's going on. I think that's where social verse probably still has its place, in that I think you know, not many people are going to pick up a print paper anymore. For the most part, you're gonna be getting the news through whatever social views you follow. So whether it's probably more like Instagram and TikTok, yeah, but then my mum's generation is probably still Facebook.

SPEAKER_01

And can brands still do that? Because obviously, brands it's a great way for brands to talk to those communities, but you've got moderators that will or won't, I'm assuming, um let brands talk.

SPEAKER_02

I think it very much depends. It very much depends on what kind of group it is. So Facebook groups can be trickier, but I think if you've got something that's really relevant for their community and they are open to posting things from other people, then I think that's fine. You can share things with them and they might approve it. But I'm presumably you'd always be very transparent when you're gonna be able to do that. Oh of course, yeah. We'd always say it's on behalf of whichever brand we're working with. But I think if it's something that's relevant for their community and something they're gonna like, if it's an event that we think you know their community's gonna love, then they probably are gonna want to share it because it's it's giving value.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, it's about relevancy and value, isn't it? You would never share a stat story with a tiny hyperlocal story because we'd annoy them. They probably wouldn't want it anyway. You don't want to ruin those relationships, but ultimately they're trying to sell paper or they're trying to get views, they're trying to get engagement. And if we give them something that's going to deliver on that because it's got the hyperlocal element, then it's it's mutually beneficial.

SPEAKER_01

So, how has the role of a regional journalist changed in the midst of all that? What what differences have you seen in the world? I wouldn't want to be there much more. I remember doing work experience in my local paper, um, obviously many years ago, and I think when I was at like university, it was a big buzzing newsroom then, like it really was the the the buzz, the heart of the community. And we were journalists could go out then to try local restaurants to go and to film premier film screening because it was it was amazing. I feel like it would have been a really fun job then.

SPEAKER_02

Whereas now I feel like it's just very much it's about clicks, isn't it? If they're not getting the clicks on the stories they're sharing, and that doesn't really matter, they've got a certain amount of stories to fill each week and a certain amount of hours to get them covered in, and there's probably one of them now, realistically, in a newsroom. Probably, yeah. You think newsrooms just down to one or two?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, one or two at the most. We're seeing that a lot, and there's not there's not really those buzzing newsrooms anymore, they're all working from home. There's not really big news there that you can just call and then you can just ask to speak to whoever is there, because there's usually nobody there. One of our one of our colleagues was uh a regional journalist before she joined us, and she was just saying just how stretched and how much of a of an articles factory she felt like she was because there was less and less of them and more and more and more to cover, especially as a bigger paper absorbs a smaller one, all of a sudden you've got two people to cover an entire county, and yeah, huge job.

SPEAKER_02

But then I think this is where we can be really helpful, and our teams are brilliant at this, is that if you're packaging things up for the media and for these poor journalists that are so so stretched, actually, we can package it up in exactly the way they want it written. We can give them photography in the way we know that's gonna work for them, and we can send it in an email that's super concise and gets to the point and tells them this is why it's a good story for you guys, and that means that they are gonna have everything packaged up and ready to go. They haven't got to do too much editing, hopefully, and it will make their lives easier. So they're more likely to use our stories, and they also know that we're trusted to send them content that's gonna be good.

SPEAKER_00

There's just no time for them. If they're if they have to ask for anything extra, if we've forgotten, if there's no picture attaches, there's not enough quotes, they're not they don't have time to ask for them. They'll just move on to the next story, move on to the next.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, so is there still potential for PRs to build relationships with these local and regional journalists?

SPEAKER_02

I think yes, but it just looks different. It's not gonna be a chat on the phone every week anymore, it's not gonna be going for lunch and drinks, it's probably more they know that we're trusted to send them great content, great stories, things that are relevant, and it's packaged up in the perfect way for them, and that builds that level of trust. And then actually, if they did need something regionally or they wanted to know what was going on, they know that they can come to us. Yeah, but it's probably the relationships are just different to the way they probably looked 10 years ago.

SPEAKER_01

So I think that's really important. If a brand, any brand, is seeking to build connections with the communities that it serves, they need to find an agency that has already got those trusted relationships with journalists because the chances of making new ones when journalists are so stretched these days is more challenging than ever.

SPEAKER_02

They're gonna recognise our names in their inbox and they're gonna know the kinds of stories we're gonna send them and that it's gonna be trusted. I mean, AI adds a whole nother level of kind of mistrust into this because journalists are now gonna have to be questioning what content's coming through. Is it AI created? Is it from a real expert? Is it from a made-up expert? And actually, I think that's where the relationships probably become more important, if anything.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. Yeah, there'll certainly be some horror stories about fake experts being created, not just like in regional and and local papers, but nationals too. It's uh yeah, I think that's something we're all awake to now. So is the picture the same across the UK? Are there some areas where it's easier to get local regional coverage?

SPEAKER_02

Are there some areas where you just think, oh, there's definitely not there. There are patches that come through where you think, oh, that's gonna be a tricky one to get coverage.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, it really depends how many media titles you've got still thriving in a one-given area. You get areas where it's just one massive Reach PLC title just covering the entire county, in which case it's unlikely they'll have time for local events and and smaller things like that. They prefer the big story to video-led stuff.

SPEAKER_02

So again, that's why we'd probably just tailor what we were doing. So if we're trying to get coverage in one location that's you know dominated by Reach PLC, then we're going to be tailoring the content in a different way to if we've got, you know, three lovely local local titles, which probably isn't any patch anymore, it's three, maybe two. A couple.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

And then that's where you really delve into the hyper-local media and you just look at different options and different mixes depending on what stories you're going out with.

SPEAKER_01

So should we be thinking differently about how we define what regional slash local coverage is? You know, it used to be a standard news article, but can it take different forms now?

SPEAKER_00

Absolutely. And I think we we also need to start stop thinking about regional as kind of a backup to national, where national is just a big crown jewel and then oh, maybe we'll do a little bit of regional if we have time. They genuinely need and deserve an entire tailored strategy to them because there's so much value to it. So it's not just about sending a press release and a picture and maybe a link to an event. Now, I think like like Rachel said, there's so many publications that are very much asset first, so it's about kind of thinking, right, we absolutely want to be in the reach VLC titles because we need all the SEO benefits that they give us, we need all the massive, massive audiences and all the link building. Well, then in that case, we need to rethink how we package the story we've got and and how we target them in a way that's completely relevant. That's that's really gonna increase our chance of getting success.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. So, what does a good story look like to a regional journalist now? When do you think that that one's gonna land? That has got all the hallmarks of a great.

SPEAKER_02

I mean, whether we're targeting Breach PLC or not, something quirky, something you've never seen before. I don't think there's ever been anything we haven't seen before, but something really different. And you see the stories landing in your inbox, and you're like, oh, that's gonna be just a brilliant one. Like a journalist who's gonna jump all over that. I think some great examples we've had lately is the care home provider we work with had a resident who wanted to be arrested. Yeah, and it was a wish, and it was yeah, brilliant.

SPEAKER_00

Yep, she was put in handcuffs, the police took a few photos with her, she was arrested for speeding in her wheelchair. That's just the kind of stories that that's just everything that a local journalist warrants, hasn't it? Yes, it's so it is so fun, and read you know, regional campaigns don't have to not be fun. I think we always think of like fun, fluffy, stunty activations for national, but or charity. I think people think big check, big check charity, check, yeah, local breast release done.

SPEAKER_02

I think some of the the tried and tested things like PR 101, they still work. Local mare, giant check for charity, fine. It's it's good ways of engaging with the community, it works, but actually things that are quirky, where you've got a brilliant photo, maybe, or video content, something you're not expecting to be happening in your local community, that's where you're gonna really get the journalist's interest.

SPEAKER_01

I love that. What's your both of your favourite um local, regional stories that you've ever worked on? And why?

SPEAKER_00

I don't know if that was my favourite story, but it was certainly my favourite headline. It was some kind of open day I came years ago where there was a donkey and an Elvis impersonator, which is the recipe for a great party, if you ask me.

SPEAKER_01

Umkey wasn't the Elvis impersonator. It wasn't, but I feel like they were there on the same deck.

SPEAKER_00

It was an extra flip. Uh and I think the headline that we landed on was not Step on my Blue Sweet's cute hooves. I just think it's going to be my favourite.

SPEAKER_02

But yeah, it does contain everything for a brilliant regional story.

SPEAKER_01

It that's got everything. Animals, it always used to be, but you know, back in the day when I worked on it, it was animals, kids, older people. That was just the stories that worked.

SPEAKER_02

It still works.

SPEAKER_01

And if you've got a favourite, yeah.

SPEAKER_02

I think it's animals again. And we transformed one of the care homes. I think it was a Windsor one because it was um oh, is it between? Jubilee. So we transformed the care home, which was so exciting. And then we like surprised all the residents. They came down, it looked like Buckingham Hallex. We'd even got like a new fireplace and everything, red carpet, and they were having an afternoon tea and basically feeling what it was be like to be royalty. But the the bit that I loved was we had a furfluencer who was obviously a corgy. I can't remember what his name was. He was a French Corgi! He was a French Le Corgi. I think it was Le Corgi. Um, but he was brilliant. So we did some fantastic video content with the residents who adored Le Corgi. And they all sat around and had an afternoon tea. And yeah, that was just a really fun, fun story for the cat home in Windsor.

SPEAKER_01

I like that. That's a theme that's coming out a lot as you're talking through this. It's fun. Yeah, it is. I think you go to the national press. Well, at the moment, you avoid the national press because it's full of such depressing news, isn't it? You start, I need a break, I need a week off. Um, but you probably do look to your and always have done, look to your regional and local news, yes, for information on what's going on in your area if there has been a terrible incident, anything that you need to be aware of, but you do also look at for those heartwarming community connection stories, don't you?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. And I think that's what's really important, especially in the doom and gloom at the moment. You want those heartwarming stories. You want to see that lovely, nice things are happening in your community and make you feel feel part of something bigger. And I think that's where we can work with the brands that have these wonderful local connections and ensure that they feel like they're part of their communities.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, it's giving it's giving those titles a bit of a point of difference. It's so much of a focus on crime and on negative news in some of the bigger regionals, even that if you give them something fun, something quirky, something that's nice to write about, and something that's ultimately nicely packaged by the team, you know, like like you said, PR 101, still still very much work. You still want your release to be really well written, really easy to read. You still want to make sure you share the right images, they're all high-rares, they're all lovely and staged. Yeah, all the key facts are basically a lovely penny title.

SPEAKER_02

We love a lovely penny title. A lovely punny title. Um, yeah.

SPEAKER_01

And are consumers still engaged with local media? Are they finding local news elsewhere? So are they switching off from their communities?

SPEAKER_02

No, I think they're very much engaged with their communities, but the way they're getting their media is shifted. So no one's, you know, they're not going on to Birmingham Live, you know, they're getting their news through their social channels, be that Facebook or Instagram or TikTok. And so we need to design our stories so that they are going to be social first for the journalists, and that's how we're gonna reach our target audiences. It's just a slightly different way around now.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, I think for anyone that says, Oh, you know, local, regional media, dying, dead, whatever, just go and look at the number of comments or engagements on many of these stories, yeah, and you'll see that's far from the case. It's yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_02

People want to see what's going on in their local communities, and it is so depressing in the national news at the moment.

SPEAKER_01

I think you want to know that lovely, nice things are still happening. So consumers are still engaged with local and regional media. I think we can all agree on that. Do you think that differs by age, by demographic, or I think it's the meat it differs by age if you look at the medium?

SPEAKER_00

Well, we still get feedback from some of the locums we work with, for example, that they actually get a lot of inquiries from people over 60 because they've read something in their print newspaper. Yeah, and I feel like it's a little bit more trusted somehow.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, for sure. It's certainly with the older demographics, and then when you're looking at the more sort of millennial audience, they're probably getting their news stories by Instagram and Facebook, but they're still there's still the news stories that are coming from the regional press. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

And for the future generations, what do we think that might hold? It's hard, isn't it? I don't envy the future generations sometimes because I feel like it's gonna be so hard to tell what's real and what isn't. There's already been lots of stories being told in in recent years about that kind of trust crisis where people trust the media less and less. And I think with all that AI-generated content that we see online and that journalists are trying their hardest to combat, there's gonna be more and more people that perhaps a bit less trusting of what content they're reading. So it's gonna be super important for any news outlet either and any brand to really establish themselves. This is kind of confident, reliable source of information.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, I think it'd be hard as well to know what the younger audience will engage with at a regional local level. Because I don't think you're necessary, you don't necessarily feel connected to your community until you're truly a part of it.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Until you have a vested interest in it, till you're till you have a home, whether it's a home you own or a home you're renting, yeah, and you're living independently, only then do you think, well, actually, I do need to know what's going on down the street. I do need to know what's happening on my local high street. And I I am really interested to hear what clubs or associations, whatever I can be a part of. And that changes as as you grow older anyway.

SPEAKER_02

And certainly once you have kids, you start thinking, right, what clubs are going on around the corner, what the schools like, actually, and you start to care more about those, I guess, different pockets of things that are happening in your community.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, this might be. I was gonna say, this might be where hyperlocals make a bit of a comeback, really, because you'll probably look at those smaller community pages because you you just need to know what's happening right by your doorstep, not to say the broader regional news.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. So we have talked a bit about trust. Do you think trust in local and regional media is higher than trust in national media?

SPEAKER_00

I think it might, I think it might be, yeah. You probably assume that your local paper is a bit more trustworthy than your national one, just based on the fact that it's stories that you can probably go out and verify yourself. You know, your your local paper's not got no interest in lying about an event happening at your local housing development, for example. And you can very easily check that it's true or not. Whereas I think this this more immaterial element in national news where you think that could be true, that could not be. I'm not really able to check.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, and it's your community, isn't it? So you're hoping that it's someone within your community that's writing these stories.

SPEAKER_01

What do you think regional media offers brands that national outlets don't?

SPEAKER_00

A direct line, I think, to a very, very niche audience that you can't really get anywhere else. I think there's so so many things going on nationally that you might be able to get that little bit of brand awareness, yeah, but you're really able to buy loyalty and trust from an audience through regional media.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, that's so true. If you're talking about things that are happening in someone's local community, I just think you're gonna get a completely different audience engaging with that. It's gonna be a much smaller audience, but they're gonna be so much more engaged.

SPEAKER_01

I think as well, by just you know, by participating, by sharing your store stories with your local market, you're gonna come across as caring about your local market and showing that you're you're you're there for the long run, you want to invest in that community, support that community. Yeah, and there's a much higher chance that community will support you in return as well.

SPEAKER_00

It's about becoming these community hubs. We we have so many brands with nationwide presence come to us and say, we want to become community hubs. And you can't do that by just mass marketing a stun through a campaign through a national, because that's not that's just not going to reach the right people, that's just not gonna resonate like a regional story would.

SPEAKER_02

And often what we'll do is if we've got bigger campaigns, then we will have something happening at a national level because you still want that national huge awareness, but then the campaign will be filtered down to the regionals where it's just a different strategy. So you'll have a big, exciting stunt, but then you'll have something that's really important to the local community, be it an expert-led event or a project with a local school. Um, and they just take different forms. So you might want to do both because both have value but for different things.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. So, what would your advice be to brand teams, to marketing teams who want to engage with their local community through PR, through earn media?

SPEAKER_00

I think it's about taking stock of what it is that you can offer to your local community and really working with specialist teams to understand how you can package that in a way that's gonna build loyalty. Yeah, it can't be a token effort.

SPEAKER_02

I think it has to be a bit more than that. If you really do want to be a community hub within wherever you've got your care home development hub, then you need to be giving something that's a value, it can't just be a stunt that might be national community to get average.

SPEAKER_00

It's about authenticity. We say we I feel like that word gets thrown around a lot in VR, but it's about being authentically local and having genuine things to offer to your community and having this genuine drive to become a community hub and actually caring about your community.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, I mean, I think some of the core advice I'd give to those marketing teams is put an agency that already really knows all those journeys out there, such as us, but I'm ever so slightly biased. And I think I would add to that, which you've you you've you've said and stressed already about tailoring the approach. I think the mistake I've seen, not for a good many years, but marketing teams sort of wanting to do one story that they can just sort of change the the town name and just send it out. Now like you just like you've you you've made this point really clear throughout throughout the podcast that every regional title is different to every other regional.

SPEAKER_02

You can't just send something out syndicated. You can't just be like, right, this is one story and just or blast just an email out that's just gonna go to like hundreds of different people and hope, hope that it lands. It's just not gonna happen.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, well it's like it's like you know, when when you build a national strategy, you'll usually have a very different approach if you're going after to Daily Express or if you're going after The Guardian, yeah. And it shouldn't be any different with regionals. So if you're thinking of going after Leeds Live, that's great. Devise a strategy for that. But if you want to go after your tiny hyperlocals and tailor that approach to them and don't treat regionals as a as a uniform groups.

SPEAKER_02

I think where we can probably really support, and we do really support the brands we work with, is that we have all of this knowledge, it's just in our heads because we've been doing it for such a long time. Whereas if you're an in-house team, you can't possibly be expected to know what hyperlocals in Bournemouth and whether Birmingham Live will cover that story, and whether, I don't know, somewhere in Scotland. Aberdeen Express. Aberdeen Express. But yeah, you can't you can't expect in-house teams to have that knowledge. That's where we are the experts because we've been doing it. I mean, I've been at WPR for 11 years nearly now, and this has been my role, really. You know, I've come up through the ranks, but still I've always had an interest in the local media, and regional has always been something I've supported some of our biggest consumer clients with. So we have that knowledge at our fingertips, and our team is great at knowing the really specific areas of the UK and knowing exactly how we get into those titles. And you just can't expect an in-house team to have that knowledge, it would be too hard.

SPEAKER_00

It took it took us years to build all that knowledge of all these regional medias. We added more and more regional clients. We just built such a massive database now of regional publication, regional hyperlocals, down to Kevin at Cordon Village was that tiny web page that they run up in Leicestershire. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

That one real village, yeah. And they know us imported.

SPEAKER_01

They owe us, yeah. Yeah. I think something I find really encouraging is that you might think that there would have been a decrease in the number of brands that are coming to us for this sort of national, regional, local uh PR support. But if anything, I think it's flipped. I think more are coming to us. I think as more brands recognise the importance of connecting with those local communities, yeah, the more opportunities it's presenting for us.

SPEAKER_02

I think they can really see the value. I mean, they literally can see the value. And you see the kind of if a care home gets fantastic regional coverage day in, day out, and they will see an uplift in inquiries. It's just you can see the correlation right there. So it's not hard to show the value once you start doing this sort of nationwide PR that really taps into the regional media.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, we've hardly touched on it yet. And I don't know if I want to get us started down that road yet. But you know, from an SEO perspective and from a GEO perspective, you have hundreds of regional publications, way more than you have nationals. And I think we're starting to see the value that having large volumes of coverage can have when it comes to appearing in the AI summaries, when it comes to ranking higher on Google. Yeah. And that's something you can't replicate without regional media and without having a really solid, well-crafted strategy that allows you to target lots of different publications everywhere with really, really relevant stories that have the right keywords and that just deliver.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, if you want to be in the AI summaries, you've got to have that volume of coverage, and I think that's what we're seeing more and more. It's a focus, isn't it? It's you can't ignore it.

SPEAKER_01

No, absolutely not. Um, I think my final question then uh fact or fiction, getting regional coverage is easier than that getting national coverage for Brian.

SPEAKER_02

Oh my god, so we always joke that getting into Boeingham life is harder than the Daily Mail.

SPEAKER_01

I think it is.

SPEAKER_02

I don't disagree with you. It's in the Manchester Evening News. Oh yeah, and the Manchester Evening News. They are, they are, they're tricky, aren't they? I mean, we know what works for them, but you're certainly not gonna get you're not just gonna ping them a press release and just hope for the best and get coverage. Whereas I feel like with the Daily Mail, if you've got a really strong national story, you know, you're gonna you're gonna be hopeful. But the likes of M E N, you've you've got to be tailoring exactly what you're doing just for them and them alone.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, I'd agree with that. I don't, I don't maybe it's unfair to say which is easier, which is harder, but probably none of them are easy. None of it's all really hard. Our job is hard. Our job is hard, but we we do it well, we soldier on. Well, thank you very much for your time. Really appreciate it. It's been great to chat all things regional media with you. Thanks, Joan. Thank you. Yeah, enjoy the love.