When you’ve spent years planning hours of TV news output, or having to work with what your planners have supplied for a day's coverage, you learn pretty quickly what makes a story work. But it’s a different kind of thrill being on the other side of the press release. And for our recent Tulip Cycle Wands project, a joyous, recycled-plastic-meets-road-safety trial in Westminster, I found myself in exactly that reversed role: channelling my newsroom instincts into a launch strategy.

An essential part of advancing your business story is by securing coverage from journalists, bloggers and influencers. You may not have a PR agency to hand, so you may have to do it yourself. If that's the case, then here are some tips from someone who spent several years as the very target of business's coverage-seeking exploits:

1. Stakeholders first

Before you get anywhere near press strategy, you need to know who’s in the mix. Our first challenge was mapping the range and cast of characters involved — not just those making the Tulip Cycle Wands happen (Pitman Tozer and Westminster Council), but also those who might want a stake in the launch moment. It was essential to coordinate messaging and expectations so we could amplify the project through a united front.

2. Be clear on who you’re talking to

Pitman Tozer could reach the architecture world directly, so we focused on everyone else: the general public in Westminster and London, urban cyclists, and civic-minded citizens in cities further afield. We built comms for traditional news outlets, cycling publications, city influencers, and social-first audiences. That clarity helped us tailor the tone and tactics from the outset.

3. Lead with the picture

If it doesn’t look good in a thumbnail, it probably won’t get picked up. The Tulip Wands were a dream: rainbow-coloured, sculptural, and photogenic. We planned the install to coincide with a major cycling event (The London Cycling Campaign’s festival of cycling), got schoolkids involved to add colour and charm, and built an open-access media pack full of stills and video so no journalist or influencer had to chase us. And crucially: we kept that pack updated before, during, and after launch.

4. Get the headline right

This was a fun and happy good news story about bringing colour, playfulness, and imagination into the urban environment, while making cycling safer in London. The first opportunity to write the headlines and script which would later appear in publications was ours, so that’s exactly what we did.

5. Write copy that’s ready to run

Journalists are time-poor and inundated. I wrote our press release so it could be copy and pasted into a story; and several publications did exactly that. We provided usable quotes, minimal jargon, and everything needed to make writing effortless.

6. Be ready for curveballs

On launch day, the crowd was bigger than expected. We had to pick the right stretch of the tulip-lined lane to cut the ribbon, corral guests into place, and keep things moving. At one point, a cyclist (understandably) shouted, “This is a cycle lane!” as he approached the closed-off stretch. We had a spotter in place, but the moment still broke through — and sure enough, Road.cc picked it up. Rather than dodge it, we responded with humour and honesty. We even added the video to the media pack.

7. Measure what matters

Coverage trickled in both before and after the launch. The Evening Standard picked up the story from the press release alone, and BBC London came to the event and ran a segment the following week. Meanwhile, I watched Reddit threads and social sentiment closely, and saw overwhelmingly positive responses. When the tone matched our intentions, I knew the message had landed.

8. Follow up, and follow through

One of the most effective things I did was send three rounds of contact to each outlet, each time with something new: a confirmed VIP, fresh visuals, launch-day content. And next time, I’d lock in a few pre-briefed interviewees ahead of launch for potential pre-recorded and live interviews by publications. Because you cannot rely on Jeremy Vine randomly turning up on a penny farthing every time (though it didn’t hurt).

I reckon being an ex-journo absolutely helps you be a better press officer. Because you’re extra focused on clarity, allergic to fluff, and obsessed with helping the story land, because you know how journalists think. But even if you didn’t work in journalism before being a press officer, I hope these tips will help. And in the case of the Tulip Wands, it helped turn a quirky piece of recycled road furniture into a burst of joy that London, and a fair few journalists, couldn’t ignore.