PR
for VC

The PR lessons can Venture into Capital

While the average Venture Capital acquisition lifecycle is 5 to 10 years, many aim to exit within as little as three years. No matter the timeline, the first 12 to 18 months are critical to market perceptions. As Venture Capitalists, your goal is to demonstrate quickly through the media that your acquisitions are designed to release the full commercial and social potential of the companies you acquire. To do this, you need a media strategy that allows you to hit the ground running…and a picture of a new CEO carrying a sink into head office is not how it’s done. Your strategy needs to demonstrate that you will build on the strengths and potential of the business you’ve acquired while solving the financial and other challenges that were barriers to tremendous success. You want to demonstrate that you will disrupt a business in a good and positive way.

Nature (and the media) abhor a vacuum

The announcement of your acquisition will get media coverage; the question is, ‘what kind of coverage?’. If you allow competitors or disgruntled ex-staff to create the narrative, you will need to invest more time and resources to get your story back on the rails. The most effective media strategy for a new acquisition is a combination of targeted Press Releases and media events, all backstopped with a next-gen online newsroom.

The visual narrative

While the temptation is to create a media strategy that demonstrates your management expertise and ability to take your acquisitions to another level, you should uphold the value of developing visual narratives around this messaging. 

The average person can understand the content of an image in as little as 13 milliseconds. That’s the blink of an eye. The media seek story ideas with access to pictures and video so they can create visual narratives in their stories. The brands that provide 24/7 access to these editorially compliant visual assets to journalists naturally get priority media coverage, which is why you want a next-generation online newsroom with these capabilities.

Build and maintain relationships with journalists

A next-gen online newsroom like Lookatmedia™ is designed to be a magnet for journalists seeking stories about your acquisitions. Whether your new investment has a clearly defined geographical boundary or whether it is a global business, the same PR principles apply. You want to create and maintain relationships with those in the media who are prepared to tell your story how you want it to be heard. Lookatmedia™ has features that incentive journalists to tell your stories, provide and maintain contact information and help you maintain ongoing media coverage.

Whether you want to create an online newsroom presence for an individual acquisition or one that covers all of your business’s activities in one solution, an enterprise-level online newsroom like Lookatmedia™ is the way to go. Lookatmedia™ is designed to transform your media presence in timeframes that align with your VC project lifecycles.