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In an age where reputation can be built—or broken—by how media cover your brand, having a well-structured press office is essential for any inhouse PR department or business looking to maximise their PR activities or manage its public image effectively.
A press office serves as the central hub for all media relations, ensuring that a company’s messaging remains consistent, responsive, and strategic. Whether part of an in-house PR team or a dedicated function within a larger organisation, a press office helps businesses respond to media enquiries quickly, handle crisis communications, and maximise positive media coverage. But what does it take to establish a press office that truly delivers?
This article explores the key considerations for setting up a press office, from defining its role to ensuring it has the right tools, processes, and people in place.
A press office is the central point of contact between a company and the media, responsible for managing communications, handling press inquiries, and shaping the organisation’s public narrative.
Depending on the size and needs of a business, a press office can be a fully staffed, in-house department dedicated to media relations or a smaller function within a marketing or communications team. Regardless of its scale, its purpose remains the same: to ensure that the company’s messaging is clear, consistent, and aligned with its strategic goals.
To operate effectively, a press office requires several key elements. These include at least (or a team of) skilled communicators who can draft compelling press releases, respond to media inquiries, and build relationships with journalists. It should also have a well-organised bank of multimedia assets, such as high-quality images, videos, and company logos, ready for distribution.
Additionally, a successful press office maintains a library of pre-prepared statements for potential issues that may arise, along with detailed biographies of key spokespeople to ensure consistent messaging. Other essential materials include pre-written company backgrounders, fact sheets, and press kits that can be quickly provided to journalists.
Building a press office requires careful planning. The first step is to define its core function—will it primarily handle media relations, crisis communications, or thought leadership?
Then, putting together the right press team is crucial; whether it’s a smaller function with a comms or marketing team, a dedicated press officer or a full department, you need skilled professionals who can craft compelling messages, engage with journalists, and manage press inquiries effectively.
Establishing clear processes is also key, including how media requests are handled, who approves statements, and how crises are managed. Additionally, investing in essential tools—such as a media contact database, press monitoring software, and a structured content calendar—will help streamline operations. A good press office should also develop a bank of ready-to-use assets, including press releases, spokesperson biographies, and visual materials, ensuring it can respond quickly to media opportunities.
So, what else should a digital press office consist of? Here are 7 thing you’ll need to consider and compile to build an effective digital press office that enables an effective reactive and proactive digital PR strategy.
A key component of a good press office is a comprehensive library of written materials. These should be up-to-date, preapproved written press resources that can be accessed quickly, enabling you to respond quickly to journalist enquiries.
One of the most important written assets is a press pack, which provides an overview of the company, its leadership, and its key messaging. This typically includes a company backgrounder, outlining its history, mission, and values, as well as product and service fact sheets that detail offerings in a clear and media-friendly format. Keeping these materials updated ensures that you can respond to media quickly and that journalists have access to the most accurate and relevant information when covering the business.
In addition to general company materials, a press office should maintain a library of pre-approved spokesperson quotes and commentary on key industry topics. These can be used in press releases or provided to journalists seeking expert opinions. Spokesperson biographies should also be readily available, offering a brief yet impactful overview of key executives, their expertise, and their media experience.
Access to quality imagery and video can be the difference between securing quality media coverage or having a PR campaign that falls flat. However, when we say multimedia we mean having more than just a nice fluffy product shot. This means a large bank of lifestyle shots, as well as aspirational, high quality and aesthetically pleasing images and videos. Think about the types of PR stories that you are likely to run regularly and make sure you have enough for every angle. Make sure they are high enough resolution for publication and an appropriate length. Ensure your videos are well edited, natural and editorial rather than advertorial in nature. Chances are, if you have a specific campaign in mind you will want to tailor multimedia around that so that it has the best chances of securing coverage and links. But its always good to be prepared so that you can react to incoming news and short deadlines.
One of your most valuable PR tools is your experts. They are the people that the media will want to speak to or get opinion from when big developments happen in your industry. So vet your experts and put together written profiles on them so that you’re ready to react to the news agenda and propose your experts for contributing article and comment opportunities ahead of the competition. First, this means vetting your experts based on media appeal and on credentials. You obviously need a spokesperson who is comfortable talking to, or at least being in the media. But if they are going to be a real tool for your PR strategy they also need to have the credentials for that story too. One mistake that people often make is always making the big boss the spokesperson, and while that is obviously key for big company announcements, its not always key if they’re not the ones with the technical expertise that the media are looking for.
Think carefully about what you’re going to need to run an effective PR strategy and what your PR assets are. These can often include:
Having your ducks in a row and these assets at your fingertips and easily accessible will save you time in the future and help your digital PR strategy be more effective.
Key to every PR campaign is your media targeting. Journalists and content creators are who you need to target and you will want to spend time fine tuning these so that you are reaching not just the right publication, but also the right person (or people) at that publication at the right time. Ideally you will use tools such as Roxhill or Cision, but if you are building lists manually you may want to block out a large amount of time for desk research, Googling and phoning around media outlets! While you will need to tailor each media list for each story/campaign, PR is a fast-moving discipline and it is key that you have those baseline media lists that will allow you access to journalists quickly.
Don’t just think about who you know, but also who your client or key internal stakeholders know. If they have been in the industry a long time, chances are they know a lot of people. Map out who your key existing relationships are (as a company) and then create a bank of them so that you can use those relationships to your advantage to build links and generate coverage in the future. Make contact with those people in advance so they are warm for when you need them. For example, could you exhaust your industry contacts to get valuable backlinks that will provide a meaningful SEO uplift? Or do those contacts have expertise and authority that you don’t have inhouse, and which you could borrow and leverage to help you build more effective and appealing PR stories?
This one may sound a bit dry but it is really key. Time is everything, and if you don’t move quickly you run the risk of your PR story become irrelevant before it has even been signed off. Where possible sit down with colleagues and establish who needs approval on key documents that go to press and how long it is going to take them to approve those documents. Set expectations. While you’re at it, stress the importance of newsworthiness and encourage a culture of few amends. Make it clear that time is of the essence. Ideally, you’ll have one key contact that is responsive, but sometimes your story will need to go through the mill and be seen by a thousand eyes before it gets the go ahead. If this is the case, think about making your stories as evergreen as possible (while still newsworthy) and prioritise getting sign off on documents well in advance. Either way, it is good to set expectations with colleagues early on.