Media Relations:
Your people, prominently positioned.

The Lowe Group’s media relations team taps our deep relationships with journalists, editors, producers, podcast hosts and other content creators to consistently deliver quality media outcomes for clients.

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Regularly earning successful, commercially impactful outcomes starts with a sophisticated understanding of the financial media: What are that producer’s audience dynamics and competitive imperatives? What motivates this reporter and what are their personal preferences and quirks? Armed with these insights—insights developed over decades spent sitting on both sides of the table—we’ll work with you to tailor your key messages accordingly and craft pitches that land.

The first step in building a successful media relations strategy is developing clear messaging delivered through:

Media
outreach

Media interviews:
print, digital, broadcast

Content
placement

Media
tours

News releases and media advisories

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Media Training.

We conduct media training to ensure all spokespeople deliver a unified message that supports the firm’s brand. We help spokespeople prepare for interviews, identify key messages, deliver quotable soundbites and handle difficult questions.

Message triangle development
Interview preparation (broadcast, print, online/podcast; in-studio, live/taped show, satellite)

Media Events.

Bringing media together for in-person or virtual events is an important part of our work. Media events can be helpful for announcing major news, sharing research or educating selected media.

We’ve planned news conferences, media webinars, educational seminars and media roundtables for groups large and small. From planning the in-person logistics to creating support materials and coordinating technology, Lowe Group has managed numerous media events for clients, helping them get in front of reporters in a way that leads to news coverage and builds awareness and long-term relationships.

Your frequently asked questions, answered.

What does FurtherFaster mean for Media Relations?

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Transcript

In the context of our media practice, the Lowe Group’s Further Faster ethos takes on several dimensions. It means being able to quickly get up to speed on complex organizations and their differentiators. That's where our financial services backgrounds come into play. And then knowing just where to go with the pitch.

Faster also means making sure that your spokespeople are ready when opportunities come up. Before they do, we will have gotten to know them, train them on how to handle themselves in an interview, and train them on how to pivot to those key messages that we helped you develop.

Faster also means being efficient with your senior people's time. Whether it's a single broadcast hit or a full day of meetings in New York or at a conference, we sweat all the details because we know that's how you make sure that they walk away feeling that their time was respected and productively spent.
Now, what about further? That can mean casting a wider net to tell your story. Our relationships with major print and broadcast outlets run deep, but we also understand the power of trade publications, niche podcasts, and influencers in many markets.

Further is also helping you do more with those hard-won media outcomes. So, leveraging them to get additional coverage, teaching your spokespeople to answer questions in a way that's not going to give your compliance officer indigestion so that you can amplify those outcomes on social or even teaming up with our colleagues in Lowe Group's digital marketing practice to help you ensure that your media campaigns are integrated with your marketing and lead gen programs.

How do you plan a successful media event?

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Transcript

Whether it's a press conference to announce news or more of a roundtable format designed to educate media on an important topic or introduce the portfolio management team, we find that our live and virtual media events can generate instant media coverage and shape a narrative for months to come. But they can be really tricky to pull off. Reporters jealously guard their time and are dubious of anything that looks like a sales job.

That's why we always recommend an initial invite that's less about the sponsoring firm and more about what a reporter will get from attending the event. Skeptical reporters love to see an agenda ahead of time where clients will share the stage with a customer or an industry expert. After the invite goes out, it's all hands-on deck. We relentlessly chase target media with a series of communications and phone calls until we get it on their calendar. That's because it's really a numbers game.

Reporters get story assignments or breaking news comes up or maybe they just aren't feeling it like they were the day they registered. So unfortunately, 35% to 60% no-show rates aren't uncommon. So we always overbook the event.

What we do have more control of is the event itself. So we work to make sure the program will deliver what reporters need and we organize for a smooth delivery. And we don't sleep on the follow-up either. After an event, we make sure to reconnect with attendees and circle back to the reporters who didn't show up to share materials like a video or recording of the event if it's available. So those are some of the keys to pulling off a successful media event that really makes an impact.

What do financial services professionals need to know?

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Transcript

Our media training puts a lot of emphasis on understanding where reporters are coming from. As the former editor of several capital markets publications, I can share that reporters tend to be smart, curious and overworked—which means you can go a long way toward building a relationship if you can prove yourself to be a resource. I'd say they tend to be more literate than numerate.

So that means maybe don't share that fancy chart or the 3D implied volatility surface you brought with you. Instead, tell them a story about the biggest tail risk that investors are facing and how it compares to 2008.

Now, what reporters are not, at least the good ones, is your friend or your stenographer. And that can come as a bit of a shock to senior people on Wall Street who are used to bending markets, not to mention people working at a more junior pay grade, to their will. So, a reporter may ask a shockingly basic question or an impertinent one and we can't guarantee that they read that research report of yours that we sent them several days ago, or even your bio for that matter.

What we can promise is that you'll be ready even if they're not. You will have their background, clips of some recent stories, a list of questions they're likely to ask, and more often than not, a little bit of color on their interview style that we've picked up over the years. More importantly, from your media training, you'll be prepared to handle those tough questions and to pivot to the key points that you want to make.

Media Relations FurtherFaster Proofpoints.

Launching a new offensive
while guarding the flank

Helping a storied firm
reimagine its image

Distinguishing impact
from ESG

Launching a new offensive
while guarding the flank

Background

A $500B+ fund manager wanted to break into the ‘niche-ey’ custom SMA/direct indexing conversation, while continuing to broadly raise the profile of its standout investment team.

Scope of work

From the outset, Lowe Group viewed the assignment as two engagements in one. We even gave them code names.

‘Operation Small-Ball’ was about growing intermediary awareness of the client as a custom SMA player through relentless ongoing engagement with key media. We first organized media events for trade press to introduce the client’s capabilities, then hit the conference circuit hard, often arranging one-on-one meetings with reporters who had attended the events.

‘Operation Air Cover,’ on the other hand, entailed growing brand awareness by increasing the number of earned media hits for the investment teams. Here we could be a bit more deliberate, focusing on one strategy and its investment team every few weeks—learning the product, providing media training if needed, then lining up interviews. This was supplemented by regular submitted content placement.

Outcome

Our client is now known in key media as an expert voice on custom SMAs; reporters they invested time getting to know now call us when they are looking for insights. And that business has taken off. On the investment side, the number of awareness-building media hits is up sharply and the bench of media-ready investment pros is much deeper than before.

Helping a storied firm
reimagine its image

Background

A venerable fund manager best known for a single niche investment product that was heavily associated with its founder sought to reinvent itself as a diversified alternative investment platform and needed help telling that story to intermedaries.

Scope of work

Our media outreach program to reposition this firm from one-trick pony to multiproduct alternatives juggernaut has leaned heavily on three pillars:

Our technical understanding of financial markets; we’ve been able to help media understand how the firm’s proficiency in its core product relates to other products it has rolled out
The client’s vigorous content program; we find solid content to be a differentiator and door opener with reporters and have worked with the client to generate content that the media appreciates
Transparency into the distribution channel; insights from sales on what products are resonating with intermediaries—and why—has informed our media focus and made it more commercially impactful

Outcome

The manager is no longer viewed as a single product boutique dependent on its founder but, rather, as a dynamic, multiproduct leader across the liquid alternatives space with a deep bench of investment professionals. AUM has grown substantially.

Distinguishing impact
from ESG

Background

A pioneer in impact investing that had managed a single fund for decades was preparing to roll out its first new funds in years and needed to get the word out. Making matters trickier: an ongoing media backlash in the US against sustainable investing.

Scope of work

We got to work developing messaging for the new funds that made an impassioned case for private impact investment—and specifically our client’s approach—while avoiding taking potshots against public market ESG. We secured regular coverage of the firm’s new funds and we helped amplify that coverage—as well is firm news and website content-on social media.

Outcome

The manager is now perceived as a true multiproduct platform and its leaders are routinely covered with respect to the fund launches and key industry issues.

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