Twice as nice: same story, same outlet

One of the most persistent myths in PR is “after top outlet runs a story, competitors won’t cover it and may even be offended if pitched it.”

This is false, as I’ll demonstrate in this email. In fact, with some creativity, you can even land the same story a few weeks later in the SAME OUTLET.

Our proof for these seemingly outlandish claims comes from the Best Pitch of the Year competition I run annually and present to my Inner Circle members. Among the honorees last year, we saw:

A great feature about Neumann University ran in the Wall Street Journal, and then the exact same story ran on CBS Evening News seven weeks later, carefully shepherded by PR pro Adam Dvorin.

Scientists are growing endangered coral in a lab – an NPR national correspondent covered this, and then nine weeks later, so did a correspondent for CBS Evening News (the CBS connection is purely coincidental to my point). Michelle Ashton was the persistent pitching pro who pulled this off.

Two other Inner Circle members pulled off an even rarer pair of doubles.

Jessica Krakoski secured in a top business pub an article contributed by her client, an author who shared the main ideas from her new book. And then three weeks later, Jessica placed a full article about the book in the same business pub, this time written by a journalist.

Amazingly, Judy Kalvin placed two contributed articles by a different author three weeks apart in the SAME top business pub. I’m not going to name it here so the staff there doesn’t get deluged with demands for repeat coverage :). But IC members know.

Our overall winner pulled off the most rare pair of all. This big win is different from those previously cited, because she placed two different clients in the same feature package, one coveted by travel PR reps worldwide. Yes, Taryn Scher pitched two of the 14 U.S. destinations that ended up in The New York Times’ “52 Places to Go in 2024.”

As I’ve noted, these double successes are rare. That’s part of why they qualified as Best Pitches of the Year, right? But one of the reasons this feat is rare is simply because so many PR pros quit pitching after a big win. When you understand what’s actually possible vs. what’s not, and the nuances of pitching the same story again while protecting your long-term media relationships, you can achieve more than you think.

Inner Circle members saw the verbatim pitches that landed all of the above, plus another 15 stellar pitches. You can access this presentation, and all the previous Best Pitch collections, if you decide to join the Inner Circle the next time we accept new members.

Register on our Wait List to be alerted when enrollment opens next (you have no obligation to join – it’s just so you don’t miss the window).