Beyond earned media: A new PR playbook

A strong PR plan should balance day-to-day visibility with long-term brand building. At most plans’ core will be some sort of press office, one that fields reactive inquiries, chases proactive opportunities, and strives to create a consistent drumbeat of attention. That ongoing media presence is further punctuated by product launches, releases, or announcements that help create heightened awareness around a singular piece of news or event.

That describes the basic tenets of a traditional PR plan for earned media (acknowledging that the PR function is much broader). But the playbook that agencies and in-house teams are using to deliver that is evolving; it looks vastly different in 2026 than it did a decade ago.

FRAGMENTATION IN MEDIA

With changes in consumer media habits and the digital diversification of news, media has become deeply fragmented. People no longer get their news from a handful of publications or local newspapers; they get it through social feeds, newsletters, podcasts, YouTube, and more. How PR professionals think about creating that drumbeat attention must change as well.

PR’s role is to increase awareness, attention, sentiment, trust, and reputation. Brands will always need constant care to retain their vitality and relevance, but how that is achieved can look quite different year over year.

At Intrepid Travel, we’ve thought a lot about our new PR playbook. We have an in-house team of more than 20 communications professionals, plus agency partners globally based in our primary source markets of Australia, UK, Canada, the U.S., and increasingly countries like Morocco, Vietnam, and Sri Lanka.

Last year we had over 10,000 stories published about Intrepid Travel, and as we build on this momentum, we need our PR playbook to better reflect the modern media realities.

Our vision for PR and communications at Intrepid is to grow, strengthen, and protect a sentiment and reputation as the best travel company for the world. Our plan prioritizes three pillars: a robust multimedia press office driving a consistent and credible media presence, signature campaigns delivering high-impact storytelling moments, and our messaging build that underpins everything we do and reinforces our purpose, thought leadership, and impact. Together, these elements should create a continuous drumbeat of attention, punctuated by moments of cultural relevance, while achieving an underlying goal of building awareness and trust.

HOW WE CHANGED OUR PR STRATEGY

Looking under the hood, these three things have changed the most as part of our PR strategy:

1. THINK BEYOND TRADITIONAL EARNED MEDIA

We’re thinking well beyond traditional earned media. We expanded the scope of earned third-party credibility into areas like newsletters, creator journalists, influencers, publishing, and new media in response to an evolved and fragmented media landscape. Our pitch lists are increasingly diverse and sit well outside traditional media.

For example, we use Beehiiv in press campaigns as paid advertorial, helping us identify relevant newsletters. We gained hundreds of earned and paid placements in new media arenas like Substack, newsletters, and closed communities, which are highly impactful placements to reach our audience—often much more so than traditional travel media.

2. INTEGRATED CAMPAIGN WORK

We’re focused on “fewer, bigger, better” in integrated campaign work. Our campaign toolbox expanded; when we launch significant news, we try to maintain at least five media touchpoints and launch moments. That means any five of the following: releases, pitches, social video, media trips, newsletters, creator journalism, op-eds, owned publishing, activations, events, reports, data, celebrity endorsement, influencers, and more.

For example, as a travel company we tend to do a lot of media familiarization trips. While effective, the resulting media often comes out sporadically throughout the year, in different countries at different times. We rarely run big press trips in isolation anymore; they will always be part of a wider system, where other touchpoints are available to create sustained relevance, lifting the entire campaign’s efficacy.

3. QUALITY METRICS

We’re creating more impactful quality metrics. We target three things and track three things. Our key targets are mentions, features, and high domain authority (DA) links. Mentions speak to volume, features speak to quality, and high DA supports our wider SEO/AEO efforts. While KPIs like mentions and reach (unique visitors per month) and ad value (advertising value equivalency) have long dominated PR, we are embracing metrics that more wholly encompass our PR program’s effectiveness. Things like aided and unaided brand awareness, share-of-voice, and priority media.

The most important call out here is priority media, where we have used Qualtrics data from our six core customer segments to build a list of which media is most trusted and relevant in our addressable market’s lives, speaking directly to the fragmented media landscape mentioned above. These priority media outlets are not just traditional newspapers or travel magazines. These are newsletters, creators, podcasts, social news channels, and more. While much more difficult to track on a year-over-year basis, our priority media will be a key pulse check that we are prioritizing the right placements and allocating resources effectively.

A VARIED PR APPROACH

There is no one-size-fits-all approach to a modern PR playbook. The key takeaway is that in a noisy and fragmented world, you must be the architect of your own attention and design a highly intentional plan that is tailored to your target audience. Your press office must reflect how people consume information. Media is not disappearing, but it has decentralized. Trust and authority have shifted from a handful of outlets to a network of communities, creators, and platforms.

Traditional PR plans have a tall task answering to non-traditional media, where the PR function is less about generating coverage but more about engineering credibility at scale. For us it is about defining awareness, trust, and relevance as our North Stars, and thinking deeply and critically about how to achieve that in today’s media landscape. The new PR playbook isn’t just about reacting to changes in media, but designing for it.

Mikey Sadowski is vice president, global communications at Intrepid Travel.