New Campaign Workflow

What you will learn

• The two entry points where a Story is created.
• How to work a Story through the Campaign Builder tabs in order.
• Where the press release is written, reviewed and approved.
• How the media pack PDF and the NewsWire post produce, and how pitching and tracking follow.

The mental model: created, built, taken to market

The Story workflow runs in three phases: create the Story upstream, build it out in Campaign Builder, take it to market through pitching, bookings and coverage. Every phase has a purpose-built page, and they hand off cleanly to one another.

Two entry points create a Story:

• From a signed agreement in Account Management. When your tenant uses the Engagement and Agreement flow, the act of signing an agreement seeds a Story. The brief, agreed services and account manager flow through with it -- commercial paperwork becomes delivery work in one step.
• Directly in Engagement Hub. When agreements run elsewhere or the team wants to plan ahead of the contract, Engagement Hub's Go Live - Create Campaign path creates a Story directly.

Either way, the Story lands on the ACTIVITY tab in Campaign Builder. Open it there and the rest of the build tabs unlock.

Working the Campaign Builder tabs, in order

1. ACTIVITY

Find your Story (search, location filter, dropdown, Include Completed toggle) and open it. Once loaded, this tab doubles as the Story's running activity log.

2. BRIEF BP1

Fill the Campaign Brief: Specific Objectives, Key Messages, Target Audience, plus campaign notes. Stories from a signed agreement arrive with much of this populated -- check and refine.

3. SMART BP1

Run the SMART check on those objectives -- Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound. Tighten on BRIEF if anything reads loose.

4. OUTCOMES BP2

Set what the Story will be measured on: Delivery KPIs (with quick-start presets), sentiment and message pull-through targets, and any Business Outcome KPIs you add. These targets feed the Success Score and the KPI Scorecard later.

5. STRATEGY BP3

Sub-tabs: CAMPAIGN BRIEF (outcomes and success criteria), PITCHING STRATEGY, SMART MATCH (AI-ranked journalists), CAMPAIGN LENS, SOCIAL MONITORING, PROJECT PLAN. Plan the route to coverage.

6. MEDIA RELEASES

Write the release. Covered in detail below.

7. TALENT

TALENT sub-tab for the spokespeople list (bios, photos, contacts, talent agreements and a per-row Schedule portal link); INTERVIEW PREP sub-tab for talking points that flow into the Spokesperson Pack and the Schedule portal.

8. MEDIA PACK

Assemble pack content -- Event Details, About The Research, About The Day, About The Client, Information Page, infographic data -- and click Generate Media Pack (or Generate Spokesperson Pack) for the branded PDF.

9. NEWSWIRE

Build the Story's NewsWire post in the card editor -- the public release card, assets, teaser, publish date.

Drafting the release (MEDIA RELEASES)

The MEDIA RELEASES tab is the heart of building a Story:

• The inline editor carries four fields: Headline, Summary (Key Points), Body, and Suggested Questions, References and Citations.
• Multiple release angles: click Add Release to add one (regional, broadcast, print); right-click a tab to rename or delete it.
• The AI Assistant slide-panel (Category, Topic, Key Message, supporting stats) drives Regenerate Full Story, Ideas and Headlines. Open an empty release and the four-step AI Release Wizard runs by default -- Body, Headline, Bullets, Questions -- drafting from your notes and offering around three headline options.
• Auto-save roughly every 15 seconds, with a Save button for explicit writes.
• When the release is ready, click Approve directly or Assign the release to a colleague or client for review in the Editing Suite. Approval is the publishing trigger -- once a release is Approved, downstream surfaces pull that version on their next render.

Campaign planning lead times

Every campaign type has a sensible lead time. Plan against it from the BRIEF tab onward and the wave-by-wave pitching works; collapse it and the Story arrives at the inbox half-formed. Industry benchmarks:

Major launch with research data (e.g. Globex Wellbeing Index)

6-8 weeks. Brief and research design 4-6 weeks out, releases drafted 2-3 weeks out, NewsWire built 1-2 weeks out, embargoed pitch wave 48-72 hours before launch, broadcast bookings confirmed by launch eve.

Trade-press exclusive or thought leadership

2-4 weeks. Brief 2 weeks out, release drafted 1 week out, single-outlet pitch with exclusive offer 5-7 days before publication.

Product announcement

3-5 weeks. Brief 3 weeks out, NewsWire and media pack 2 weeks out, embargoed pitch 5 working days before launch.

Reactive comment / breaking news

Same day. Approved spokesperson, pre-prepared messaging, NewsWire link ready. The discipline that makes reactives work is the preparation done weeks in advance -- spokespeople media-trained, contact records up to date, key messages already in the platform.

Award entry or feature pitch

4-6 weeks before deadline. Different rhythm to news pitching -- this is long-form preparation rather than a wave. The Award Entries page handles the entries themselves.

Key milestones to set on Campaign Builder's STRATEGY tab:

• Brief sign-off -- the moment BRIEF and SMART are locked.
• Release approval -- the moment Approve is clicked on the MEDIA RELEASES tab and the version becomes canonical downstream.
• Media pack rendered -- the PDF generated, assets staged for the NewsWire.
• NewsWire publish -- the public page goes live.
• Embargoed pitch wave -- tier 1 outlets receive the pitch under embargo.
• Embargo lifts -- the launch moment.
• Coverage tail -- the days and weeks following where the long-tail coverage lands.

Set those milestones in the PROJECT PLAN sub-tab on STRATEGY and the whole team works against the same calendar.

From built Story to coverage

• Generate the media pack on the MEDIA PACK tab once the release is approved -- the branded PDF pulls the approved content.
• Publish to NewsWire on the NEWSWIRE tab and set the publish date. The Story's public asset hub goes live.
• Pitch. Open Email Pitching for the Story -- pick the release, compose the covering email with merge-field pills, choose contacts via Contact Group / Search / Smart Match, and queue the send. Follow up in Telephone Pitching, logging call outcomes; declines feed the Exclusion Register so future waves stay clean.
• Book and log coverage in Bookings & Coverage: BOOKINGS for interviews, MANAGE COVERAGE for results. NewsWire Leads on the same page captures journalist pickups from the public NewsWire automatically.
• Track in Story Performance -- coverage totals, quality, reach, KPI progress, Success Score -- and use NewsWire Analytics for the cross-campaign view.
• Report on the Reporting page when you are ready to show the client the formal milestone.

Quick reference

• Story created in Account Management (signed agreement) or Engagement Hub (Go Live - Create Campaign).
• Campaign Builder tabs in order: ACTIVITY, BRIEF, SMART, OUTCOMES, STRATEGY, MEDIA RELEASES, TALENT, MEDIA PACK, NEWSWIRE.
• Release written on MEDIA RELEASES (inline editor, ~15s auto-save, AI Assistant and four-step wizard); Approve publishes.
• Branded PDF: MEDIA PACK > Generate Media Pack / Generate Spokesperson Pack.
• Take to market: NewsWire publish → Email Pitching → Telephone Pitching → Bookings & Coverage → Story Performance → Report.

What to read next

• Campaign Builder -- a closer look at the build page and the MEDIA RELEASES inline editor.
• Editing Suite -- the review-and-approve step before pitching.
• Pitching Workflow -- taking an approved release out to journalists and logging coverage.