How to Avoid Mediocre Methods

James Barnes: Not always, no. Something we’ve done a lot lately is conduct our own manual primary research to ensure we’re providing the most up-to-date data, rather than rely on old sources. We achieved this recently with a project that calculated the average pay a mother would receive in each country if they took their full maternity leave.

LD: We had a lot of journalists scrutinizing that data given the nature of the topic, but the fact we used the latest governmental sources meant we were equipped to tackle any questions. 

JB: Yes, and in doing the research I noticed that the AI overviews in most countries referenced outdated studies. If neither PR or journalist takes the time to do the primary research, you end up with a situation where the data cannibalizes itself. 

LD: From an outreach point of view, nothing kills a pitch faster than sources from 2018. Saying "we’ve updated the data for 2025" is sometimes a method in and of itself. It shows relevance and timeliness, which is what every journalist wants.

JB: And when you’ve pinpointed some headline trends within a vertical that you want to target, it’s always good to ask whether you could expand the scope of existing research beyond what’s already been done. And it doesn’t need to be manually either.

For instance, we noticed that American food publications and sections routinely cover the ‘cheapest grocery stores’, but never factor in the regional price differences that exist within chains. In response we pulled data from over 2,000 stores on Instacart to determine the cheapest store by city and state.

LD: You could apply this same logic to iterations of your own existing projects too. For example, we were doing an annual ‘cost of McDonald’s’ by state, but we challenged ourselves to take it further for the third edition. As well as state comparisons, we managed to add data for hundreds of cities by pulling it manually via the app. This gave us new regional angles, which meant new journalists for us to contact.

JB: Using McDonald’s own app as a source might not be the first place people think. It proves there are lots of different ways to find the data.

LD: Definitely, and to stick with food, most popularity based campaigns, like the ‘UK’s favourite cakes’ or ‘favourite takeaway chains',  typically use either survey insights or Google Search volume as data sources. 

Although these are good solutions, it’s worth checking if there are any user-generated datasets already out there that could be harnessed. 

JB: Yeah there are endless untapped routes into other UGC verticals. A good place to start is product review pages from online shops and profile pages from specialist forums. For example, we pulled assembly difficulty ratings straight from IKEA, profile pages from the leading Pokémon fan site, and most recently, product reviews from Costco’s website to determine the highest rated snacks in America.

LD: And in the case of the Costco snacks project, we scraped reviews from thousands of passionate people, as opposed to a small number of paid survey respondents. The bigger the scale, the more eye-catching the headline in busy journalist inboxes.

When Food & Wine published this story they used the headline “These Are the Top 50 Costco Snacks, According to More Than 145,000 Customer Reviews”. Which is exactly what we hoped would happen when pitching it. It’s clear that they saw the value of scale beyond the usual one or two thousand usual survey respondents.

JB: Another way to sidestep familiar formats and introduce novel elements is by incorporating the use of a tool. “The happiest cities in X” is an evergreen headline but one that’s oversaturated at this point, particularly with indexes. We tried something different by using Amazon’s AI Facial Recognition tool to detect emotions in the social media images of residents from each city, which helped cut through the noise.

LD: We got feedback from a journo at CBS saying they’d seen six similar stories that week, but this one really stood out. The use of this tool helped differentiate our story.

That's the dream scenario for outreach. When we pitch a journalist, and the method is the story, it’s effortless. A line like ‘They used facial recognition on thousands of Instagram photos’ - makes them stop scrolling.

JB: It’s not to say that experimenting in this way will always come off or perform better than the traditional executions. But operating in a slightly different space can help protect against near-identical projects. Especially when competing for the same coverage opportunities.

JB: On the topic of happiness, I discussed in last month’s newsletter with Juan Carlos about how our Price of Happiness project benefited from its academic method, and I’m interested to hear your thoughts on how you sell that in the outreach stage.

LD: The academia approach changed the whole perception of this project during outreach. When we say in a pitch something like ‘based on academic research into happiness indicators’ it instantly feels more trustworthy for journalists. And this credibility is what gets you opens, replies, and coverage.

JB: The key takeaway here isn’t that you need to layer on complexity to improve a project. Just ask yourself the right questions.

Can you do the primary research? Increase the scope? Harness user-generated content? Use a tool? Lean on academic studies? Always ask yourself whether you can adopt a different approach when navigating well-trodden ground. It will help you stand out.

LD: And with journalists receiving over 300 pitches a day, standing out is pretty important!