End-to-end outreach workflow
Table of Contents
- Case studies are the single biggest lever in Australian PR — journalists want validation from a real person or customer, not just data.
- A “no” over the phone beats a “no” over email — email silence tells you nothing; a phone call almost always gets you a reason and a chance to reshape the pitch.
- Reactive PR should never be a standalone strategy — it can’t shape a story the way targeted, proactive PR can, so the strongest programs run both together.
- Copying a UK or US playbook is the most common market-entry mistake — Australian coverage responds to local spokespeople, local data, and local relevance, not an imported case study.
This week I’m joined by Jasmin Hyde, founding director of Hyde and Seek Communications, a PR agency based in Australia.
Over the years, we’ve had a few guests talking about doing PR in different locations (Eirini Theadoridou and Libby Windle, Hana Montgomery, Ellie Sumner among others), and with digital PR picking up steam due to AI, I wanted to reconnect with the Aussie scene.
We get into how AEO and AI visibility are reshaping PR strategy, why case studies are close to non-negotiable in the Australian market, why a phone call still beats an email pitch there, and what tools and databases her team actually leans on.
Let’s get into it.
Below is a slightly edited transcript:
What’s the difference between traditional PR, digital PR, and media relations today?
Jasmine Hyde: The lines are converging. It’s a really exciting time to be in the industry.
Traditional PR still very much has a place. When you’re leaning toward TV, print, and mainstream outlets, there’s still a home for clients who want to be there — whether that’s to attract investors, boost internal morale, or reach certain audiences.
What’s interesting is that more and more clients are coming to us wanting the digital side of things, and much of that’s driven by the appetite for AI visibility. So they’re coming to us wanting digital PR strategies built. But the tactics that proved to work well over the years with traditional media are the same tactics now driving AEO and digital PR visibility strategies.
There’s absolutely crossover, and there’s still a home for both. It just comes down to: one size doesn’t fit all when it comes to PR strategy. You need to think about which mix is going to work best.
Do you specialize in a certain type of PR, or does it depend on the client?
Jasmine Hyde: Good question — we do both, and we tailor the strategy to what the client needs. We’ll sit down with them at the start, if they don’t already have a clear view, and work out their goals, where their audiences are reading or viewing, and whether their strategy is best served mostly by traditional media or digital. We tailor it from there.
That said, we were built to bridge the gap between good journalism and good PR. We weren’t built on a very traditional strategic-communications-consultancy model — but as more clients come to us wanting that digital pace, we’re expanding into that area naturally.
How is AI visibility (AEO) changing the way brands think about PR strategy?
Jasmine Hyde: Coming up with the plan is one thing, and deployment is the second. On the plan side — some clients come to us and AEO visibility just isn’t part of their go-to-market strategy at all. Then a month later they’ll come back and say, “Actually, our investors are asking what our AI visibility strategy is.”
Earned media drives around 80% of all AI citations, from what I’ve seen. So the market is educating itself on the value of PR — by the time clients come to us, they’ve already been told they need earned media, they need PR, they need to be visible to AI bots.
It’s not always going to be where people first discover you — especially if you’re a B2B business — but people are using AI to judge you.
They’re asking chatbots: should I trust this brand? Would you recommend it?
It’s similar to how Google works, and now Google’s got that AI overview at the top too, which is AI-driven.
So AI visibility strategy is different from traditional media, and it’s different from SEO. I wouldn’t call it the new SEO — I’d say it’s even bigger. It’s about a variety of sources: how many different publications are talking about you, how your spokespeople are positioned, whether your content reads as expertise and authority rather than just links or mentions.
It’s really about the content, because AI is getting so smart about what’s actually in there — spray and pray doesn’t work. You have to lean on the traditional tactics, and relationships are a huge one.
Nurturing meaningful journalist relationships — working with them to get coverage, traditional or digital, that helps AI visibility — is so important.
I always say: keep it a two-way street. Make it valuable for both sides.
Thank the journalist if it’s appropriate, if they’ve covered your story. Ask what they’re working on next.
How can you help them?
How can you add value to their workflow?
That’s why we want to bridge that gap — as soon as you take out the demanding factor, or the power imbalance between PR and journalism, you can build two-way, valuable relationships that tell some pretty good stories.
What PR tactics stand out — data-driven stories, case studies, and reactive PR?
Jasmine Hyde: It depends on the client — what you’ve got ready, what you can shape, what you can grab externally. A key thing, especially in the Australian market, is the importance of case studies and data — perhaps even more so than in the US and UK.
An example: we worked with a brand last year, a wealth and property-investment strategist, who came to us wanting to build the founder’s profile and brand awareness. They had a really interesting insight — around that time, laws had changed to make it easier to build a second dwelling in the backyard. In Australia we call them granny flats.
Internally, they were seeing clients come to them with these requests more and more, and were educating clients on the changes. But there wasn’t much being said in the market about what this meant for investors and renters.
So we paired that insight with 2025 rental data [from a source Jasmine spelled out as “Fund” on the recording — worth confirming the exact name/spelling before publishing], added expert commentary and some strong case studies from people who’d actually done it, and packaged it into a media story.
It got a good spread — the morning show here called Today, the Sydney Morning Herald (because we had state-centric case studies too), and a solid run through industry press like realestate.com and Domain.
That worked because we had the key elements: the issue or challenge people are facing, a solution they might not know about, punchy commentary from the founder to back it up, and data to prove it’s coming from all sides. That’s one example of issue-and-solution-based PR.
Vince Nero: I love that — that’s the first time I’ve heard it framed quite that way, as issue-and-solution-based. Is that a standard PR concept, or something new? Tell me more.
Jasmine Hyde: It’s not really a term — maybe it could be — but every story’s got that drama at the center.
Every good movie has a problem and then an ending. Another example: especially for not-for-profits or charities, you always lead with what’s going on, what the challenge is, what data proves this is an issue that deserves airtime.
Then you package it up — not as “here’s a call to action to buy from a company” or “visit a website,” but as “here’s how we can help solve it.”
In this case, it was the cost-of-living and rental squeeze in Australia, and here’s a solution for homeowners, renters, and investors alike. The brand’s in there getting awareness, but we’re not telling the journalist “please cover this because we want attention” — it’s “here’s the solution.”
Vince Nero: Right, there’s that fine line between getting free advertising and presenting a brand that’s genuinely part of the solution.
I like that — the idea of presenting your brand alongside the solution, where you’re the next logical step.
One example: there was a wildflower superbloom in California, and Hipcamp — kind of like Airbnb for campgrounds — did an interactive piece on the best places to camp to see it, with a heat map of where the blooms were happening.
The framing was basically: if you want to camp, camp right here, and we’re the people who help you do that.
Really smart. I’ve seen it done in other spaces too — SeatGeek, the secondhand ticketing site, did a piece on the best spots to catch home runs in every baseball stadium. It’s the logical next step, but it’s not shoving anything down your throat.
Okay — I cut you off earlier, Jasmine, on the idea of reactive PR.
Tell me more about that.
Jasmine Hyde: I love those ideas, especially Hipcamp — that’s such a timely hook to jump on. Especially with B2B clients, we have to be a bit strategic telling these stories, because they don’t always have the obvious campaign appeal or timely moment other brands have when launching something new.
On reactive PR, sometimes people ask us, “Do you do proactive or reactive PR?” Definitely both — I think that goes for every consultant, every firm.
It has to be a mix. The value of a reactive component inside an engagement is that you’re not falling away between proactive milestones.
So between the stories you’re pitching or publishing, reactive PR means building relationships with the journalists writing those stories — they come to you, or you find them through something like Help A Reporter Out.
In Australia, we’ve got a great platform called SourceBottle.
You can see call-outs there, and if you know what journalists are writing on, it’s a way to get your spokespeople into the media between milestone announcements.
Is reactive PR a full strategy or supplemental?
Jasmine Hyde: While the best PR is a mix of both, you should probably never do reactive on its own — you could do proactive on its own, but not reactive, because with reactive you’ve got no control over what’s coming next.
Some of what crosses your desk will be high-value and relevant, but if you’re being strategic about which opportunities you say yes to, you can end up with long stretches of silence.
If you say yes to everything, you’ve got no control over the topics — you’re just slotting in where it suits, and you’re not actually shaping anything.
Good proactive PR shapes your commentary and shapes the entire story.
That’s what better influences how people see the brand, or how people think about a policy, or raises awareness of an issue — whatever the brand’s goals are.
Reactive PR alone doesn’t give you the chance to ladder back to the strategy and the business goals.
What makes pitching in Australia different from the US and UK?
Jasmine Hyde: One of the most common mistakes brands make entering Australia — say, from the UK — is copying and pasting a strategy that worked well back home.
There are similarities, but so many nuances.
And you’re a hundred percent correct, Vince — case studies are going to be so valuable to Australian media.
That’s because they paint a picture — it’s validation.
It’s saying “this is a person with lived experience,” or for a B2B client, a customer story of why the brand’s done what it claims to do. It’s all about validation.
The second thing is data — that can be gold.
I’m not sure how much of a role it plays in other markets, but from what I’ve seen it’s less of a priority there than it is in Australia.
Data matters because it says “here’s what we’re seeing on the ground” — speaking on behalf of the client — but also “we’re not the only ones.” Going back to issue-and-solution-based PR: even if it doesn’t look like an issue or challenge by the time it reaches the media, every good story is built on something like that. It can be a positive story too — “here’s this uptick,” “here’s this trend” — and the data says you’re not the only one. The journalist wants to write something that speaks to their audience, and the audience needs to know it’s relevant to them or something the whole industry cares about. Data makes it less “look at us” and more “here’s what’s going on, and here’s why you should write about it.”
Local relevance is another big one. You don’t necessarily need an Australian spokesperson, but you want one with local knowledge or market relevance — because if you pitch someone based in the UK or US who hasn’t had anything to do with the Australian market, they can’t really speak to local trends or changes, and it’s less likely to land.
How do you find local case studies and run campaigns without being on the ground?
Jasmine Hyde: Sometimes teams already have local people on the ground — not necessarily local comms teams — and in that case it’s about giving them a really tight brief on what to look for, especially if they sit outside marketing or comms.
If you’re not on the ground yet and you’re looking at market entry without case studies, it’s not impossible to get a story up without them — you look at what other elements you have.
If you’ve got the right timely hook, that can get you across the line, especially if a journalist is already looking at something in that area and has data from someone else — you can newsjack that.
My tips for anyone entering Australia without a team there yet: either work with a professional on the ground, or stay close to what’s going on in your sector and what the media is writing about.
Start planning early, because the chunkier stories need that on-the-ground expertise.
But just being on top of what the media’s talking about goes a long way — you get a sense of the stories they write, and when you start pitching your own, that puts you ahead, because you understand how they put those ingredients together.
Vince Nero: I don’t want to harp on this too much, but I’m curious how you personally do it — you’re in Bangkok, not Australia.
Finding someone local — maybe you have connections already, but how do you actually do it?
Jasmine Hyde: We’ve got whole teams in Australia — I’m normally there myself, just working from Bangkok right now, lucky to be, since it’s pretty cold in Melbourne, down to about two degrees Celsius.
Hide and Seek is a remote-first agency anyway, so we’re speaking with comms teams via phone, email, Slack, WhatsApp, whatever works.
We work with them to find case studies on the ground — we call people to get their story, interview them, basically do the journalist’s legwork before we even put them in front of an interview.
So we’ve got the team on the ground, and I’m back there whenever needed, for a client event or case study briefing in person where it makes sense. But a lot of PR can be done remotely these days.
Why do phone calls still matter in Australian PR?
Jasmine Hyde: I’d say so — we love a phone call. WhatsApp is the primary channel in most other markets, but Australia still loves the traditional direct phone line — mobile line, not landline exactly.
When I’m working from overseas I need daily roaming so my number still works as normal.
That said, it’s so effective with the right journalist — you learn which ones prefer a text or email versus a call, and that comes through relationship building.
But here’s why it’s so effective: with email, a “no” usually just looks like silence — you don’t actually get told no.
When you call someone, unless they just hang up on you, you generally get an actual “no,” and nine and a half times out of ten you’ll get a reason with it. That live feedback can be really valuable — it might push you to reshape the whole pitch.
Is Australia’s journalist scene a tight-knit world — and how is it changing?
Jasmine Hyde: The key difference is there are still a lot of different mastheads, but only a few primary owners.
I haven’t done an exact count recently, but under News Corp, for example, there might be close to thirty different titles, and within those you’ve got journalists across different beats and formats.
So spray and pray can move around a network quickly, because it’s largely one network, and there aren’t that many networks.
That said, spray and pray still doesn’t really work. It’s not like there are ten journalists in one building in Australia, so if a story doesn’t land, you do have options — you just have to be careful about the cadence when presenting those options, especially around exclusivities.
I’d say it’s more a vibe of a decent-sized market where everyone kind of knows everyone.
And I think this is global — the journalism landscape is shrinking in Australia too, for a number of reasons.
Just yesterday it was announced that Nine cut thirty roles, so this keeps becoming a more frequent thing, and it’s happening across the world.
As that happens, you have to be conscious that journalists’ inboxes — already overflowing — might now mean covering three beats instead of one.
They’re getting busier, so your pitches have to be stronger, and you have to stay current on who’s sitting where with all the movement. Interestingly, another announcement yesterday was a very reputable, experienced reporter launching a Substack. So new media is something to build into strategies more and more.
What media databases and tools do you rely on?
Jasmine Hyde: I won’t call out specifically which ones Hide and Seek uses, but broadly — Telum is a media database and also a great news site, and there’s also Medianet, and the likes of Meltwater, who focus on media monitoring.
Isentia, Brandwatch, and Streem are others — some Aussie-specific, some global.
They’ve all got pros and cons, and it usually comes down to what suits the agency. If you’re helping Southeast Asian startups enter Australia, you might want that Southeast Asia capability in your database too.
A boutique agency’s answer on best practice is going to look different from a four-hundred-person agency’s.
Vince Nero: That makes sense — we don’t need to call out any tools specifically. I guess what I’d want people to walk away with: if I’m starting in Australia and I’m from the UK, I probably can’t use Roxhill, right?
These tools are region-specific — just like you probably wouldn’t want to use Telum if you were in the US, since they’re branded pretty closely to where they’re best suited.
Jasmine Hyde: Right — Roxhill is more a media monitoring service or media contact database.
If you’re looking for a database specifically, you’d look at Telum and Medianet — those are the two big ones that come to mind.
Vince Nero: I hadn’t heard of Medianet before.
Jasmine Hyde: Medianet’s good for a local beat — they’ve all got their quirks, pros and cons.
Telum’s also got a great news section I’ve written for.
It’s a good resource for anyone starting out in the market, across Asia as well, and the Middle East.
On that point — if a team is lean with a tight budget, I wouldn’t discount manual research.
Some outlets have emails, probably not phone numbers, on their website, and you can often work out the format from other addresses.
There are ways around it before committing to a big database — it’s whatever works for you.
Have that experimental phase when it comes to media relations.
Vince Nero: Good point about phone numbers — those are probably harder to find these days.
That might actually be the reason to invest in a database, if phone matters more and you can’t as easily do it manually.
Jasmine Hyde: Or you spend years having it land in your inbox from journalists’ email signatures and save it to your phone — but not everyone’s got the time.
Eventually it builds up. Or you do the database.
What campaigns are you most proud of, and where can people find you?
Jasmine Hyde: There are some case studies on our website, a mix of industries depending on what people are interested in.
One we’ve absolutely loved working on this year was supporting a health tech brand’s market entry into Australia — they’re headquartered in the UK and came in with no local PR footprint.
We worked to get the news out about what they’re doing through the lens of the clinicians and patients whose lives they’re improving. It’s been a fantastic campaign — a variety of publications have become familiar with who they are, and journalists are now reaching out for expert commentary.
They’ve just entered their sixth market as well.
We’ve also worked with Australia’s leading disability consultancy on their accessibility messaging, and a tech consultancy helping businesses implement AI and CRM tools.
Across the work, my favorite part is translating complex, jargon-heavy stories into something audiences not only understand but actually enjoy reading or watching, and start to care about.
Moving the dial in that respect can be great. I’d love for people to check out our case studies, see what we do, and reach out if they’ve got questions — happy to share thoughts.
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