The account director who knew everyone
Your best account director has worked with the same trade editors for years. She knows which one hates phone calls, which one wants exclusives offered on a Monday, which freelance writer is working on a long read about the sector, and which one was burned by a client's embargo break two years ago. None of it is written down anywhere the rest of the team can see.
When she is on holiday, a junior executive phones the editor who hates calls. When she hands in her notice, most of that knowledge walks out with her. The new hire starts from the media database profile, which tells them the journalist's beat and nothing about how to work with them.
Where the knowledge actually lives
Agencies do not lack information about journalists. They have too much of it, in places that cannot be searched together.
| What the team knows | Where it usually sits |
|---|---|
| Previous pitches and replies | Individual Outlook or Gmail inboxes |
| Stories a journalist wrote about a client | Coverage reports, filed by client not by journalist |
| Preferences and pet hates | Memory, occasionally a note in a campaign spreadsheet |
| Who has the relationship | Nobody records it, everybody assumes |
| Promises made, such as an exclusive or a first look | An email thread one person can see |
Media database notes fields exist, but they are rarely filled in because adding a note means leaving your inbox, opening another system and typing something up after the fact. Nobody has time for that between pitches.
What goes missing with it
The cost shows up as awkward moments. Two people offer the same editor different stories in a week. A journalist who was promised a first look at a report reads it in a competitor's piece. A new executive pitches a story the journalist already turned down last month, in almost the same words. Each one chips at a relationship the agency spent years building.
It also slows down new starters. Getting up to speed on a sector means shadowing someone for months, because the useful context is oral history.
What we build: a shared journalist record
The aim is to capture knowledge as a side effect of work people already do, and to ask for as little extra typing as possible.
- We connect the mailboxes your team uses for media work, with consent and clear rules on which folders are read. Personal mail stays out.
- Emails to and from known journalist addresses are logged against that journalist's record as a timeline: who pitched what, on which date, and whether there was a reply.
- Coverage already captured for clients is linked to the journalist who wrote it, so their record shows the stories they have run.
- A short notes field sits on each record, with a quick-add from the inbox via an Outlook or Gmail add-in, so a two-line note takes seconds.
- Commitments such as an exclusive offered or a first look promised can be tagged, and show as a banner on the record until they are closed.
- Optionally, a language model such as OpenAI or Anthropic Claude drafts a one-paragraph summary of the recent history for a person to check, which is useful before a call.
The mailbox connection logs metadata and the relevant thread, not everything in someone's inbox. We agree the rules with you, including what staff can mark private.
Before you pick up the phone
An executive about to pitch opens the journalist's record. It shows the last five contacts from anyone in the agency, the last three pieces they wrote about your clients, a note saying they prefer email and short pitches, and a banner saying a colleague offered them an exclusive on a different client last week and is waiting to hear back.
- They can see who in the agency has the warmest relationship and ask that person first.
- They avoid pitching a story that was already declined.
- They know not to ring, and why.
- Anything they send is added to the timeline without extra effort.
When someone leaves, their history stays on the records. The new hire reads it instead of guessing.
Signs your agency needs this
- The only way to find out who knows a journalist is to ask around the office or on Slack.
- Pitch history sits in personal inboxes and disappears when people leave.
- Media database notes fields are mostly empty.
- Journalists have been pitched the same story twice by your agency.
- New starters take months to learn which journalists to approach and how.