Retrospective: ICO Media in 2011

If you have been following our activities, you may be aware that we started up a media relationship management service (also called ‘public relations’/PR) called ICO Media in 2010. We recently added a new section to our website to outline our approach to media relations for online games.

So… ICO Media in 2011 was very interesting for us. We took on more PR clients, and the team had a greater variety of tasks to juggle than in the previous year. We experimented with tools to improve efficiency, learned a lot about what works for us, and streamlined our processes quite a bit.

 

We had to keep an ever-present eye on our resources in order to keep with the demand from clients, while at the same time maintaining the core elements of our service, which make us unique: we liaise with media throughout Europe; communicate on our clients’ behalf with a long term, sustainable perspective; and work with peripheral media that have a relevant focus in line with our clients’ games. Here come the numbers (a few more than in the last post):

 

– 8 different clients: 4 short term missions that ended during 2011, and 4 longer term contracts (of six months or more), all of which are currently ongoing. Four longer term contracts is really the limit for the size of our present team.

 

– 34 high level press releases sent to the media in English, plus 120-some localized versions. We also sent 75 lower level ‘news alerts’ over the course of 2011, which were timed to deliver key info and announcements promptly without becoming spammy.

 

– We reviewed and collected close to 10 000 articles published by European professional and enthusiast press in connection with the news we distributed.

 

– 29 reports were submitted to clients. This includes both end-of-mission summaries and the monthly reports we provide to our longer-term clients. Our reports include statistical results, press feedback, analysis and recommendations. A lot of work goes into our reporting, and we feel that’s a huge part of our value to clients.

 

– 247 press meetings were pre-booked for gamescom (B2B) on behalf of our 4 long-term clients. This is the number that intimidates me the most, because I am not sure we will ever beat it! Unless of course we include all the walk-up appointments we book during this year’s show in our 2012 retrospective.

 

Really we know that numbers are just numbers, but these particular ones make us happy. Considering that our PR service will be just 2 years old this spring, we’re proud of what the team achieved last year and how far we’ve come in such a short time. Now we’re immersed in this year’s work, and excitedly approaching some new frontiers.

Watch this space!

 

If you would like to know more about ICO Media and our approach to media relations, please get in touch.