Bigger businesses already have brand awareness, meaning that for better or worse they are on journalists’ radars. If a FTSE 100 company announces a new product, partnership or senior hire, it’s almost certainly going to be newsworthy.

This is what we term ‘press office’ activity: sharing your own news with the media. It’s an integral part of corporates’ PR strategies, which are largely focused on reputation management, stakeholder engagement and, potentially, crisis comms.

For startups, the challenge is to stand out, to be heard. For context, in the UK alone, over 900,000 new companies were incorporated in 2023 – many of them are vying to have their brands seen by prospective customers, investors and employees by getting in the media.

It’s not easy. Most journalists will not readily write about a startups’ products or services; nor are they particularly interesting in who they are hiring or who they are working with (unless a startup forges a partnership with a corporate). Instead, startups face more of an uphill battle to attract journalists’ attention and, in turn, build their brand.

Thankfully, being a startup does also afford certain advantages in PR when going up against larger companies. The trick is tap into them. 

1. Relevance

From the outset, startups can formulate a brand identity and tone of voice that resonates. They are not shackled by branding or reputations forged decades ago.

Again, look at the example of Jaguar this past week. The car manufacturer has changed its branding in a bid to better connect with a younger, more diverse audience. The reception has been poor.

“Efforts to give the British carmaker a more progressive image have raised concerns among loyalists,” read The Telegraph’s headline. The Drum went further: “Jaguar rebrand a complete comms car crash”.

This is a common issue – when legacy brands try to relaunch with a new logo and a more contemporary look and feel to their PR activities, the reaction is often negative. It is commonly interpreted as inauthentic, an attempt to clamber onto the bandwagon.

Startups, on the other hand, have a clean slate. With due thought and attention, they can create a brand identity – built around the right language, tone and messaging – that cuts through and resonates with their desired audiences. And they have the freedom to still tinker with this in the early days.

Challenger banks have tapped into this approach; you also commonly see it with new food and drinks brands, as well as in fashion and beauty. Their brand is defined, in part at least, by being purposefully different from the big players in the market – the use of punchy language and zooming in on issues that matter right now (such as sustainability or diversity).

2. Speed

It’s a cliché that startups’ main advantage over their larger competitors is their greater speed and agility. But it’s true, and it certainly applies within PR. Startups might not have the same platforms and brand awareness to leverage, but they can experiment and adapt as they develop an effective PR strategy.

And just with their products, their comms can benefit from a quicker speed to market.

Imagine five different pairs of eyes needing to look at every piece of content before it’s posted on social media, published online or shared with a journalist. Without this bureaucracy, startups can be more responsive, either reacting to journalists’ requests or creating content relating to breaking and developing stories.

Timeliness is everything in PR – startups’ speed and responsiveness is a blessing.

3. Being bold

Startups can also be bolder in what they are saying. Established corporates tend to be more cautious about what they are saying for fear of journalists taking comments out of context or unwittingly attracting criticism. While any commentary still needs to be carefully considered, startups who want to make their mark have an opportunity to take a stronger stance on a particular issue without that same level of risk.

Clearly, a great deal of thought must still go into a startup’s PR tactics, from what it wants to say through to where it wants to be seen. But combine these factors – aligning the brand with relevant issues, moving fast and being bold – and startups have all the ingredients they need to be successful with their public relations strategies.