Suede Public Relations & Earned Media

Suede Public Relations turns verified milestones, evidence, and timely angles into respectful earned-media briefs for journalists, podcasts, and newsletters. It optimizes story fit and source usefulness without treating a drafted pitch as sent or coverage as earned.

Before Starting

Check for product marketing context first: If .agents/product-marketing.md exists (or .claude/product-marketing.md, or the legacy product-marketing-context.md filename, in older setups), read it before asking questions. Use that context and only ask for information not already covered or specific to this task.

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Core Philosophy

PR is not a substitute for distribution. Treat it as a channel hypothesis whose value must be measured against the current audience, story, and sales motion.

• Do not assume a placement drives or cannot drive conversion. Track referral behavior, brand search, citations, and sales influence for this campaign.
• Pitch journalists like you'd pitch a customer: specific, useful, fast, and never about you.
• The story is not your product. The story is the trend, the data, the conflict, or the human. Your product is the evidence.
• Test speed against relevance and accuracy. Use the story's observed coverage curve and deadline; never trade verification for haste.

When PR is worth it

• You have a real story: proprietary data, a strong opinion, a milestone, a customer with a sharp before/after, or a fresh angle on a trending topic
• You have founder/exec time: journalists want quotes from people with skin in the game, not from a PR rep
• You have a destination: a press page, blog post, or product launch that converts attention into something useful

When to skip PR (for now)

• Pre-launch with no story beyond "we exist"
• No one on the team can sustain the approved, measured test window
• You don't have a clear ICP: journalists ask "who reads my piece because of this?" and if you can't answer, neither can they

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The PR Mix

Four possible modes. Select only those supported by the story, audience, capacity, and current source access.

Mode	What it is	Effort	Speed to coverage
Reactive (newsjacking)	Inject your POV into trending news	Low–medium	Hours to days
Proactive (pitching)	Build a media list, draft original-story pitches	Measure current capacity	Set from story flow and response data
Inbound (press requests)	Respond to journalist queries on HARO/Qwoted/Featured	Low	Days to weeks
Owned (press page + media kit)	Make it easy for journalists to find you	One-time setup	N/A

For the reactive newsjacking workflow: see references/newsjacking.md

For proactive journalist pitching: see references/journalist-pitching.md

For inbound press-request platforms (HARO, Qwoted, etc.): see references/press-platforms.md

For where to pitch (media outlets, podcasts, newsletters): see references/media-outlets.md. For startup/SaaS/AI directories, use the separate suede-directory-submissions skill: different intent, different list.

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Owned: Press Page + Media Kit

Build this when verified newsroom assets and a maintained press contact would reduce friction for the current media motion; measure usage rather than assuming ROI.

Press page (/press or /newsroom) should include:

• One-paragraph company description (copy/paste ready)
• Founder bios with headshots (high-res, downloadable)
• Logo pack (SVG + PNG, light + dark, with usage guidelines)
• Product screenshots (high-res)
• Recent coverage list (social proof for the next journalist)
• Founding date, employee count, funding (if disclosed)
• A current press contact path in the format the intended outlets accept
• Recent press releases / announcements

State a response expectation only if the team has approved and staffed it. Use the team's real service level rather than a universal 24-hour promise.

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Quick Reference: Pitch Quality Bar

Before presenting any draft for send approval, resolve these checks:

• Does a bounded recent sample show that this journalist covers the beat?
• Is there a clear news hook: something that just happened or is about to?
• Could this journalist write a complete story from this email alone? (Data, quotes, customer name, contact.)
• Is the subject line specific enough to predict the article's headline?
• Is the pitch within the outlet's published word or character limit, or, if the outlet publishes none, within the limit the user stated?
• Did you avoid the words "revolutionary," "game-changing," "disruptive," and "synergy"?
• Is the ask clear? (Interview? Embargo? Exclusive? Quote?)

Pass rule: any unchecked box blocks the draft from being presented for send approval. Fix it or, if it cannot be resolved (the outlet publishes no limit and the user has not stated one), name the box as unresolved in the handover below rather than checking it.

Send-approval handover (the one gate in this skill)

Every workflow in this skill and its references ends here. Contacting a journalist is unrecallable, so nothing leaves as a draft-plus-send. At the handover:

1. Stop. The work is complete; the output is a draft and nothing has been sent.
2. Name the four variables, one line each: recipient (person and outlet), channel (email, platform form, DM), visible sending identity, and the exact message to be sent.
3. State cost and timing if either applies (platform fee, embargo time).
4. Offer three options: approve as written / revise (name what changes) / drop.
5. Wait for the user's explicit pick. Approval for one recipient never transfers to another, and any edit to the message re-opens this gate.

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Measurement

What to track:

Metric	Why
Coverage count (placements / month)	Activity baseline
Domain rating of placements	Backlink value
Referral traffic from coverage	Did anyone actually click?
Brand search lift	Did people search you after reading?
AI citation rate (ChatGPT, Perplexity quote your brand?)	The new measurement that matters
Sales conversations citing the article	One revenue-influence signal to reconcile with attribution limits

What not to obsess over: AVE (advertising value equivalency): it's a vanity metric PR firms invented.

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Common Workflows

"Help me newsjack [trending story]"

Go to newsjacking.md, run the scoring rubric, draft a bounded set of evidence-backed angles, and return a recommended draft for review. Do not pitch or publish.

"Find journalists who cover [beat]"

Go to journalist-pitching.md, use the discovery checklist, and first discover whether an authorized browser or research connector is callable. If not, work from user-supplied article URLs, exports, or a manual research worksheet. Build a sourced, scored list without claiming any profile or article was reviewed unless it actually was.

"What's worth pitching this week?"

Combine: recent product milestones + active news cycles + any data you've collected. Score each potential story by the quality bar above.

"Respond to this HARO query"

Go to press-platforms.md, use the response template, follow current outlet limits, and keep the result draft-only.

"Build my press page"

Use the checklist above. Most companies do this in an afternoon and forget about it for a year: that's fine.

Boundaries

• Do not contact journalists, submit reporter responses, publish press releases, or represent that a draft has been sent without explicit approval and a confirmed recipient.
• Do not fabricate claims, data, quotes, customers, credentials, urgency, or coverage; separate verified facts from proposed angles.
• Do not impersonate a source, promise exclusivity, or decide legal disclosure, embargo, or crisis-response policy.

Routing

• Use suede-launch-packaging to coordinate a broader product launch.
• Use suede-directory-submissions for directory and catalog listings.
• Use suede-social for approved social distribution and engagement.
• Use suede-copy to polish a verified press-page or announcement draft.
• Use suede-co-marketing when the announcement is a joint launch with a partner.