Media relations and tier one placements
Named reporters on their beat, business desks, trade press. We build the list, write the pitch, work the follow up.
The corporate PR agency that puts the targets in writing and its fee on the line
We run media relations, corporate reputation work, and executive thought leadership for companies with a board, a regulator, or a buying committee watching. Outlet tiers, placement targets, and dates are agreed before kickoff, and our fee rides on them, under a 100% guarantee. You get the agreed results or your money back.
Who is watchingstatus board · today
The stakes
What a quiet reputation costs a company this size
Most people shopping for a corporate PR agency are not trying to sell one more unit. They are trying to stop losing arguments they never got to join. A journalist writes the sector piece and quotes two rivals. An analyst builds a category map without you on it. A candidate googles you, finds three years of press releases and one bad thread, and takes the other offer.
Where it actually shows up
A round priced lower than it should have been
Procurement asking for three more references
A bad week where no newsroom has any reason to give you the benefit of the doubt
None of that shows up on a dashboard. It shows up in a round priced lower than it should have been, in procurement asking for three more references, in a bad week where no newsroom has any reason to give you the benefit of the doubt.
The distinction
What corporate PR is, and how it differs from product PR
Corporate PR manages what people believe about the company itself: its leadership, its numbers, its conduct, and its right to be in the conversation. Product PR sells the thing on the shelf. Agencies that only know one of them will quietly run the wrong playbook on your account.
| Criteria | Product or consumer PR | Corporate PR |
|---|---|---|
| Audience | Buyers and fans | Investors, regulators, employees, analysts, procurement |
| What triggers it | A launch or a season | Results, leadership, policy, risk, scrutiny |
| Who speaks | The brand and product leads | Founders, the C suite, named experts |
| Success looks like | Reach and sales lift | Trust, investor confidence, talent attraction |
| Failure looks like | A flat launch | A credibility gap that surfaces in a crisis or a raise |
| Rhythm | Campaign bursts | Continuous, plus response measured in hours |
The work
The corporate PR services we actually run
Every scope starts from your stakeholder map, the publications your investors and buyers name without prompting, and whoever owns the share of voice you want back.
Corporate reputation strategy
An audit of what is already indexed about you, a messaging framework executives can repeat under pressure, and positioning that survives a hostile question.
Thought leadership and executive positioning
Bylines, op eds, reactive commentary, CEO profiling, executive LinkedIn programs.
Announcement and milestone PR
Funding, results, senior hires, partnerships, research reports, sequenced so coverage lands in a cluster rather than dribbling out across a year.
Crisis and issues management
Holding statements, escalation paths, and a playbook written before the reporter's email arrives.
Digital PR, measurement, and reporting
Coverage aimed at the pages that carry commercial weight, reported as placements against target, referring domains, branded search movement, and where AI answers name you.
Full menu at public relations services.
The method
Build it, prove it, defend it
Three jobs, in that order, because most companies try to defend a corporate reputation they never built.
Job one
Build
Decide what you want to be known for, then make it verifiable: a narrative, named experts, published work an outsider can check without calling you.
Job two
Prove
Get third parties to say it. Earned placements in outlets your stakeholders already trust do work no owned channel can.
Job three
Defend
Know your exposure before it goes live. Monitoring, a rehearsed response, and a team you reach in 1 to 2 hours rather than next Thursday.
Hire us as your thought leadership agency and the deliverable is not a content calendar. It is a point of view sharp enough to be argued with, attached to a person with a name and a title, placed where your market reads.
The new front
Whether AI engines recommend you is now a reputation question
Buyers, candidates, and journalists ask ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini what your company is and whether it is any good. The answer gets assembled from what the model can verify: publications it already trusts, consistent entity signals across the web, and structured data stating who you are.
Almost no corporate PR firm has this on its service list yet. We treat it as core work, because a zero click answer naming two companies in your category is a reputation outcome whether or not comms signed off on it.
Nothing you can buy moves that answer the way earned editorial coverage does, and that is the one input a link vendor cannot fabricate. See AI SEO and SEO and GEO.
The process
What the first quarter actually delivers
Week one
The commitments get itemized
Reputation audit, messaging framework, share of voice read against named rivals, target media list. Outlet tiers, placement targets, and dates are signed before money moves.
Weeks two and three
Pitching starts
Named journalists on their beat, plus reactive commentary placed into live stories while they are still open.
Days 30 to 45
First coverage and the crisis plan
Trade and business press usually land first. Holding statements are finished in the same window, while nothing is on fire.
Day 90
Tier one push, then a number your CFO can read
National desks, executive bylines placed, and every week one target marked landed or missed. No activity log standing in for a result.
On the Forbes program, a first opportunity typically appears within 4 to 8 weeks.
Why AceIt
Why hire AceIt as your corporate PR agency
Ask every agency on your shortlist what happens if the program fails. Almost none of them have an answer. The offer in this category has not changed in fifteen years: sign a retainer, wait, receive a hit report.
The quarter, scoredevery week, landed or missed
Any committed line missed, on the timeline we committed to, and you get your money back
Our answer is the one thing a corporate scope usually lacks: a fail condition. Placement targets, outlet tiers, timelines, and deliverables are agreed before kickoff, and if we do not deliver what we committed to, on the timeline we committed to, you get your money back. The promise covers the work and the agreed deliverables, not a specific journalist's yes, because no ethical agency sells another person's decision. Naming that limit is what makes the rest of it enforceable, and it gives you something to show a CFO in month nine that is not a sentiment chart.
Three more things to put to any shortlist: senior people run the account with no junior manager learning your sector on your budget, replies land in 1 to 2 hours, and PR, SEO and GEO, and web sit in one team out of Austin.
Receipts
What we can evidence
1M+Brand impressions Vezbi, a community super app, cleared from organic PR alone during its U.S. expansion
50+Forbes placements across 12+ industries, with a first opportunity for most clients within 4 to 8 weeks
4,200+Visits from one anonymized feature, with branded search up 38% and 12 secondary pickups
DA 94Authority of the backlink that same feature earned
Clients have been featured in Forbes, Bloomberg, TechCrunch, Wired, Inc., Fast Company, Adweek, and Entrepreneur. More at Vezbi and case studies.
The number
What a corporate PR agency costs
Almost no corporate PR agency publishes a price. The few that do quote roughly $7,000 to $20,000 a month for retainers and $25,000 to $60,000 for campaign work. Use that as your sanity check on any proposal.
Published retainers$7,000 to $20,000a month
Campaign work$25,000 to $60,000per campaign
AceItPriced per placementapproved before money moves
Ours works differently. We price placements individually instead of billing for a month of effort, so you approve the outlet, the position, and the price before money moves. Every price is on the pricing page.
Forbes campaigns are scoped and priced in writing before kickoff. Programs pairing earned media with search run mid five figures to six figures annually against a 12 month roadmap.
The honest filter
Where this works, and where it does not
On the agendait fits
It fits companies with more than one audience to answer to:
- Businesses selling into procurement
- Venture backed firms heading into a raise
- Established firms whose search results have not kept up with the business
- If organic visibility is part of the same problem, pair this with enterprise SEO
Off the agendawe say so on the first call
- Anyone who wants a named publication guaranteed by Friday
- Anyone shopping purely on the lowest monthly rate
- Anyone who wants coverage to bury a problem rather than fix it
You will hear that on the first call, not in month six.
Questions
Asked before every corporate engagement
Anything else, email [email protected] and it comes back in 1 to 2 hours.
A corporate PR agency manages how a company is perceived by investors, employees, regulators, analysts, and the press, rather than promoting a single product. The work covers narrative and messaging, media relations with named journalists, executive thought leadership, milestone announcements, crisis and issues management, and measurement against agreed targets.
Corporate PR earns attention and shapes the story going forward. Reputation management protects and corrects what already exists: search results, review threads, sentiment, misinformation. They overlap in practice, because the fastest way to fix what people find about you is usually to place enough credible third party coverage that it outranks the problem.
Published corporate PR retainers in this market sit around $7,000 to $20,000 a month, with campaign work from $25,000 to $60,000. We price placements individually instead, so you approve the outlet and the price before spending. Forbes campaigns are scoped and priced in writing before kickoff, and combined PR and search programs run mid five figures to six figures annually. See pricing.
First coverage typically lands inside 30 to 45 days, usually in trade and business press, and most Forbes clients see a first opportunity within 4 to 8 weeks. Compounding effects on search visibility, branded demand, and AI citations take 6 to 12 months, which is why we agree interim milestones in writing rather than asking you to wait and trust us.
Four things you can check before signing. Who personally writes and sends the pitches, and whether they are senior. How fast they reply before you are a client. Whether targets, outlet tiers, and dates go in writing before kickoff. And what happens to your money if those targets are missed. Our answer to the last one is a full refund.
PR does two jobs. Before a crisis it builds the credit you spend later: reporter relationships, a record of published expertise, a rehearsed response plan. During one it controls sequence and accuracy through holding statements, spokesperson readiness, and correction of the record. Companies with existing coverage recover faster because journalists have something to weigh the bad news against.
Next step
Take the plan to your board before you take our invoice
Two inputs: your domain, and the two competitors who keep getting quoted instead of you. What comes back is the narrative we would build, the publications we would work first, when first coverage should land, and the targets we would attach our fee to. Behind it, the same commitment as every engagement we sign. A 100% guarantee: you get the agreed results or your money back.
Every engagement carries a 100% guarantee: you get the agreed results or your money back