We recently welcomed Alex Cassidy to the Honchō team as our Head of Digital PR! We managed to grab a few minutes of his time to ask some questions about him, his career so far, and what you can expect from Digital PR at Honchō.
A bit about me
I started working as a sports journalist when I first graduated in 2013, working as a sports editor of a local newspaper, and as a writer for Gridiron magazine, an American football publication.
After that I worked in horse racing media before I started my digital PR career with Verve Search in 2016. After a few years in the outreach team I was promoted to head of the team, where I remained until 2020, when I took a placement working in-house at RVU for six months.
Some of my favourite campaigns that I’ve worked on:
Eco-friendly university league – Uswitch
This was a project for Uswitch that looked into the status of renewable energy on campus at a variety of universities. After an FOI looked into several areas of renewable energy including questions such as Who is the energy supplier and are you on a green/renewable energy tariff with them?, we then created a tiered list to create the first Uswitch Renewable University report. It achieved links in places such as University of Southampton, Essex and Northampton.
Can You Spot It – Lenstore
A campaign that I outreached during my time at Verve Search, with the idea from then Head of Creative Hannah Smith. Can You Spot It added a layer of interactivity to the successful premise of ‘can you find it games’ that often gained coverage in the media. The ability to play the game and the fact that correct answers were stored allowed us to outreach not just the initial project but also effectively use data for later outreach.
Endangered Languages – GoCompare
Although it was a behemoth for the project managers and production team to work on, the end result was a fascinating insight into some of the world’s most forgotten languages. Armed with a bulletproof hook in that it was the most endangered languages according to UNESCO, and a unique insight in that you can hear, not just read, the languages being spoken, it is a campaign that marries both authority and intrigue and was great fun to outreach.
Outreach Philosophy for Honchō
My aim at Honchō is to answer interesting questions through data-driven campaigns with concrete methodologies. We’ll do this by focussing on the strength of the stories that we decide to make, and not getting carried away with ideas that sound good on paper but don’t stand up to scrutiny.
There are more blogs, podcasts, tweets and newsletters about Digital PR & Outreach than ever before, and they all claim to show the best tips and tricks to getting your brand in the media. But truthfully, the fundamentals of a ‘good story well told’ (and then putting that story in front of the right person) is still what consistently gain links and coverage.
Plus, as well as ideas, I’ve previously spoken at BrightonSEO about how to get those stories in front of the right journalists, using the SLLAM methodology.
What you do in your spare time when you’re not Head of Digital PR?
I spend a lot of my free time working on side projects, including writing my books both fiction and non-fiction which are mostly centered around sports. Unsurprisingly I’m interested in local history and sports culture, but I’m also a keen runner and play rugby for my old boys side Old Tiffinians, where I help run the website and sit on the committee.
Are you planning your own Digital PR activity? Find out how we can help you create inventive, strategic Digital PR campaigns to get people talking about your brand. Get in touch using the contact form below to speak to one of our specialists.
Jade Halstead
