- Traditional campaign-based PR is becoming obsolete
- Brands must adopt an “always-on” communication strategy
- The ‘continuous newsroom’ is the new strategic model
- Content should be agile, reactive, and widely repurposed
- Real-time relevance builds authority and competitive advantage
We need to be honest with ourselves: the old way of doing public relations and marketing (the six-week blitz campaign followed by six months of silence) is frankly, kicking the bucket.
In today’s digital landscape, where the news cycle moves faster than a taxi on the N1 and consumer attention is the most valuable currency, relying on sporadic, high-impact campaigns is a recipe for irrelevance.
If your brand’s communication strategy still relies on a single, massive launch event every quarter, you are essentially telling your audience, and the media, that your business is only worth talking about four times a year. That simply does not cut it anymore.
The reality is that audiences are always on, and therefore, your brand must be always-on.
The solution is not just more content; it is adopting a strategic mindset borrowed directly from the media world: the continuous newsroom.
The big campaign
For years, brands planned their communications like a military operation: The Big Campaign.
We would gather all the budget, all the resources, and all the creative energy for a single, powerful push. The result was often spectacular, generating a flurry of media coverage and social buzz.
But what happens on day 46, after the budget runs out and the agency moves onto the next client? Nothing. Silence.
This boom-and-bust cycle creates a feast-or-famine relationship with the media and, more crucially, with your customers. The moment you go silent, you lose the opportunity to participate in the real-time conversations shaping your industry.
In South Africa, where media houses are under immense pressure and journalists are juggling multiple beats, they don’t have the luxury of waiting six months for your next big product announcement. They are looking for credible, timely, and relevant commentary right now.
They need an expert who can react to the Budget Speech, comment on the latest interest rate hike, or weigh in on the national debate around AI ethics.
Operate like a media house
If you are not positioned as that expert in the moment, someone else will be.
The Newsroom approach fundamentally changes the structure of a brand’s communications. It moves the focus away from the product launch and towards the continuous narrative. Instead of a marketing department that builds campaigns, you create an agile, dedicated team (internal or external) whose job is to operate like a media house.
What does this mean in practice?
Reactive and proactive story mining: A continuous newsroom is constantly scanning the external environment, economic trends, political developments, and social media chatter, to find opportunities for the brand to legitimately contribute.
Think of a local South African bank. Instead of waiting for their next home loan campaign, a newsroom would immediately analyse the impact of a surprise SARB rate announcement and issue a commentary piece within hours, positioning the bank’s economist as the go-to expert.
Repurposing and ripping: In the old world, a campaign generated a press release and maybe a few social posts. In the newsroom model, one core idea is ripped into multiple formats. A five-minute CEO video on a new sustainability initiative becomes a LinkedIn article by the head of logistics, a series of TikTok clips showing behind-the-scenes staff interviews, and a detailed infographic for trade publications.
Multichoice or Woolworths are good examples of brands that do this well, continually feeding their owned media channels with fresh, relevant lifestyle and business content that goes far beyond simply selling a product.
Your greatest assets are the knowledgeable people within your organisation. A newsroom identifies your key experts and technical geniuses, and trains them to be the consistent voice of the brand. This provides the media with fresh, authentic sources, rather than the same old corporate statement.
The Nando’s effect
The most powerful South African illustration of an always-on strategy is arguably Nando’s. They are the masters of the real-time, continuous conversation. While their advertising campaigns are memorable, their true power lies in their agility.
When a political controversy erupts, or a major social event dominates the public sphere, Nando’s is often the first brand to respond with witty, culturally relevant commentary that lands perfectly with the audience. They do this because they operate with a newsroom mentality, a team poised to seize the moment, not wait for a quarterly creative briefing.
This isn’t just advertising; it’s public relations at the speed of news, embedding the brand directly into the national dialogue.
Transitioning to a continuous newsroom is not a cost. It is an investment in relevance and resilience. It ensures your brand is not just present when you want it to be but expected to be present when the customer or the news environment demands it.
For South African brands looking to thrive in our dynamic and demanding market, the choice is clear: stop relying on the occasional big bang. Embrace the continuous newsroom. Adopt the always-on mindset. It is the only way to ensure your story is not just told, but becomes an integral, trusted part of the daily conversation.
Martin Slabbert is the Head of Newsroom at the Cape Town based communications and marketing agency, Alkemi Collective. For more, visit Alkemi.global or connect with him on LinkedIn.
