Alaska Railroad
For nearly 20 years, T&C has served as the agency of record for the Alaska Railroad offering media relations, event planning, reporting and much more. A main PR goal is to secure positive news stories about travel in the 49th state via the Alaska Railroad.
Copywriting
Media Relations
Monitoring and Reporting
The Challenge
With uncertainties swirling surrounding travel in spring 2022, the Alaska Railroad planned a return to its regular winter service. However, with nothing new and a cautious travel market, T&C had the age-old challenge of making “news out of nothing.”
The Approach
Knowing that a hook is crucial to a news story, T&C developed a press release centered around the Alaska Railroad resuming midweek service. In February, at the peak of the winter travel season, the Alaska Railroad offers more departures allowing guests to get around the state but the service had not been offered during the pandemic.
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Copywriting
With no new services or packages to highlight in the press release, the hook of the news became based on the time of year and more departures being offered. The release featured mentions of the Alaska Railroad being a top attraction in Anchorage, the winter packages it offers, and a quote talking about the magic of exploring Alaska via the railroad.
Media Relations
This is T&C’s bread and butter. We develop relationships with journalists that span decades. For this press release, T&C curated the media list featuring freelance writers, on-staff editors, contributors, bloggers and industry trade outlets. But it can’t just be an automated distribution where every recipient gets the same information. T&C further refined its list to ensure that journalists new to writing about the Alaska Railroad, and those familiar, received a pitch tailored to their knowledge.
Monitoring and Reporting
After news stories were secured, T&C then analyzed the content of the stories based on the Barcelona Principles – a set of rules that measure the effectiveness of a PR campaign. The stories are scored on a scale of 100 and points are earned in categories like media tier, key messages, assets included like a photo, website link or quote, and the overall tone of the article.
