- 18 min
- from the first reports to an approved pitch landing
- 43
- national journalists pitched
- 67%
- opened it, 29 of 43
The brief
The client is a European venture capital firm. Its partners are judged by founders choosing between term sheets and by limited partners deciding on the next fund, and both audiences form their view partly from whether the firm has anything to say when the news is about its market.
Political appointments are the hardest kind of reactive comment. The window is an evening, the competition is every economist in the country, and a partner will not sign off a view they do not hold.
What we did
When John Healey was named Chancellor, we drafted the partner's take on what it meant for UK small and medium businesses, had it approved, and put it in front of the FT, Reuters, the BBC and Bloomberg the same evening.
How it ran, July and August 2026
- 20 Jul
18:17First reports that the Chancellor has been named - 20 Jul
18:20Comment drafted and sent for client review - 20 Jul
18:30The partner approves the quote; the pitch list is generated - 20 Jul
18:35Approved pitch goes to 43 national journalists - 21 Jul
07:49Money Marketing runs the comment word for word - 20 AugThree publications in total: Money Marketing, Sifted twice, and IT Boltwise
The same partner, twice in Sifted
Reactive comment works when it is not a one-off. Over seven weeks we sent 14 tracked pitches to Sifted journalists. In August, Sifted quoted the partner in two features, one of them the day after a pitch on Europe's AI robotics debate. Sifted reaches 1.2 million readers a month, and is read by exactly the founders and investors the firm wants to be known by.
Why it worked
Eighteen minutes is what preparation buys you. The partner's position on SME funding was already agreed, the journalist list already existed, and the approval path was one person rather than a committee. By the time the news broke, the only work left was the writing.