Nathalie Agnew, Author at Muckle Media

The press release is dead, long live the press release!

By Nathalie Agnew
1 April, 2026
News

By Eleanor Bradford, Director of Corporate Communications, B2B, Crisis and Media Training

The value of a good old fashioned press release has come full circle: it is fast becoming the most important piece of PR in your arsenal. That’s because of the radical change in the way search engines operate.

When you ask a question, instead of a list of web page results, your search engine now uses AI to answer. Sources are cited, but only visible if you click on the tiny icon. Companies have seen a radical drop in traffic to their websites because Google is not listing them anymore (not prominently, at least). Not only that, but Large Language Model (LLM) search engines look for information in a different way, and guess what…they love press releases.

AI is drawn to the structure of a press release because it’s easy to interpret. The information is attributable and authoritative, it’s clean and logical. Press releases state what matters, who said it, and an organisation’s aims, which is information LLMs want to extract.

AI does not like adverts and it thinks your website is OK as a source of information (especially if you’re a big organisation) but what it loves most of all is a press release, issued on a newswire or picked up by a news organisation. At the time of writing (in a fast moving world) 82% of all AI citations come from so-called ‘earned media’ (Source: Notified)

What AI likes even more than a press release is a lot of press releases. If you ask the same question of a LLM search engine every day for a week, you will find the sources of its answers change each day. Freshness counts, and regular updates, which tell your story in a consistent way, get rewarded. How often you issue a press release will have a direct impact on how often you are mentioned in search results. This is a game changer and means, with some nimble PR, even the smallest organisation can beat the big brands in a Google search. Press releases don’t require expensive videos or charge money to be seen, but they do require you to step outside your bubble and explain a story in a clear and compelling way.

This is music to those of us who’ve spent a lifetime crafting our writing skills and who had begun to give up hope in a world of influencers and one-line social media posts. A well written press release with a punchy headline and a stunning image is a thing of beauty. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking you’ll just get AI to write your press releases. AI can’t spot an engaging story and can’t write with originality, and that means your press release won’t get picked up, which reduces its visibility to LLM search engines. We’re still humans writing for humans, whilst making sure the machine in the middle allows its discovery.

Muckle Media DAREs to win big at PRCA Awards

By Nathalie Agnew
16 June, 2022
Uncategorized

Muckle Media DAREs to win big at PRCA Awards

Muckle Media, the creative communications agency, has been named Scotland’s top Large Consultancy of the Year 2022 at the PRCA DARE Awards in Glasgow.

The event, attended by representatives from across Scotland’s public, private and third sector communications industry, was held at the Trades Hall in Glasgow. This is Muckle Media’s first time winning the large consultancy gong, having held the small consultancy and medium consultancy awards in previous years.

The award is testament to the agency’s prolonged period of growth, securing new clients and growing the agency team across four Scottish offices. Other winners on the night included Police Scotland and in-house team of the year Argyll and Bute Council.

Muckle Media is currently recruiting into its offices in Aberdeen, Edinburgh, Glasgow and Inverness and also offers remote roles under its work where you want to work policy.

Find out more about working at Scotland’s top PR agency here: https://mucklemedia.co.uk/careers/

Muckle Media promotes two to Director after sustained growth

By Nathalie Agnew
2 November, 2021
Uncategorized

We are pleased to announced the promotion of current employees, Linsay Brown and Chris Batchelor, to Director, following a period of continued growth. The two will work closely with agency founder, Nathalie Agnew, across client servicing, new business and agency culture.

Linsay Brown joined the agency as an Account Director in 2018, leading on consumer PR accounts including Thistles shopping centre and Gordon & MacPhail. Linsay has been heavily involved in growing the team, with a focus on embedding a positive culture and supporting employee wellbeing, and delivered the successful Returners to Communications programme earlier this year.

After joining Muckle Media in February this year from London-based agency Pretty Green, Chris Batchelor has supported the agency’s new business with several high-profile client wins throughout the year, alongside overseeing a successful brand refresh and relaunch.

Commenting on the changes to the team’s structure, Muckle Media Founder Nathalie Agnew, said: “Chris and Linsay have both played a key role in Muckle Media’s success over the past twelve months, so deserve this recognition and promotion. As we work towards further exciting growth plans I look forward to working alongside Chris and Linsay in their expanded remits.”

Linsay Brown, commented: “Over the last few years the agency has grown rapidly and it has been fantastic to be part of the team behind this. We’ve brought on new team members, won a wealth of new business and focused our efforts on making Muckle Media one of the best communications agencies to work for and with. We have big aspirations for the agency and our team, and I look forward to working with Nathalie and Chris to bring these to fruition.”

Chris Batchelor added: “After moving to Edinburgh earlier in the year after nearly 10 years working at a number of agencies in London, Muckle Media couldn’t have made the switch easier. Not only do we have a talented and supportive team, but we are also delivering high quality work which is reflected in our growth. I’m excited to see what the future holds for Muckle Media as we continue to push ourselves to deliver for both existing and future clients.”

For enquiries please contact: hello@mucklemedia.co.uk

The Summer of Sports: gold medal for creativity

By Nathalie Agnew
18 August, 2021
Uncategorized

After 18 months of postponed or cancelled events, 2021 saw a summer of sports like no other. We got not one, but two international sporting events taking place still carrying the 2020 name of the year they were supposed to be, they just happened to arrive a year late.

First, we had the Euros 2020 where football was so close to coming home (to the horror of my Scottish teammates) followed by the Tokyo 2020 Olympics – the first ever to be held without spectators. As the dust settles on an amazing couple of months of sport, we can look back and reflect on the brands that delivered gold medal worthy creativity.

We had a memorable Euros tournament, football has always evoked passion and rivalry between fans, and as Scotland played its first major football tournament in many years, Wales faced Italy in group A and England progressed to the final, we saw brands across the country get behind their home nation teams with varying degrees of success.

Reactive social posts and advertising were ever present and Tesco’s play on ‘I-tes co-ming home’ was mocked by both fans and other supermarkets alike, with a particularly witty post from Iceland. Whilst this was all in good spirit and got people talking, the most successful campaigns and stunts saw brands going out and offering football fans something different – McDonald’s stole all the headlines after offering 25% off menu orders to celebrate England reaching the quarter finals.

Another example of a quick reactive stunt was from Tennent’s, mocking England’s ‘bottlers’ after Scotland’s excellent Wembley display ending in a 0-0 draw, launching a new promo poster which read: “Don’t worry England, we bottle it too.” Alongside the new Tennent’s Light bottle. Not only did this go down a storm with Scotland fans but it was also intrinsically linked to a new product, getting people talking for all the right reasons.

If brands played on rivalries during the Euros, for the Olympics brands looked to celebrate unity and success – campaigns such as Proctor and Gamble’s Lead with Love looked to showcase the value of hard work and patience among athletes whilst acknowledging the efforts made by people around them.

Whilst we saw big adverting campaigns from sponsors during the Olympics, including DFS, Aldi and Purple Bricks – we saw less brands reacting to what was happening following dramatic days of action.

This shows how different sports conjure up different emotions, and brands need to be privy to this – the Euros offered brands an opportunity for some brilliant reactive stunts, where the most successful examples were when brands were able to tie it back to their offering or purpose. For the Olympics, brands played on the emotions and the hard work the athletes go through to make it with multi-channel marketing campaigns.

One thing is clear, with so much noise during these international sporting events, only the best campaigns and stunts will be heard, and sit at the top of the creativity podium.

To find out how we can help you, visit our what we do page.

How to get a Clubhouse app invite

By Nathalie Agnew
24 January, 2021
Uncategorized

If you haven’t heard of Clubhouse yet you must have been hiding under a rock somewhere! But for those who don’t know it’s an exclusive, invite-only social media app that hosts audio only chat rooms, where you can listen in and also put yourself forward to join the conversation.

With rumoured users including Oprah and Jared Leto, many are joining Clubhouse in the hope of being in the same ‘room’ as a top celeb, but there are also lots of business deals being done on the platform, and from a PR perspective it offers a fantastic way to build your own personal brand.

It’s still new enough for you to get in early (if you can get an elusive invite!) and raise your profile or try and claim ownership of your area of expertise by building clubs and hosting rooms. The Muckle Media team are lucky to have access and we’ve enjoyed joining rooms over the past few weeks, we’re even been on the stage a few times and are hosting our first own room next week.

If we’ve got your interest, or you were looking for an invite anyway and that’s how you found this, here are the best ways we know of to get a Clubhouse invite:

Option one – Reserve your username

While it is invite only, you can join the (very long!) waiting list by downloading the app and reserving your preferred username here: https://www.joinclubhouse.com this will speed up your registration when you do get an invite. There is also an algorithm that allows your contacts (if you allow access on the app) who are already in Clubhouse to see that you are on the waiting list and they will randomly be invited to let you in without using their limited invites, so a first step idea is definitely to join the list.

Option two – Ask around!

The easiest way to get access is to find someone you know who has an invite to spare for you. They are hard to come by though as each member only starts with two, so be selective in who you invite in! Active members receive additional invites regularly, so it’s worth asking friends and contacts if they can let you in when they can. We’ve also seen reports of people selling invites, but we really don’t recommend this route, it’s not in the spirit of the idea and you may be scammed.

Option three – wait a while

If you’re not in a rush you can just wait for the invite to arrive or the app to open up – but it’s so much fun in there you really might be missing out.

We’re out of invites for now and prioritising sharing ours with team members and clients, but comment on our post and we’ll let you know if our team ever have spare invites available.

Building your personal brand? If we can help, on Clubhouse or with wider PR, please get in touch! https://mucklemedia.co.uk/contact-us/