The 5 Most Impressive Press Releases from February: Thought Leadership Edition

The press releases I highlighted in January, which did a great job of cutting through the noise, focused on “going digital” and included a strong call-to-action. For this month’s review, the stories that stood out were those taking a thought leadership approach.

Thought leadership is a great piece of content marketing that helps establish a brand as an expert in its field and builds credibility for the brand as a trusted source. Fostering positive brand awareness also goes a long way in attracting future loyal consumers and increasing strong search discoverability results down the road. 

Here are a few examples of brands who did well on this front in February: 

• IHG Hotels & Resorts reveals guests' growing passion to travel better, younger guests are leading the way with their green intent
  In this “global survey” announcement, IHG includes great imagery, a nice use of bold text and section headers as they tell the story about what travelers want regarding safety and sustainability, and how it impacts the brand’s “Journey to Tomorrow” program.
• U.S. Ranks Fifth in Best Places to Raise a Child, New Global Parenting Index Finds (Nestle USA)
  As the “world’s largest food and beverage company,” Nestle announced the launch of The Parenting Index, “a first-of-its-kind study examining global parenting experiences” as part of their ”ongoing commitment to support families in the first 1,000 days of life.”  A nice thought leadership piece that also stood out for its unbranded headline. 
• Survey Reveals Young Americans Prefer A Hybrid Digital and Human Banking Experience (KeyCorp)
  This press release – wherein KeyCorp tells us about the preference some age groups have towards utilizing more digital tools over human interaction when conducting financial transactions – features another nicely unbranded headline, along with a great infographic to engage the reader further. 
• New Study: Twice as Many People Plan to Watch the Super Bowl Alone this Year (Oracle)
  In a third example of an unbranded headline on this list, Oracle embraces the thought leadership announcement here, which is summed up nicely in this quote from Oracle SVP Nate Skinner near the end:  "As our study shows, the fan experience will be very different this year and in order to make this moment matter, marketers and advertisers will need to use data to understand changing behaviors and expectations.” 
• LexisNexis Risk Solutions Reveals the State of Fraud in the United States and Canada Amid COVID-19 Pandemic
  Leading strong with the brand in the headline here on a highly relevant topic, this announcement does exactly what the brand’s boiler leads with: “LexisNexis® Risk Solutions harnesses the power of data and advanced analytics to provide insights that help businesses and governmental entities reduce risk and improve decisions to benefit people around the globe.”

Thought leadership pieces, which position a brand as relevant and as an expert, are great content options we see on the Cision wire, and something to keep in mind for your editorial calendars as we move along this year. They’ll keep your brand top of mind in journalist headline queues – and hopefully near the top of search page results.