Always-On vs Campaign PR And Why You Need Both
There's a debate that surfaces regularly in marketing departments and agency pitches: is it better to invest in a PR retainer that runs all year, or to focus resources on specific campaign moments that generate concentrated impact?
The honest answer is that it's the wrong question. The most effective PR programmes don't choose between always-on and campaign activity. They use both and they understand exactly what each layer is for.
What Always-On PR Actually Does
Always-on PR is the least visible part of a well-run programme, which is partly why it gets undervalued. It doesn't produce the dramatic spikes of a big campaign launch. What it produces is something more foundational: a media landscape that stays warm, journalist relationships that deepen over time, and a narrative consistency that compounds into genuine brand authority.
In practice, always-on activity covers a weekly press programme built around story angles aligned to commercial priorities — not generic product announcements. It covers journalist relationship management: the outreach, follow-ups, and relationship maintenance that means when a reactive opportunity arises, there's already a relationship to leverage. It covers asset management — keeping visual libraries current and available to press. And it covers forward planning aligned to seasonal trading cycles, so PR activity anticipates demand rather than chasing it.
None of this is glamorous. All of it is necessary.
The brands that have consistent, high-quality media presence aren't the ones with the best campaigns — they're the ones that maintain the infrastructure between campaigns. Their journalists already know them. Their press assets are already in circulation. Their narrative is already established.
“When a campaign moment arrives, it lands into a landscape that’s already engaged.”
What Campaigns Are For
Campaign PR does something different. It creates spikes — concentrated moments of visibility that connect a brand to culturally and commercially significant periods. These are the activations, the big ideas, the stunts and experiences that generate standout earned media attention that simply can't be bought.
Campaign work is where creative ambition matters most. The best PR campaigns position a brand inside a conversation that's already happening, rather than trying to start a new one. They generate not just coverage, but content, community and cultural residue — the kind of impact that outlasts the campaign window.
But campaigns are only as effective as the foundation they land on. A campaign that arrives in a cold media environment — where journalists don't know the brand and the narrative has no established context — has to do far more work than one that arrives into an already-warm landscape. This is the multiplier effect of always-on PR: it doesn't just maintain presence, it makes every campaign more effective.
The Two-Layer Model
The most effective PR programmes we've built at Roar are structured around both layers working together. The always-on retainer handles the foundation: weekly story angles, relationship management, asset distribution, reactive opportunity tracking, and forward planning across the year. Campaign projects sit alongside this, scoped individually, designed to create the bigger moments when the brand and the calendar align.
The key is that campaigns don't have to compensate for the absence of always-on activity. They can focus entirely on ambition, because the infrastructure is already in place.
Over nine years delivering PR for one of the UK's leading home and lifestyle retailers, this is the model that generated over 5,000 editorial features in three years, three consecutive industry awards, and a media presence that remained consistently strong across seasonal peaks, quiet periods, and everything in between.
The question isn't always-on or campaign. It's whether your PR programme has both, working together.
Want to take this further?
If this got you thinking about your own PR strategy, the Roar PR Playbook goes deeper. It's a practical guide to building communications that work year-round, not just when you've got something to shout about.