car2go N.A., LLC, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Daimler North America Corporation, offers an innovative mobility solution in rapidly growing urban areas via a carsharing network of affordable, eco-friendly Mercedes-Benz and smart vehicles. Today, car2go’s global operation is the largest, fastest-growing carsharing program in the world with more than 2,800,000 registered members and a fleet of about 13,000 vehicles in 26 locations in North America, Europe and Asia.

Search

There isn’t a day that goes by at car2go that our communications team isn’t logged in to the Muck Rack platform. One of our most frequently-used features is the incredibly helpful search engine. We use it constantly!

Our team is currently in the middle of a media list overhaul. We’ve been cross-checking old media lists with Muck Rack’s up-to-date data. It’s a daunting process, but thankfully Muck Rack’s customer success team has been outstanding each step of the way. 

Earlier this year, car2go introduced Mercedes-Benz vehicles to our North American fleet. Since then, we have begun to transition some cities to 100 percent Mercedes-Benz vehicles. Muck Rack has contributed greatly to the success of our fleet transition media outreach and news.  We can attribute some of that success to how savvy our media lists are, and how easy it was to reach out to the right journalists captured in our lists. Muck Rack is proving to be the assistant we needed to find the right list of journalists interested in our news.

Building media lists

Anyone who has ever worked in PR knows how time consuming it is to build a media list. Muck Rack cuts that time in half, if not more than that. Being able to build a targeted and accurate press list in less than a couple of hours is something our team was not capable of doing before Muck Rack. Other databases we’ve used are not as up-to-date and intuitive.

With the modern media landscape as dynamic as it is now, we needed a tool that keeps pace with media, and Muck Rack does that.

The real meat and potatoes of our media relations efforts at car2go is local. With 11 different markets, that’s 11 different audiences and media landscapes our team is tasked with navigating. It’s incredibly important to the success of our team to ensure our local media lists are refreshed constantly. Muck Rack makes it easy to break down media by region, or even get as granular as targeting a single publication.

Alerts

Alerts have been tremendously helpful to the car2go team, especially when it comes to our niche markets. We love being able to monitor who is having the conversations we want to be part of, and figuring out a way to join the discussion. It’s as targeted and effective as it gets.

Recently, a broadcast reporter in Denver tweeted that he loved driving our new cars. Blaire Kniffin, PR Manager for car2go NA was able to strike up a conversation with that reporter. Without Muck Rack, that conversation may not have ever happened because likely, she would have not seen the tweet in the first place. Because car2go’s PR managers engineer media relations in multiple media markets, it can be a real challenge to keep up with the conversation and contacts in real-time. Muck Rack keeps the team proficient. Because of alerts, our team was able to reach out to a reporter, have a conversation on background and cue up the station for a story the following month.

This is just one of many times that we have used Muck Rack to create storytelling opportunities with reporters that resulted in positive relationship-building and background conversations as well as actual coverage.

1. What has your experience been like working with Muck Rack’s customer success team?

No joke, we love this team! It’s been such a pleasure to work with Muck Rack. The help is always there when you need it, in real time, via the chat feature on the platform itself. We’ve encountered issues with some other services and software providers, so to be working with a responsive team like this has been wonderful. We love the ability to chat with a Muck Rack expert -- whenever we have a question, we pop into Muck Rack and within minutes, our question is answered. We rely on Muck Rack for accurate targeting, and the reliable customer service is just another added bonus.

2. What would you tell other companies considering using Muck Rack?

You are silly to not consider it! For every one journalist, there are at least five PR professionals doing their best to pitch as effectively as you are. Not only that, but journalists are bouncing to different media outlets constantly. Media relations is so fast-paced, the competition is stiff, and both contribute to the need to find the correct reporter for your news - fast. Speed and accuracy is a delicate dance, and Muck Rack keeps up with the pace by providing constant, real-time crawling of social media – the place where journalists live and interact the most. Really though, I don’t know how teams can be effective in today’s PR world without a tool like this. I just don’t.

3. How has PR changed in the past several years? How has Muck Rack helped you keep up?

The media landscape changes fast, and the pace of change is only increasing. You have to trust in a failsafe way that the media information you need to be effective is up-to-date. I don’t know how you can do that without Muck Rack, and I know because I’ve used other competing tools. Also, who is considered media these days is changing. Muck Rack helps us identify traditional media, but also where there are other avenues to garner coverage, including bloggers and influencers.

4. If you had to explain how you use Muck Rack to someone in a 140-character tweet or a 10-second Snapchat story, what would you say?

@MuckRack helps us stay ahead of the game in an ever-changing media landscape. Plus, it’s the best tool to find the right reporter to tell the @car2go story.”

5.How would you describe your experience with Muck Rack in three words?

Efficient, Modern, Savvy