Allison+Partners is driven by a collaborative approach to innovation and creativity. The firm is organized around four practices: Consumer Brands, Corporate + Public Affairs, Health and Technology. The agency’s Marketing Innovation Team, which combines integrated marketing, creative, research and measurement expertise into one offering, works across these practices to deliver integrated storytelling for clients. At the core of everything they do is the belief that it is truly “about the work”—work they do for their clients to move the needle for their businesses and the opportunities they create for their team members to work in a truly collaborative and creative environment.

Prior to adopting Muck Rack in 2020, we tried out other customer relationship management solutions, but weren’t able to find something that fit all of our needs and enabled us to work efficiently.

When working at a big agency, creating time and resource efficiency is paramount. We found ourselves spending a lot of time manually updating media lists in Excel or doing our own research to find reporters because the databases we did have were outdated.

We wanted to find a solution that had accurate and complete reporter data and allowed us to collaborate more effectively as a team through dynamic media lists, without having to copy and paste from Excel.

For example, we may have one client that has an entire team dedicated to their PR due to the size and complexity of their business. Those client teams need to be able to easily see who has pitched what and when, to ensure we aren’t double pitching or over-pitching a reporter. Static spreadsheets in Excel weren’t allowing us to do that.

Media Database

One of the most important things we needed in a media solution was accuracy, and Muck Rack has exceeded our expectations on that front.

The ability to easily find publications and specific reporters quickly, and save them to media lists that live directly in the platform has made our workflow much more efficient.

We can see right on a reporter’s profile page any articles they’ve recently published or what they’re tweeting about, so we have a good picture of what they might be working on or interested in at a certain moment in time.

And knowing the information is staying up to date for us, without our team needing to resort to manual and usually ineffective Google searches is a big timesaver.

Team Collaboration

Pitching in teams has become a lot easier with Muck Rack as well. Being able to input notes on individual reporters and keeping a log of all our touch points ensures everyone is always on the same page. 

Not only does it help spark conversations between colleagues when they can see a team member recently pitched a reporter or landed a story with someone, but we’ve also been able to streamline our communications with specific reporters. 

Using Muck Rack we’ve seen increases in accuracy, efficiency, and, most importantly, outcomes. With the efficiency gained, our teams are able to concentrate on and expand other workstreams that helps us maximize results for our partners.

Intuitive Interface

One of the biggest bonuses of switching to Muck Rack has been the seamless user experience. With an agency as large as ours, we have a lot of employees who come to us with different levels of technology familiarity; we need to be able to get them up to speed and trained on our systems and software as quickly as possible. 

The quality user experience and intuitiveness of Muck Rack allows everyone, no matter their tenure, feel confident using it every day. Despite the wide breadth of features and functionality available within the platform, it was extremely adoptable across the agency, and that was a big benefit for us.

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

“Nothing but success.”

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

We've chosen it and haven't thought twice about it.

3. What would your job be like if your team didn’t have Muck Rack?

Before Muck Rack, I used to get a lot more complaints from the team telling me “this isn't accurate, it's not working, can we get a new system?” Those complaints have gone down, which is great. From the team, though, it's the time value efficiency. Being able to allow them to focus their jobs, and do it in a better way. Muck Rack saves them time and helps them be more accurate. You really can't beat that.