How Bospar’s PR Strategy Turned Harvard Business School BiGS Institute Into a Global Thought Leadership Powerhouse
Harvard Business School’s Institute for Business in Global Society (BiGS) stands at the intersection of rigorous academia and real-world transformation.
This intellectual powerhouse studies and shares research and insights about the world’s most pressing challenges – from climate change to economic inequality to AI disruption to social mobility and beyond – and empowers business leaders to make an impact.
But even Harvard’s prestigious name couldn’t guarantee the media attention this groundbreaking work deserved, so the institute brought in PR agency Bospar to help.
Challenge
Here was Harvard Business School – a global beacon of business education – with an institute producing world-class research. Yet BiGS was barely making waves in the media landscape.
Despite publishing breakthrough analyses weekly and hosting thought-provoking roundtables featuring industry titans, this exceptional content only drew minimal media coverage.
With a lean but brilliant team focused on research excellence, virtually every week brought:
- Groundbreaking research publications
- Data-rich analysis pieces
- High-stakes global roundtable discussions
- Thought leader video series featuring industry luminaries
But the client was drowning in its own success. In managing all the thought leadership content, it had limited bandwidth to engage reporters and cultivate media relationships. As a result, this treasure trove of wisdom the business world desperately needed was trapped in academia.
Strategy
Bospar developed a comprehensive earned media strategy that capitalized on the client’s consistent research/content drops as well as flagship events such its on-campus debate series that bring thought leaders together to discuss major topics like “Is Big Tech Too Big?”
The PR strategy to drive earned media coverage and public perception involved:
- Content archaeology and story mining by public relations specialists
- Precision-targeted relationship building with media sources
- Event-driven momentum creation
Diving deep into the client’s extensive catalog, our strategic PR agency identified what content was the most media-worthy and pulled the most relevant soundbites and data points to draft highly personalized pitches for our primary reporter and editor targets. Our aim? To stop top-tier journalist targets scrolling and start reaching out to and reporting about the institute.
Our media outreach professionals focused on pitching for coverage and relationship-building meetings to build awareness and rapport between reporters at media channels that cater to the Harvard institution’s target audience and the client’s thought leaders/faculty.
For the on-campus debate series, Bospar narrowed our focus on impactful local/regional media who could attend in person to form deeper connections with the client’s team that was on-site.
What happened next exceeded even our own ambitious expectations. Bospar secured media coverage and positioned the institute as the definitive source for business-in-society insights.
PR success proof points included:
- National media breakthrough
- The “Big Tech” debate media coup
- In-person media elite attendance
- Virtual visits by journalist VIPs
Bospar made inroads with high-profile journalists and media outlets, earning high praise from the client team, which recognized the PR team’s success in fostering valuable new connections.
Our PR team’s media outreach secured media placements in high-impact targets – including Newsweek (Jeff Young reporting) and the MarketWatch Money Life podcast with Chuck Jaffe.
The client was thrilled to receive national media attention in these highly sought-after publications. But Bospar’s “politely pushy” team of PR experts didn’t stop there.
We also got key reporters from high-profile media outlets like The Boston Global to attend the client’s “Is Big Tech Too Big” debate on campus. In addition, the PR professionals at Bospar convinced journalists from major publications such as Bloomberg, The New York Times, MarketWatch, POLITICO, PCMag, TechTarget and The Verge, to attend virtually.
The client didn’t just appreciate our results, it celebrated them. On LinkedIn, the client team publicly acknowledged Bospar’s success in fostering invaluable new media relationships and securing the kind of high-impact coverage that the institute had only dreamed of achieving.
Bospar’s success wasn’t measured just in clips and mentions, we built a sustainable media infrastructure that continues to serve the institution’s thought leadership goals.
Every relationship we forged, every successful pitch we crafted and every event we promoted created compound value that extends far beyond any single news cycle, amplifying the client’s ability to influence conversations shaping how businesses approach societal responsibilities.
“Fabulous to see this research and thinking gain visibility – and proud to have brought this moment to life through evidence-based storytelling, writing, marketing, PR and design with pros like Mariana Castaneda, Glen Justice and the Bospar team!”
— Barbara DeLollis, Harvard BiGS’ head of communications
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