The best way to increase your public relations return on investment is to make sure that a journalist understands why your company, technologies, products and visions are important, prior to them receiving your ongoing releases and media pitches. If you establish a strong, knowledge foundation journalists will be far more likely to read your press releases and take your calls if they understand the significance of your story. Trying to educate journalists on the fly is near impossible in today's busy media environment.

​​As lead-times have shortened, journalists have increasingly turned to sources they know can provide expert, reliable commentary on the issues of the day. Kickstart Forum is the ideal venue to position a company's spokesperson as authoritative and quotable, an outcome that will lead to a steady stream of publicity enquiries and opportunities.

Participation at Kickstart Forum, affords all participating companies with a five-minute presentation in which your speaker can demonstrate their expertise, followed by an hour of round table discussions where you can answer questions and further get to know all the attending journalists.

​​Any journalist will tell you that relationships are the key to improving your chances of . With journalists increasingly swamped with a deluge of press releases, you increase your chances considerably of getting noticed if the journalist already has a pre-standing relationship with you. Kickstart Forum is the ultimate relationship-building event - combining intensive professional interactions before everyone unwinds at our famous gala dinners.

While the primary aim of Kickstart Forum is to help the media to get to know you, it's also incredibly valuable as a way of learning about and knowing how to interact with the media. Our Media Insights sessions involve journalists telling you how you can best work with them as well as tips for getting their attention.

Kickstart Forum is also a wonderful opportunity to market-test your messaging. The round-table sessions are a great opportunity to get an insight into how your messages and ideas, are being received by the press and you'll learn a lot as to how you can improve your external communications following the event.

Kickstart Forum is first-and-foremost about relationships and education, however those companies that choose to announce news or make announcements at Kickstart Forum always achieve fantastic results. Given you have the ears of more than 50 of Australia and New Zealand's top journalists it presents a natural opportunity to make an announcement and many of our past clients have received dozens of press clips after using Kickstart Forum to reveal news. You also have the opportunity to conduct at least six one-on-one interviews which is an another opportunity to provide journalists with publishable material.

However, much of the publicity that stems from Kickstart Forum comes well after the event, as journalists tell us it provides a deep well of stories ideas that they often work from, long after the event concludes.