Every Access team member is responsible for building and maintaining strong media and analyst relationships, speaking to journalists and analysts on a regular basis – not just when pitching a story – to understand evolving editorial needs and business perspectives. Access team members meet regularly with their media colleagues at industry events, press tours and for casual one-on-ones over coffee or drinks.

We also produce a regular feature called Access Social: Scene, a video interview showcasing thought-provoking insights from key journalists of interest to our clients; recent interviewees include: Zach Seward, community editor for The Wall Street Journal Online, Jon Swartz, USA Today, Tiffany Black, Inc.com, Brian Stelter, The New York Times, and Gene Marks, small business columnist with Forbes.com and The New York Times.

We host frequent brown bag lunches and media roundtables and brown bag lunches in both offices, inviting reporters in for editorial insights and perspective: recent guests have included Sarah Lacy and Cliff Edwards of Bloomberg BusinessWeek, Brian Barrett of Gizmodo, Ryan Kim of The San Francisco Chronicle, John Markoff of The New York Times, Steve Fox, Editor-in-Chief of Infoworld and Jeff O’Brien of WIRED Magazine.

We also host informal mixers designed to enhance our relationships with key media. This year has featured our popular gaming and consumer media event at E3 in Los Angeles, with more than 60 attendees, and our third annual Fall Mixer (media only, no clients, to encourage relaxed, informal dialogue) in New York City, attended by over 30 media from outlets including ABC News, CBS News, The New York Times, Maxim, The Huffington Post, and c/net.

Finally, Access employs a variety of best practices to maintain strong relationships with industry analysts, including: our “adopt-an-influencer” program, meeting with analysts during client events, quarterly email programs, monthly conference calls, announcement pre-briefings, in-person meetings.