Everything Everywhere, All at Once
Clare Newsome began her career as a journalist and editor (Stuff; What Hi-Fi) before progressing into marketing and PR, where she has spent the past 14 years working across both in-house and agency roles. Since 2024 she’s run her own consultancy, supporting a diverse portfolio of audio and technology brands on everything from fast-paced launches to long-term PR programmes. With multiple brands and projects to manage, Clare is keen to maximise the time spent on creating, pitching and delivering her clients’ stories, which means eliminating or automating as much of her nemesis – admin – as possible.
“Brandlifi slickly handles asset and press office management. I’ve gained more time, more contacts and more coverage as a result”
“I loathe admin: it robs PR professionals of the creative and strategic time to deliver the best results for their clients.” Clare says. “I’ve ditched the time-suck of meaningless meetings and needlessly repetitive tasks in favour of intelligent tools that streamline essential admin. I’ve long used CoverageBook - a game-changer for reporting - and now Brandlifi slickly handles asset and press office management. I’ve gained more time, more contacts and more coverage as a result.”
She adds: “The key to streamlining is finding tools that are true time-savers– we’ve all experienced tortuous tech ‘solutions’ that take longer to wrangle than the work they’re meant to manage. I firmly believe Brandlifi gets it right because it’s created by two PR and marketing professionals who’ve lived the pain and are on a mission to make it easier. It’s also infused with their super-organised, attention-to-detail DNA!”
How Brandlifi helps
Clare manages multiple brands through a single Brandlifi login – where she has jump-off dashboards for every client. Here she can easily build and manage press offices, image collections and more, plus automatically send out press releases and announcements to relevant press across consumer and pro audio, technology, music, CI and mainstream media.
“Brandlifi isn’t a substitute for personal outreach – that’s still vital for both making and maintaining key contacts plus securing core coverage - it supports it. It takes care of structure and admin so I can focus on relationships, storytelling and results. And its growing media membership does mean I’ve been introduced to some superb new contacts – all helping my clients gain a wider spread of coverage, both here in the UK, into Europe and even the US,” Clare says.
Whether they’re writing a news story or looking for info and images to support features and reviews, journalists have access to Clare’s press offices 24/7 - and can easily contact her to request samples, expert comment and more. All of it organised and logged by Brandlifi, with regular alerts and reports available so nothing gets missed.
“It’s a huge help in managing multiple brands simultaneously. Whether onboarding a new brand for a short-term launch or supporting an established client with ongoing reviews and features, everything lives in one place,” says Clare.
That centralised hub makes it easy to keep things up to date, too, as Clare explains: “If a product’s technical specification is updated, for example, or a client has a fresh logo, headshots or imagery – it takes a matter of minutes in Brandlifi to remove the old and replace with the new. While there, I can easily send out a quick announcement to relevant press alerting them of any major changes, too.”
Tea and tracking
Brandlifi’s reporting capabilities add another layer of value. Being able to see exactly who has accessed which press releases, images and other assets (and when) allows Clare to follow up personally, with context and confidence.
“Seeing who’s accessed what is incredibly powerful. It means I can follow up in a much more informed way. And it’s great to feed into client reporting, too – showing the clear value of a Brandlifi press office” she says. “Also, having weekly reports land in my inbox every Sunday night is genuinely useful – I start Monday mornings with a massive mug of tea and peruse the results, which helps me plan the week ahead more efficiently.”
With a mix of shorter- and longer-term PR projects to manage, Brandlifi’s agency contract flexibility is another important consideration. Clare pays a set fee covering all her core brands – she can then easily scale this up and down as projects start and finish.
“Brandlifi offers incredible value for money,” she concludes. “Quite simply, it’s given me hours of my working week back - I spend less time managing logistics and more time doing the fun stuff: pitching creatively, nurturing relationships and thinking strategically. It’s like a super-organised admin assistant working quietly in the background, giving me timely updates on everything. I truly love it!”
Clare Newsome, Freelance PR
Interested in seeing how Brandlifi could streamline your PR admin too?
If you’re a busy PR agency or freelance PR looking to spend less time on admin and more time delivering results, get in touch with the team at hello@brandlifi.com to learn more.
Or explore the platform yourself with a free trial at brandlifi.com.