Emily Beale handles PR for the group's brands alongside a packed day job. Here's how Brandlifi took the legwork out of launches and put the Radius Series 4G in Forbes.
Emily Beale, Monitor Audio Group
Monitor Audio Group is an independent British audio company with more than 50 years of engineering heritage. Its portfolio brings together three complementary brands: Monitor Audio, known for its loudspeakers and home audio systems; Roksan, specialising in hi-fi electronics including amplifiers and turntables; and Blok, which makes furniture and supports for hi-fi systems. Together, the brands serve music-lovers and home entertainment enthusiasts across a wide range of products and applications. But a marketing team of just six manages press relations across three distinct brands.
Emily Beale, the group's Communications and Events Executive, leads press relations. It shares her week with copywriting, press releases, social posts, web pages, review sampling, influencer work and events. For a long time, launch-day PR meant writing a release and sending it to the master press list through Mailchimp a few days ahead.
"Whilst this was a relatively quick process, I wasn't finding that we were getting the coverage we wanted," Emily says. The list itself needed constant upkeep as journalists changed titles. Then came the follow-up, with Emily chasing journalists one by one to get the news shared.
Enter Brandlifi
Emily already knew Brandlifi co-founder Chelsea Hinton. They had connected on LinkedIn a few years earlier, before Chelsea and Liz set up Brandlifi. When Emily joined Monitor Audio Group, she could see straight away how the platform would help her role, and she pushed her manager to sign up.
She was after two things. The first was reach: a way to put releases in front of media contacts who weren't on the master list. The second was visibility. She wanted to see exactly who was downloading the group's content, instead of guessing from the coverage that eventually appeared.
Launch week, reworked
"Brandlifi comes into its own at launch time," explains Emily. Up to a week before a product goes live, she uses the platform to share the release under embargo, lifting at 9am on launch day.
Each release goes only to the types of media it suits, whether that's custom install or traditional hi-fi. Before, that meant building new segments and audiences in Mailchimp for every launch. On Brandlifi it's a simple click to choose which press get sent the release.
After the release goes out, journalists can view and download the release and images whenever they need them. Asked whether that has cut the requests landing in her inbox, Emily's answer is simple: "Yes, massively." The assets stay live after launch, too. She has seen journalists come back months later, often while reviewing a product, to download imagery for their reviews.
The reach has widened, too. Monitor Audio Group's distribution partners usually handle press in their own countries. With Pro-tier access to global press, Emily now sees media from across Europe downloading content directly. Because Brandlifi names every journalist who downloads, she can tell how a launch is landing as it happens. "When a name pops up that I don't recognise, that's usually a good sign!"
The Forbes moment
One of those names stood out during the launch of the Monitor Audio Radius Series 4G. Mark Sparrow from Forbes, a keen user of Brandlifi, downloaded the release and imagery from the platform and posted a great story on the launch.
Forbes isn't a specialist hi-fi title, and that was the point. It put the Radius launch in front of a far larger audience than the group's usual press list could reach.
A year in the press office
Over the past year, journalists have viewed Monitor Audio press releases 162 times and downloaded 276 images, giving massive support to Emily's continued direct outreach.
Launches range from the Monitor Audio Silver Series 8G and Bronze Series 7G to Roksan's 40th anniversary, the Roksan Caspian Series 4G amplifiers and Blok Axis. Alongside the product news, she has also shared stories such as the group's Experience Centre and Elevate Training, CI Connect and a collaboration with the Museum of Youth Culture.
The difference shows most in Emily's week. "As a small team it is difficult and time consuming to be chasing journalists, on top of all the other work we have to do, and Brandlifi helps with that," she says. "Especially when we have multiple product launches around the same time."
Emily also praises the Brandlifi team's responsiveness, highlighting Chelsea and Liz's professional, helpful approach.
Her advice to other brands with in-house marketing teams weighing up Brandlifi is short: "Do it! Brandlifi is an extremely useful tool for PR. I couldn't recommend it enough!"
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