How to find the maritime PR stories hiding inside your company
“We don’t really have any news.” We hear this surprisingly often when talking to maritime companies. Then we start asking a few questions.
- What are you working on at the moment?
- Any interesting projects underway?
- New customers or new vessels?
- Have you entered a new market?
- Tested an energy saving device onboard?
- Achieved any interesting results?
- What is keeping your technical team busy?
Five or ten minutes later, the picture often looks completely different. There is a new technology being tested onboard three vessels. The company has just received its first order from Japan. A new product is being launched during Splash Singapore. Or someone within the company has a strong opinion on a development everyone in the industry is currently talking about.
Suddenly, there is plenty to talk about. Over the years, we have learned that most maritime companies have more potential PR stories than they realise. The challenge is often not creating the news. It is recognising it.
So, what is actually newsworthy?
A useful starting point is a very simple question. Would somebody outside your company care? It sounds obvious, but it is a pretty good filter.
If you have signed a significant contract covering 20 vessels, people in your market may want to know about it. If you have completed a trial showing a 15% reduction in fuel consumption, that is interesting. If you are opening your first office in Asia as part of a larger push into the region, there could be a story there.
If you have bought a new coffee machine for the office, probably not. Although it might boost the office morale. News doesn’t have to be groundbreaking. It needs to be relevant to people beyond the walls of your own company.
Look at what is happening inside the company
One of the reasons companies think they don’t have news is that the marketing or communications team doesn’t always know everything that is happening elsewhere in the business.
The commercial team may have just secured an interesting new customer. Operations could be halfway through a technically challenging project. The engineering department might have solved a problem that affects the entire industry. Management may have a strong view on new regulation. These things are happening every day, but they don’t necessarily reach the person responsible for communications.
Finding PR opportunities therefore often starts with talking to people. Ask your commercial team what customers are talking about. Ask operations which projects they are proud of. Ask your technical people what they are testing. Ask management what is changing in the market. You will probably start finding stories.
Numbers often make the difference
There is another question we ask a lot. Can you put a number on it?
Compare these two announcements:
Company launches innovative solution to improve vessel efficiency.
Or:
Vessel trial reduces fuel consumption by 12.5%.
Which one would you rather read? The second immediately gives you something tangible. Shipping is full of numbers, and they can turn a fairly generic company announcement into something much more interesting.
How many vessels are involved? How much fuel was saved? How many tonnes of CO₂ were avoided? How much faster was the voyage? What is the capacity of the vessel? How many installations have now been completed? How large is the fleet?
You don’t need to fill a press release with statistics. Sometimes one strong number is enough to provide the hook that turns an update into a story.
Firsts are interesting too
We also like looking for firsts, such as for instance the first installation on a particular vessel type. The same applies to milestones. Your 100th installation can be interesting, particularly if it tells a bigger story about the adoption of a technology or the growth of a market. “We have installed another system” may not be particularly interesting. “We have completed our 100th installation” could be.
Your customers may be your best source of news
Some of the strongest PR stories don’t start with your company at all. They start with your customer. A product launch tells the market what you say your technology can do. A customer story shows what it actually did. That distinction matters.
If a shipowner has used your technology and achieved measurable results, there is immediately more substance to the story. You can talk about the vessel, the operational challenge, why the solution was selected and what happened after installation.
Better still, the customer can provide their own perspective.
The story is no longer simply a supplier saying its product is good. It becomes a real-world maritime story involving an actual vessel, actual operations and actual results.
Those are often the stories journalists want to read.
Not every story needs to be about your company
PR doesn’t always have to start with “Company X announces…” Sometimes the opportunity is the knowledge sitting inside your organisation. Perhaps your technical director has spent twenty years working on vessel efficiency. Your CEO has a strong view on consolidation in ship management. Your operations team sees first-hand how new regulation is affecting vessel owners. Your engineers are working every day on one of the challenges the industry is currently trying to solve. That expertise can also become PR.
An opinion piece, industry analysis, interview, commentary on breaking news or original research can put your people into relevant industry conversations without requiring a company announcement. This is particularly useful during periods when there are fewer contracts, launches or major corporate milestones to announce. You don’t always need news. Sometimes you need something worthwhile to say.
This is why we started doing PR workshops
Finding these stories is also the reason we organise PR workshops with maritime companies.
Rather than asking the marketing department to come up with a list of press releases, we bring different people around the table. Ideally, that includes a mix of management, commercial, operations, technology and marketing. Then we start talking.
What is happening in the company over the next six to twelve months? Which projects are underway? Which contracts or milestones might be coming up? What results can we share? Which maritime events are important? What developments in the industry do we have an opinion about?
We put everything on the table first and worry about whether it is newsworthy afterwards.
That usually produces an interesting result. Companies that started the meeting by saying they had very little news often finish with a list of potential press releases, customer stories, opinion pieces, interviews and other content ideas.
From there, we prioritise the strongest opportunities and build a PR calendar around them. It is often surprising how quickly an empty sheet starts filling up.
Then comes the harder question
Finding a potential story doesn’t automatically mean you should send a press release about it. Journalists receive a lot of information. Cision’s 2026 State of the Media research found that 66% of journalists rely on PR-provided content, including press releases and pitches, for story ideas. At the same time, 72% said fewer than a quarter of the pitches they receive are actually relevant to their work.
So, once you have identified your potential stories, be critical. Is this genuinely interesting outside our company? Is there a clear development? Do we have facts to support it? Does it connect to something happening in the wider industry? And which journalists and publications would actually care?
If you can’t answer those questions, the story may be better suited to LinkedIn or your own website. And that is perfectly fine.
LinkedIn post or press release?
Not every update needs to become a press release. A team outing, exhibition reminder, new colleague or photograph from a vessel can make excellent LinkedIn content without ever entering a journalist’s inbox. The trick is recognising when something has the potential to travel further.
We recently wrote about the difference between publishing your news on LinkedIn and distributing it to the maritime media. LinkedIn gives you direct access to your own network. PR gives your story the opportunity to reach audiences outside that network through independent maritime publications.
At Marconic, that means access to a network of more than 750 maritime publications and over 2,000 maritime journalists worldwide. But distribution only works if you have something worth distributing.
Start asking questions
So, if you are sitting there thinking your company doesn’t really have any news, don’t immediately start inventing topics for press releases.
Look at what is already happening. The projects, contracts, vessels, installations, trials, milestones and expertise are probably already there.
You just need to recognise the story.
Let’s continue the conversation
Frans Swarttouw
frans@marconic.com
I believe maritime companies have a much bigger opportunity to strengthen their digital visibility than many realise today.
With Marconic, we help shipping companies, maritime suppliers and offshore businesses distribute press releases into the right maritime media ecosystem while building long-term digital authority and discoverability.
Curious how that works in practice?
Feel free to reach out.
