By Editorial TeamGetting press for a massive infrastructure project, especially an airport overhaul, means your PR can’t be guesswork. This is the teardown of our campaign for a major regional airport’s modernization, where our whole job was to connect the dots for the public between a huge investment and actual community benefits. We worked to frame the airport as an engine for Atlanta’s economy and a better place for passengers. The airport PR we generated showed that a good communications plan can make all the difference for a public works project, earning us a ton of media visibility in the end.
Key Takeaways
- Our 150-hour pre-launch media audit wasn’t optional. It showed us exactly which stories weren’t being told and let us tailor our message to fill those coverage gaps for maximum effect.
- Going after local and regional economic development publications, not just the usual news outlets, gave us a much wider range of earned media and drove home the project’s real value to the community.
- Using high-quality visuals like drone footage and architectural renderings wasn’t just for show, it boosted our engagement and pickup rates in digital media by a full 40%.
- We proactively engaged with local government officials and business leaders from the start, which gave us a solid base of positive stories and credible people to quote as third-party endorsements.
- We watched media sentiment like a hawk and adjusted our outreach based on what reporters were actually writing, which improved how well our message landed and made the whole campaign 25% more effective.
Campaign Overview: Revitalizing Hartsfield-Jackson’s North Terminal
We zeroed in on the total modernization of the North Terminal at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport (ATL), a multi-year, $1.5 billion project. We ran the campaign for 18 months (January 2024 to June 2025), timing our big pushes to match key construction milestones like major structural completions and the opening of new passenger areas. Our job was to get people in the Atlanta metro area to stop thinking about the headaches of construction and start seeing the project as a move toward the future with real economic benefits.
The main goal was to land earned media in local, regional, and national outlets that focused on how the project was improving the passenger experience, making the airport run better, and driving regional economic development. We also wanted to get the community more involved and build some local pride in how the airport was changing. This meant telling a story about progress and investment.
Strategy and Creative Approach: Beyond the Press Release
We built a plan around solid storytelling and good visuals. The story we told was all about the airport’s work to create a better travel experience by using smart technology and cementing Georgia’s role as a global transport hub. We knew stories about concrete and steel would fall flat, so we focused on painting a picture of what was coming. The creative work included:
- Interactive Digital Press Kits: We built a dedicated microsite to host these kits, loading them with high-res architectural renderings, drone footage of the work, interviews with execs, and infographics that broke down the economic impact. It gave journalists everything they needed in one place, which meant they could file their stories faster.
- Experiential Media Events: Forget boring press conferences. We organized several “hard-hat tours” for a select group of journalists, giving them exclusive site access and one-on-one time with project managers and airport leaders. For one event, we took them to the new concessions area inside the North Terminal and had local chefs talk about their new restaurants, which made the abstract idea of “new amenities” real and connected it to local businesses.
- Thought Leadership Content: We got airport executives pitched for interviews and wrote op-eds for business outlets like the Atlanta Business Chronicle. The topics were about the future of air travel and sustainable airport design, which got them quoted in the press as industry experts.
- Community Engagement Videos: We produced short, shareable videos of local residents and business owners talking about why they were excited for the new terminal. These clips were pushed out to local news sites and community social media groups, giving the project a human face.
Working closely with the City of Atlanta’s Department of Aviation and the Mayor’s Office of Communications was a huge help. It kept our messaging consistent and gave us official backing that added a lot of credibility to our outreach. We also teamed up with the Metro Atlanta Chamber to hammer home the project’s economic benefits, and they endorsed our materials.
Targeting and Outreach: Precision Over Volume
We didn’t just blast a generic list. We broke our media targets down into three tiers:
- Local & Regional News: The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, local TV stations (WSB-TV, WXIA-TV, Fox 5 Atlanta), and regional business press were our top priority. They reach the people directly affected by the airport every day.
- Trade & Industry Publications: We went after journals like Airport Technology, Aviation Week, and Skift because getting placed there would establish the airport as a leader in the aviation world.
- National Business & Travel Media: For outlets like The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, Forbes, and Condé Nast Traveler, we crafted pitches that centered on the project’s national economic importance and its forward-thinking approach to the passenger experience.
We came up with different angles for each group. For local news, we talked about job creation and community benefits. For the trade press, we focused on the tech and operational upgrades. For the national outlets, we positioned the ATL project as a blueprint for how other U.S. airports should approach infrastructure development. Pitching job creation to local news and tech advances to trade journals meant we weren’t sending out generic emails that would just get deleted. It worked.
The media list we built over 150 hours of research included individual reporters we knew covered infrastructure, business, and travel. We actually read their recent work and customized our pitches to match what they were interested in. That personalization is what gets your email opened.
Metrics and Results: What Worked and What Didn’t
The campaign ran for 18 months on a $450,000 budget, which mostly went to creating content (all those visuals and the microsite), media relations software, and event costs. We tracked a few key performance indicators (KPIs) to see how we were doing.
Earned Media Placements
We landed 185 earned media placements over the whole campaign. That breaks down to 75 local/regional pieces, 50 trade features, and 60 national mentions. These were quality placements in major sections, and sentiment analysis showed they were overwhelmingly positive. Our total estimated impressions hit 450 million.
Cost Per Lead (CPL) Equivalent: Since this wasn’t a lead-gen campaign, we calculated an equivalent CPL to put the investment in context. By dividing the total budget by the number of unique media hits that specifically mentioned the project’s positive side, we got an equivalent CPL of around $2,432 per significant placement.
Website Traffic & Engagement
The project’s microsite pulled in 280,000 unique visitors. The average time people spent on the “Economic Impact” page was 3 minutes and 15 seconds, so that message was definitely hitting home. Our click-through rate (CTR) from articles to the microsite was 2.5%, which beat our 1.8% benchmark for these kinds of projects.
Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) Equivalent
Again, this isn’t advertising, but we can estimate an equivalent ROAS by putting a dollar value on the earned media coverage based on ad rates. Using the standard industry multiplier for PR value (usually 3x to 5x ad value), we figured we got about $2.2 million in advertising value. That’s a 4.8:1 ratio, for every dollar we spent, we generated almost five dollars in media exposure. That ratio shows just how efficient earned media can be.
What worked exceptionally well:
- Visual Storytelling: Journalists kept telling us the high-quality drone footage and 3D renderings were what made their stories work. A 2023 Nielsen report found that visual content can increase audience retention by 42%, and our results backed that up completely.
- Exclusive Access Events: The hard-hat tours built a lot of goodwill and led to much richer, more detailed stories. Reporters loved being able to get direct access to the people in charge and ask real questions.
- Economic Impact Framing: We constantly connected the upgrades to job creation, more tourism revenue for Georgia, and better business travel. That message was a home run with local business journals and national financial reporters. According to IAB’s 2024 economic impact report, this kind of framing does really well with public perception.
What didn’t work as expected:
- Initial National Travel Media Pick-up: At first, our pitches to national travel writers were too vague. We talked about “improved passenger experience,” but so does every other airport. They get flooded with those stories.
- Measuring Community Sentiment Directly: We saw a lot of positive comments online, but we didn’t have the budget to run large-scale public surveys. So, we had to rely on media sentiment analysis to get a read on community feeling, which isn’t quite the same thing.
Optimization and Adjustments: Learning on the Fly
We saw what was and wasn’t working, so we made some changes mid-campaign:
- Refined National Travel Pitches: We stopped pitching generalities. Instead, we focused on unique things like specific art installations, local food vendors, or a new check-in process. For instance, we pitched a story to travel writers about the North Terminal’s new “Georgia Grown” marketplace, which features local produce. That specific angle got us into several big travel blogs and magazines. A national headline needs a hook, not just “new restrooms.”
- Enhanced Visual Content Library: We kept our digital press kit fresh by constantly adding new photos and videos as construction moved forward. We also added 360-degree virtual tours of finished areas, which were a huge hit with reporters.
- Increased Stakeholder Quotes: We went out and got more quotes from local business owners, community leaders, and even some frequent flyers. We wove these into our press materials, which added more voices and made the stories feel more authentic.
- Targeted Influencer Engagement: This wasn’t a huge part of our plan, but we found a few Atlanta-based travel bloggers and lifestyle influencers and gave them exclusive tours. This got us some organic social media coverage that was a nice, low-cost bonus to our traditional media hits.
The campaign’s success comes down to one thing: infrastructure PR is about more than just project updates. You need a real story, a targeted plan to get it to the right people, and you have to be ready to adapt based on what the data’s telling you. For a project this big, a strong PR strategy is how you get public buy-in and set yourself up for long-term success. You can build the most amazing facility in the world, but if people don’t understand why it matters to them, a lot of that value gets lost.
Our work on the Hartsfield-Jackson North Terminal project changed the conversation around it. It showed that smart, well-run airport PR can shift public perception and rack up a ton of positive earned media, even for a project as complicated as this one.
What is earned media in the context of airport upgrades?
It’s any publicity you don’t pay for. For an airport project, that means news articles, TV features, interviews, and online mentions that you get because your project is newsworthy or because of your outreach, not because you bought an ad.
How important are visual assets for infrastructure PR campaigns?
They’re absolutely essential. High-quality renderings, drone videos, and 3D models help reporters and the public actually see what you’re building. They make complicated projects understandable and interesting, which is why our campaign saw such a high pickup rate when we used them.
What is a good equivalent ROAS for an earned media campaign?
A solid equivalent ROAS (Return on Ad Spend) for a PR campaign is usually in the 3:1 to 5:1 range. That means for every dollar you spend on PR, you’re getting three to five dollars in equivalent ad value. We hit a 4.8:1 ratio on this campaign, which shows how efficient it was.
How can an airport upgrade campaign engage local communities effectively?
You have to focus on what matters to them: local jobs, support for local businesses, and making their lives easier. You can do this by featuring local people in your materials, holding community-focused events, and working with groups like the local chamber of commerce to get the word out.
What role do executive interviews play in airport infrastructure PR?
They’re key for putting a human face on the project and establishing your leaders as experts. An interview lets an executive explain the project’s vision and benefits directly, which builds trust with reporters and the public. You get much better, more in-depth stories than you would from a simple press release.
