How do you know whether a publicity campaign is moving before the final placements arrive? This article explains the difference between outreach, response, interest, booking, confirmation, and decline.
Updated: August 14, 2026
Publicity produces a lot of intermediate states: a pitch goes out and nobody replies; a producer asks for the book; an editor says she is considering it; a podcast requests dates; a bookstore says to circle back after the holidays. Those events mean different things, although publicity reporting has developed an impressive vocabulary for making all of them sound like “momentum.”
I dislike that word because it can conceal almost anything. Calling every weak signal momentum makes everybody feel better for about twelve minutes and leaves the client with no idea what changed.
I would rather name the state
- Contacted: a pitch was sent
- Followed up with: another approach was made
- Requested materials: a person asked to see something
- Considering: the outlet said it is evaluating the opportunity
- Interested: there is an affirmative signal that it may move forward
- Invited or booked: a date or concrete next step exists
- Confirmed: the commitment is in writing
- Declined: a person actually said no
A bookstore that asked for a PDF has not confirmed an event. An editor who never replied did not decline the book. A producer asking for availability has given a real signal, which is useful information, and it still has to become a booking. Precision sounds fussy until somebody is deciding whether a campaign is healthy, stalled, or being narrated into existence.
Earned media contains other people’s judgment, timing, taste, staffing, deadlines, news cycles, and competing stories. I cannot make those variables disappear. I can describe what is happening accurately enough that uncertainty does not get confused with ignorance.
There is something almost embarrassingly compatible between that and the conference theme because a campaign has a journey too. Grace Lee Boggs was obviously not developing a media-relations reporting framework, but the language is useful here. Critical connections tell you more than critical mass, and the route to an outcome matters if you are trying to understand whether you are actually getting closer to one.
