3 steps to build a connection with the right sources.
The Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo has long been a Texas staple, celebrated for its community impact and support of future agriculture leaders. Each year, millions of people visit for the month-long event that, beyond the rodeo, includes concerts, shopping and dining.
But while the rodeo is widely recognized locally, its communications team had a goal to improve its national brand recognition in 2025.
“The team really wanted to target larger media outlets while maintaining our regional connections,” HLSR Communications Director Danielle Grossman said. “We want people to know about the work we’re doing to make sure the next generation of agriculture and livestock professionals is thriving. It’s really important to us to make sure that on a national level we’re recognized for the hard work we’re doing.”
Throughout the event, HLSR was able to increase its total journalist reach by 88% year-over-year and had more than 2,400 articles written between Feb. 2025 and March 2025, the dates of the rodeo. This included more than 40 articles from national news outlets.
“We developed relationships with regional reporters and asked them for recommendations on the perfect contacts to tell our story,” she said. “That thoughtful approach really paid off.”
The brand’s media campaign established how organizations looking to expand beyond their core audience can strategically form a plan to accomplish that.
Here’s how they did it, step by step.
Start planning early
To gain national attention, HLSR’s comms team began planning a year in advance. “You have to start before the current event even ends,” said Grossman. Planning for the 2025 show began immediately after the 2024 event wrapped. The team analyzed what worked, what didn’t and defined their goals for national exposure. Creating an impact report helped the team understand where they could improve. It included an “In the news” section to track where the rodeo was showing up. “We evaluated what we needed to do and the strategy behind achieving that goal,” she said. The team’s main goals were to build more national recognition. To do this, Grossman said building a stronger network of reporters to reach out to was essential. In May 2024, two months after the previous show, Grossman brought on a comms specialist with a journalism background, making them a team of two. This added a new dimension to the Rodeo’s communications strategy, she said.
Focus on relationship-building
The team also understood that national recognition doesn’t come overnight from bombarding reporters with press releases. Instead, they focused on cultivating meaningful relationships with reporters by attending live events where journalists would be, like conferences, and taking as many informal meetings as possible. Forming those early relationships included traveling across Texas to meet with reporters for coffee or lunch, Grossman said. Setting an initial meeting with no expectations helped build credibility. “We weren’t just pitching stories, we wanted to actually know the people writing them,” Grossman said. They asked journalists targeted questions to understand their needs like, “What’s your perfect story? What characters are you looking for?” Grossman said.
These conversations helped the team identify storylines that were compelling and more likely to get picked up nationally. Even when aiming nationally, HLSR fostered its regional connections first, she said. These local connections paved way for HLSR to identify journalists who could amplify their stories on a larger stage, turning regional goodwill into national media coverage.
Enhance the experience when possible
When they held the rodeo in Feb. 2025, Grossman and her team were ready for a large media presence, she said. She emphasized that hospitality was a huge part of building positive relationships with the media. Specifically, HLSR enhanced the press experience with a media center that offered coffee, Red Bull, food, charging outlets, a TV and a place to rest. Every night, they served a buffet dinner to every press member working in the stadium. “We wanted them to feel appreciated and prepared, because hospitality is huge,” she said. The idea was that by taking care of journalists and making their experience comfortable and professional, they could focus on covering the event well, which also helped build goodwill and trust for future coverage.
The results of the 2025 campaign set a new precedent for the event, Grossman said.
Forbes highlighted luxury experiences at the Rodeo, The New York Times called it the “Super Bowl of country culture,” and Fox News and News Nation aired multiple live segments. The Rodeo appeared on OWN’s “Heart and Hustle” and in a music video.
Courtney Blackann is a communications reporter. Connect with her on LinkedIn or email her at courtneyb@ragan.com.
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