Press Association rebrands as PA Media as the news agency pursues a digital future

The Press Association today rebrands as PA Media as part of the news agency’s wider strategy to target more digital and non-media customers.

The new name is part of a wider brand refresh across the news agency’s parent company; PA Group becomes PA Media Group, while new branding is rolled out across the organisation’s portfolio of PA-branded businesses, including PA Images, the commercial picture arm, and PA Training, which provides courses for journalists and media professionals.

An in-house team created a new suite of logos for the umbrella brand, PA Media Group, as well as PA Media, PA Images and PA Training. Workshops held across the Group at the start of the process captured staff input which shaped the new designs.

Supporting the wider Group strategy

The new brand structure sees the three PA-branded businesses positioned alongside five other specialist media companies spanning data, technology, marketing and communications, all acquired in recent years as part of an ongoing diversification strategy to reduce PA Media Group’s reliance on the traditional media sector.

Clive Marshall, Chief Executive of PA Media Group, said, “Having a distinct umbrella brand enables us to better showcase the range of specialisms within the PA Media Group as we target a broader range of customers.

The new brand structure will also accommodate organic growth within the organisation, as well as new business acquisitions.”

Updating an iconic news brand for a digital future

The rebrand is the latest phase in the ongoing digital transformation of PA Media, the Group’s flagship news brand. Established in 1868 to serve regional newspaper proprietors, the agency’s diverse global customer base today includes digital pure plays, betting websites, out-of-home advertising companies and corporates.

PA Media’s new-look platforms will be the vehicle for more new products set to launch for media and non-media customers in the coming months.

The agency moved to digital-first production in 2017, introducing Ready, a feed of ready-to-publish articles aimed at digital publishers, which combined words, images, video, graphics, social media and more. This was followed by Now, a multimedia breaking news alerts service.

This year the agency will launch Create, a newswire service allowing newsrooms to search all PA content and select elements to tailor their own coverage of developing stories. An updated version of Mediapoint, PA’s news monitoring service aimed at PR and Communications professionals, will also become available.

Marc Koskela, Head of Marketing at PA Media Group, said, “Our new branding sets us up well for a digital future. The clean design works well in a range of digital environments and better reflects the modern, dynamic business that we are.

“It was important to retain a link to our heritage through the emphasis on ‘PA’. The honeycomb motif invokes the qualities of creativity, accuracy, immediacy and collaboration that exist within the wider Group. The hexagon also has a range of strong, design applications such as watermarks, picture collages, exhibition stands and much more.”

Today’s rebrand sees the introduction of a new PA Media Group website, as well as updated designs across existing digital properties, including the renamed news agency website.