How To Use Reddit To Find Inspiration For Digital PR Campaigns
Where do the best stories come from? They come from real people, talking honestly about real problems. That’s exactly why Reddit has become one of the most powerful research tools recently. And in this blog post, we’re going to walk you through exactly how we used it to build a campaign that landed 27 pieces of coverage in publications like the Irish Independent, LadBible Ireland, Lovin Ireland and more for one of our car insurance clients.
Why Reddit?
If you’ve never used Reddit as a research tool, here’s a quick explanation.
It’s a massive online forum made up of thousands of communities (called subreddits) covering virtually every topic imaginable.
People discuss everything from niche hobbies to major life decisions and because it’s anonymous, they’re brutally honest about it.
That anonymity is the key. On Instagram or LinkedIn, people try to curate the perfect caption. On Reddit, they want the TRUTH. They share real fears, real frustrations, and real opinions without any filter. For a Digital PR campaign, that’s gold. You’re essentially getting unfiltered access to what your target audience actually thinks and feels not what they tell a focus group.
Step 1: Start with a simple google search
You don’t need a Reddit account or any special tools to begin. You just need Google.
For our car insurance client, we started by thinking about who their customers are.
Irish drivers, many of whom are learner drivers or newly qualified.
So we asked ourselves: What do learner drivers in Ireland genuinely struggle with?
Driving tests. Specifically, the wait to get one.
So we typed into Google: driving test “reddit”
That’s it. Adding the word “reddit” in quotes to any search query is a reliable shortcut to get relevant threads. Google indexes Reddit content exceptionally well, so you’ll land directly inside conversations that matter.
Step 2: Read the threads
The first result that caught our eye was a thread where someone was venting about waiting roughly 4.5 months since booking their driving test without hearing anything back.
On the surface, that might sound like a minor complaint. But learner drivers in Ireland are frustrated, anxious, and stuck in a kind of limbo. They’re paying for lessons. They’re practising routes. But they can’t get a test date.
One thread became a thread of threads. People piled in with their own waiting time stories…
You start to see patterns. You start to see a story. This is the research phase, and it’s genuinely enjoyable. You’re not analysing spreadsheets yet you’re reading about people’s experiences.
Step 3: Find the angle
In this phase ask yourself: What’s the story here, and can we back it up with data?
The Reddit thread told us that the experience of being a learner driver in Ireland varies dramatically depending on where you live. Some people were sailing through. Others felt like they were stuck in a black hole. That disparity county to county, test centre to test centre felt like a campaign.
Our idea was to reveal which counties in Ireland are the best and worst for learner drivers on the road to their full licence.
It’s relatable. It’s regionally relevant (critical for media pickup). And it had never been done before.
Step 4: Collect the data
A great Digital PR campaign lives or dies on the credibility of its data. Ours came from two publicly available, authoritative sources in Ireland.
- The Central Statistics Office (CSO) is an exceptional resource for all kinds of data, and one we’d recommend bookmarking for any future campaigns you need data for in Ireland.
We then pulled the latest 2025 data from both sources and compiled a set of key metrics for each county which included:
- Number of test centres
- Pass rates
- Waiting times
- Number of tests delivered
- Fatal collision rate
- Penalty points
Each county was then scored across these metrics and given a final score out of 600. The result was an index, a clear, defensible ranking of where in Ireland learner drivers have the best and worst chance of getting their licence.
Step 5: Create a linkable asset
Data on its own isn’t enough. We built an onsite asset. A long-form blog post published on the client’s website that presented the findings in full. This gave us a credible, linkable destination that journalists could reference and link back to. That’s the backbone of any strong Digital PR campaign. A story that lives on the client’s domain, and every piece of coverage drives traffic and links back to it.
Step 6: Personalise the outreach
This is where a lot of PR campaigns fall short. They send the same pitch to every journalist and hope something sticks. We took a different approach. Each email was personalised for both regional and national publications, tailoring the angle to what would matter most in that specific county and their audience.
A journalist covering Galway doesn’t want the national average. They want to know how Galway ranks, what the wait times are there, and what that means for their learner drivers. Give them that, and you’ve done half their job for them.
The results
27 pieces of coverage.
In news publications including:
And more…
The campaign didn’t stop at news outlets. Because the data was regionally specific and shareable, it took on a life of its own on social media. Picked up by high-reach Instagram pages like LadBible Ireland, Lovin Ireland, iRadio and Beat 102 103, all with huge, engaged followings across Ireland.
That social spread dramatically extended the lifespan of the campaign. A piece of coverage in a regional outlet might be read once and forgotten. But when that same story gets picked up by an Instagram page with tens of thousands of followers, your client’s brand is sitting at the centre of a conversation that reaches their exact target audience.
How to apply this to your category
You don’t need to be in the car insurance space for this to work. The step-by-step approach works across any industry.
The key is thinking about what genuinely worries or frustrates your ideal customer and then searching for that on Reddit.
A few examples to inspire your next search:
- Home security / alarm systems?
Search: burglaries Ireland “reddit”
You’ll find threads full of genuine fear and first-hand accounts. That’s campaign territory.
- Mortgage or financial services?
Search: first time buyer Ireland “reddit”
Anxiety about deposits, rates, all of it is there.
- Health or wellness brand?
Search: [relevant condition or concern] Ireland “reddit”
Real experiences, real questions, real frustrations.
The formula is simple: [topic related to your customer’s pain points] + [your market] + “reddit”
From there, look for patterns. Look for the question that keeps coming up. Look for the emotion underneath the post. That’s your story.
The key takeaways
- Search your category on Reddit. Add “reddit” to any topic in Google and look for recurring frustrations that’s where campaign ideas live.
- Think in pain points, not products. Search for what keeps your customers up at night, not your brand. Let the audience lead you to the story.
- Validate with data. A Reddit thread gives you the insight, public data gives you the campaign. The CSO is a great place to start for Irish campaigns.
- Build a linkable asset. Publish the findings on your client’s website first. Journalists need somewhere credible to link back to.
- Go regional with your outreach. If your data has a regional angle, tailor each pitch to what matters in that specific county or city.
- Pitch beyond news outlets. High-reach social and radio pages love regionally specific, shareable content. Don’t leave them off your list.