Design the program that takes it.
Planners take the positioning decision and turn it into an executable program. Angles, journalist targets, outlet mix, message variants per channel, sequence and timing.
Translate positioning into a program plan.
Planners take the Strategist's recommendation and build the plan that takes it. They curate the media list, develop angle variants, map channels, and set the sequence. The deliverable is a full editorial calendar: who gets pitched, with what angle, in what order, and on what timing. Nothing is left for a human to reconstruct from a brief.
Explore program executionMedia list curation
Shadow's Planner scores every journalist in the Narrative Graph for fit against the chosen position. The top-ranked list ships with beat notes, recent coverage, and a tailored pitch angle for each reporter.
Angle development
One position, many angles. The Planner generates angle variants that map to outlet priorities: business press wants the customer story, trade press wants the product detail, tier-one wants the executive stance.
Channel mapping
Earned, owned, social, and paid work differently. The Planner allocates the positioning across channels with message variants calibrated to the format and the audience each channel reaches.
Sequence optimization
Order matters. The Planner sequences placements so exclusives land before syndications, thought leadership seeds before product news, and executive social amplifies rather than preempts. Timing is optimized against news cycle windows.
Account Manager (planning)
The weekly ritual of updating a media list, cross-referencing recent bylines, and assembling an editorial calendar is continuous in Shadow. Account Managers review and approve rather than assemble.
Media Relations lead
Maintaining journalist relationships stays human. Assembling, scoring, and segmenting the list does not. Shadow's Planner runs on live beat maps that update as journalists change outlets, beats, or tone.
The Account Manager's spreadsheet month.
Program planning is where comms work goes to die. Account Managers maintain target lists in spreadsheets, Media Relations leads rebuild those lists every quarter, and planners reconcile the two at the start of every engagement. Shadow's Planner replaces the spreadsheet and the reconciliation. The plan is live, versioned, and grounded in the same graph every other agent uses.
Matching is the mechanism.
The Planner runs four matching passes. Position to angle. Angle to journalist. Journalist to outlet. Outlet to channel. Each pass uses live data from the Narrative Graph: coverage patterns, beat histories, syndication routes, audience overlap. The result is a plan where every element connects to every other element, and every element has a reason.
Talk to usPosition to angle
The Planner generates angle candidates from the position and scores them for news value, evidence support, and differentiation. Weak angles are discarded before they reach a journalist list.
Angle to journalist
Each surviving angle is matched to journalists with beat fit, outlet priority, and tone alignment. Relationships and past outreach are weighted so the Planner does not recycle cold contacts.
Journalist to outlet
Many journalists write for multiple outlets. The Planner chooses the outlet placement where the angle carries most weight and syndication downstream is most likely.
Outlet to channel
Earned placements seed owned content, social amplification, and paid promotion. The Planner sequences the channel cascade so each placement multiplies rather than competes with the others.
Pitch-ready briefs
Every entry in the media list is a pitch-ready brief. Writer agents convert the brief into a draft pitch in seconds, with voice and facts grounded in the client's evidence.
Live re-planning
When coverage lands or an angle fatigues, the Planner adjusts the sequence and Writers work from the updated plan. The program breathes with the news cycle.
From plan to production.
Once the plan is approved, Writers pick it up and draft. The handoff is granular: each journalist on the list comes with an angle, a pitch hook, message variants, and a deadline. Writers do not rebuild the logic; they execute against a brief that already contains every decision. This is how a two-person team runs a program that used to take six.
Meet the WritersQuestions about Planners
What does a Planner produce?
A program plan. That includes a ranked media list, angle variants per outlet, channel mix, message variants per audience, and a sequence with timing. The plan is executable: a Writer can pick it up and draft without another round of briefing. The plan is also versioned, so changes are trackable.
How does Shadow build a media list?
Planners score journalists against the chosen position using beat fit, recent coverage, outlet authority, and tone alignment. Shadow's Narrative Graph profiles 200,000+ sources continuously, so the list reflects who is covering the category this week, not last year. Every name comes with a pitch angle calibrated to that journalist.
Who does the Planner replace?
Account Managers doing program planning and Media Relations leads curating target lists. Planning is pattern work: matching positions to angles, angles to journalists, journalists to outlets, outlets to channels. Shadow's Planner runs that matching against live data rather than against a spreadsheet last updated in Q2.
Can humans override the Planner?
Always. The Planner's output is a recommendation with explicit reasoning. Strategists and account leads can swap journalists, reorder the sequence, adjust the channel mix, or change message variants. Every override is logged, and Shadow learns from the pattern so future plans weight preferences correctly.
See a program plan assembled from your positioning.
Book a demo and we'll show the Planner turn a live position into a full editorial calendar.