Since I’ll never get to feature in one of Roxhill’s Friday Q&As, I thought I’d answer one of the questions here instead (and no, not the spirulina vs sauvignon one – you’ll just to take a wild guess at where I stand on that one). Rather, do I like images in a PR pitch?
The answer is an unequivocal yes, but not necessarily for the same reason as everyone else. I sense most journalists like them so they can judge whether or not to feature said object, and so that they can forward the image straight on to the production desk.
Both things are handy, of course, but the main point for me is simply to make the email look more enticing. We all know how off-putting a great big wodge of text can be, and a picture is the simplest way of breaking it up.
There’s a reason newspaper and magazines put so much time and effort into good design. You can write the most sparkling prose in the world, but it is wasted if the reader isn’t drawn in.
And the same rules apply to your press releases and emails as well. At our end of the business, we are mainly dealing in life’s frivolities, so make your emails look snappy and fun, not like a postgraduate thesis.
They say we form our opinion of people we meet within the first few seconds. I’m afraid the same is true of press releases.
