A friend of mine who has her own PR company was celebrating the other week having had a full page image of one of her brands in a daily newspaper.
The piece had taken her by surprise. She’s been working on this accessories brand for a year and has been doing what she’s meant to do – sending out emails to the fashion desks with press packs, look books, new imagery, product information, following up, a fair amount of chasing. You know the score.
But she’d had nothing in response from this desk. Not a peep. Then this dream piece of press appears.
She’s been in the business for a while, but still, she was bemused. “Why don’t they just at least acknowledge receipt of all the stuff I send them?” she asked.
The only answer I could give her was: that’s how it works sometimes. Particularly if you’re a small brand. When you’re on a fashion desk on a newspaper your in-box at all times resembles several editions of the Yellow Pages – if any of you can remember that concept – a never-ending ream of emails that grows exponentially every time you take a Diet Coke break.
You can’t reply to them all but somehow you remember the good ones. You log them in a file, or the back of your memory and when it seems like a good idea to do a piece about the best ‘back-to-school’ bags, you pluck out that brilliant artisan brand with the lovely imagery and give it a full page.
And it’s all because a clever PR did the groundwork.
