Pitching To Press 101

In the industry, especially fashion more than any other, press coverage is essential to help clients grow to become widely known and increase sales. Many popular brands are out there, so it is difficult to set your brand apart from others. Below are some fashion PR agency tips and tricks to help your brand increase its awareness and how to approach journalists.

1. Know your audience

Understand with the journalist what features they focus on is it shopping pages or editorials? ‘I would love to know if you could feature this for any upcoming shopping pages’ /upcoming shoots you have. Are you selling a luxury or high-street product? Understand which publications you are targeting. You will need to dig until you find the perfect target media list for every kind of pitch, whether a new launch or a trend alert.

2. Snappy headline

Zone them straight away with a subject line that draws them in. Press receive 100’s of Fashion PR agency emails a day so make sure that yours is the one that they open and reply to. Often if you are doing a quick outreach to see who is compelling a certain theme for the year like Christmas gift guides ‘Quick Question’ guarantees a reply. Instead of ‘The Best Jewellery This Valentine’s From *brand name*’ make it ‘Jewellery to lust over this Valentine’s Day’ make your email shine in their inbox.

3. Get straight to the point

Start the email addressing exactly what you are pitching for in the first paragraph. The second paragraph should be some brand information and why it is important for the outreach at the time of outreach. Then followed by any hi-res imagery/assets so they have all the information there ready to use for any feature that could work.

4. The time you outreach

Ask journalists when the best time is for pitching. Depending on whether they are an online publication or print all of them are different. Many would say Fridays as they are quieter than other days or mornings or afternoons. Monday is always busy as fashion PR agencies have the plan for the week and then begin outreach on that day. Do your research and note down which is the best time, so your pitch doesn’t get swallowed. Lastly, allow time for the launch of a certain collection to launch date, for example, long lead work on 3-4 month lead time so don’t send a launch a few weeks before.

Beauty PR. Fashion PR. UK PR agencies.