Valley PR Blog

Everyone started at the bottom

By Charlotte Shaff on July 17th, 2008 In Best Practices

If you left this morning’s PRSA Media Breakfast with only one good nugget of information, I hope it was “Everyone starts at the bottom.”

I will admit that I never really thought about the brutal reality of this until Janet Perez, Editor-in-Chief of Arizona Business Magazine (and five sister publications) explained why profile features rarely run in their magazines. The other ladies on the panel agreed, Allie Bell, Managing Editor of AZRE and Christina Leonard, Editor of bizAZ and Arizona Woman.  Unless your client is a well-known businessperson or they made 100 million dollars in less than a year, there probably won’t be a three page spread on one person in a business magazine. Because guess what? Everyone started out at the bottom. Everyone knows the end of a Hollywood popcorn movie because we know the routine. Struggle, hardship, hard work, persistance, stumble, success. Not really original, right? So, if you are going to pitch a client, read the magazine, craft your pitch and find out if they could fit a special feature like “Leisure Feature” or “Day in the Life“. And plan ahead by reading the editorial calendars.

Janet Perez may be a familiar face to some of you. She does the business news on KTVK’s Good Morning Arizona at 4:30am. She also mentioned there would be a new publication coming in the fall “1000 People To Know”. I’ll have to get more details on that and share soon.

Allie is an emailer like me. She said most of the items PR folks with Real Estate clients need are on the website. Go there first before you inquire with her.

Christina admitted that unless your email captures her within a few sentences, she’ll probably delete it. So make sure you give her good stuff off the top with a subject line that is relevant, local and directs her to the specific topic, like “Lessons Learned”.

I recognize a lot of freelancers who write for their publications. I wanted to know if we should just pitch the freelancer or the editor. All three ladies said to pitch the editor first. If the idea is a go, they’ll delegate it to the right freelancer. If you pitch the freelancer and they want to do the story, but the editor doesn’t feel that it is the right fit, they can’t ethically pass it along to another writer.

As we hear time and time again, try to offer up a pitch with relevance and information for the readers of a publication. The client may be pushing for a big profile, but unless they are Jerry Colangelo or Eddie Basha, they gotta start at the bottom and hopefully with you as their public relations expert you can work on a strategic plan to get them to that high profile status someday.

Thank you to Alison Bailin of HMA Public Relations for letting me use the blog photo.

(L-R: Alison, Christina Leonard, Janet Perez, Jolinda Nestor (PRSA Breakfast Committee) and Allie Bell)

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