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INSIDE FASHION PR

I am a beauty publicist and have been for years, so between my day job and the launch of BeautyComm Intensive, I talk about beauty PR pretty extensively.  However, I did spend five years of my career working in fashion PR for one of the most iconic women’s wear designers in the world, Diane von Furstenberg.  Since so many of you are interested in fashion PR specifically, this post is for all of you who want to know the ins and outs of being a fashion publicist.

When Diane hired me to oversee PR for her brand, I was nervous at first because I only had a beauty and consumer goods PR background – I did not know anything about fashion.  I expressed this to Diane and she said, “PR is PR. If you can get press on lipsticks, you can get press on dresses.”  It isn’t quite that black & white, but what she was trying to say is that the overall idea and strategy could be applied to PR for anything.  So, when I describe what fashion PR is, you have to keep in mind what PR is in general, which is maintaining a public image for a business, organization, or high-profile person(s) – sometimes all of the above, which was the case with DVF.

As the Director of PR for DVF, I worked in-house and spent my days focusing on gaining exposure and increasing awareness about Diane and the fashion collections.  This included communicating with editors and producers, working with stylists and market editors to pull collection samples, sending press clothing samples for shoots, working with celeb stylists to dress VIP client for events, setting up photo shoots and interviews for Diane, managing DVF press offices and/or agencies internationally, and planning events including our biggest event twice a year – New York Fashion Week.  You would do the same type of work at a fashion PR agency, but for multiple brands.

My job in fashion PR opened so many doors for me, including one that led me to FIT to go back to school at night to learn about fashion as an art form. I learned about the history of fashion, design, fashion greats, etc.  Having this knowledge helped me become a better fashion publicist.  The truth is you cannot sell something without knowing it inside and out, and in order to be a convincing fashion publicist, I had to know as much about fashion as I could.  Then I learned about fashion on the job, which is the best way to learn about the fashion business. 

I think it is important to stress that as glamorous as it sounds to say you work in fashion PR, it is a lot of work.  When you start out, it is a lot of grunt work, late hours, attending a lot of fashion events and parties, and schlepping samples from magazines to shoots to celebrities.  If you have ever seen Devil Wears Prada, I assure you there is truth to how that movie portrays working in the fashion industry – the good and the bad.  It is absolutely one of the greatest jobs I have ever had, but it was also one of the hardest.

But I want to be positive.  There are also a lot of perks… You get to work with amazing designers, sometimes you get a clothing allowance or discount, meet incredible people, attend fun events and parties, most likely get to work with celebrities in some way, and get to exercise your creativity.  The pay is little when you start out, but if you pay your dues and prove yourself, you can make a good living as you work your way up. 

If you want to break into fashion PR, I really suggest working in fashion PR first.  Intern at a fashion PR agency and try to make sure you get exposure to the work that goes on during Fashion Week, which will really test your ability to handle the pressure, the very long and late hours, and the fast-paced, unpredictable nature of the business.  See if you can keep up and if you enjoy the experience.  If you can survive Fashion Week, you can survive fashion PR.

A lot of shows portray fashion PR as an incredibly fast-paced, high-stress, intense job that is dominated by 99% percent young girls who are catty and bitchy and competitive and speak like a bunch of valley girls from the movie Clueless.  (Beauty PR girls can get a bad rap too.)  In some cases, that is the reality, but there are always exceptions.  I have found that most people end up in fashion PR because they have this deep passion for fashion in general.  In that case, Ralph Lauren said it best, “Fashion is not necessarily about labels.  It’s not about brands.  It’s about something else that comes from within you.”  Now who doesn’t want to do PR for that?

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PR Consulting, a fast-growing, dynamic New York-based communications and PR agency, is seeking a Senior Account Executive and Account Executive to support luxury beauty, fragrance, and skincare brands. The roles will support the fragrance, skincare, and makeup teams with project management, media outreach, as well as admin duties.

The agency specializes in communications strategies across beauty, fashion, lifestyle, media, and hospitality sectors, and is quickly expanding into other categories.

ROLE & RESPONSIBILITIES

  • Manage and develop media lists
  • Support team with press outreach and media relationship building
  • Proactive media monitoring and maintaining trackers of media and pending placements
  • Contribute to story angle development, team brainstorms, writing pitches, and event planning and coordination
  • Research projects as they occur, including media, sponsorship and event opportunities
  • Support US and Global initiatives 
  • Daily account management duties, including media send-outs, meeting planning, updating   contact lists, developing recaps and agendas and maintaining subscriptions
  • Fulfill international press requests
  • Create client-facing collateral such as clip reports

QUALIFICATIONS

  • 2+ years (AE) or 4-5 years (SAE) experience working full-time at a public relations agency in the beauty or lifestyle industry
  • Knowledge of and/or high interest in luxury beauty category
  • Must have established online/blogger and regional media contacts
  • Ability to thrive in a fast-paced, deadline oriented, high-energy environment
  • Ability to multi-task and work on several accounts simultaneously
  • Excellent written and verbal communications skills
  • Superior organization skills
  • Attention to detail
  • Must be proficient in MS Office including PowerPoint, Excel and Adobe and Cision Point.
  • Proficient in Filemaker Pro a plus

Please send cover letter and resume to: Quenna Sanchez, Quenna@prconsulting.net

BREAKING NEWS! BeautyComm Intensive just announced a special STUDENT RATE of $400, which is $200 off the regular price!!! The exposure you will get to two beauty PR pros, beauty editors from top magazines, HR reps, the teams at Cision and Tribe Dynamics who will certify you on their platforms and the networking you will be able to do makes this rate the deal of a lifetime!

Act now!

www.beautycommintensive.com

Do you have to have any previous public relations experience for your workshop?

Asked by
Anonymous

No experience necessary. You will get so much out of the workshop because of that…

A few weeks ago, Charlotte Giver flattered me in the biggest way by featuring me on her incredibly chic online magazine Your Coffee Break. I was excited about it because, well, it was an amazing profile and Q&A, but also because she is based in the UK, which meant The PR Closet was recognized across the pond! The beauty of social media is that even though Charlotte and I have never met, we were able to discover each other’s work and connect in an effort to eventually celebrate each other’s accomplishments. A self-described “coffee addict,” Charlotte launched Your Coffee Break to help women move up the career ladder.  Charlotte says she wakes up every morning excited and motivated to do what she can to help women in their careers around the world.  A mentor at heart, it was only a matter of time before our paths crossed. That said, I am honored to feature Charlotte in today’s Spotlight On…  

Name: Charlotte Giver

Age: 25

Position/Company: Founder and Editor, Your Coffee Break

Describe your job in one sentence: I have the privilege to meet with industry professionals, bloggers, designers and celebrities on a daily basis, so I usually tell people that my job is a lot like people watching but on a totally different level.

Where did you go to college? Bournemouth University in the UK

What was your major? Public Relations (BA)

First internship? What were your responsibilities? What did you learn? My first internship was at Red Light PR in Los Angeles. And I loved it there – such a positive atmosphere and I worked with a wonderful team! I was assisting the Fashion Director and my daily responsibilities were everything from updating databases, pulling clothes for editorial requests and tracking clothing items on loan, to assisting stylists and celebrities who came to pull clothes from the showroom. The internship taught me the process behind getting your client’s clothes and accessories featured in the media or seen on celebrities and the red carpet. The perfect internship for any aspiring PR professionals looking to work in entertainment or fashion PR!

First job in PR? My first PR job was at Suitelife Barcelona.

Did you move to another city (like NY/LA) to pursue your career in PR? Yes, I moved from the UK to LA to pursue a career in Public Relations, but I am a bit of a traveller and big city girl anyways. I have lived and worked in New York, Los Angeles, Barcelona and London and I think that even if I had chosen a different career path I would still end up in a big city.

Favorite part of your job? I love my job so it’s hard to only pick one thing. However, my favorite part of running a magazine for the professional woman is to be able to help women in careers across the world and getting positive feedback from our readers. When you do something you love, it doesn’t really feel like a job.  

Least favorite part of your job? The stress. I often hear myself saying ‘if only there were more hours in the day…’

Favorite brands (brands you think are launching great PR campaigns)? DKNY (because of their great PR campaigns and social media), Oscar de la Renta, Rebecca Minkoff, Jaeger and J.Crew.  

Biggest accomplishment so far in your career?  The biggest accomplishment so far in my career is setting up Your Coffee Break Magazine by myself – from a simple idea to running the business from our office in London’s Covent Garden and working together with luxury department stores such as Selfridges, Liberty and Harrods. We have worked closely with Selfridges for over a year now and working with the store has definitely been an adventurous journey and has opened up a lot of doors!  This year, I am excited to start working with Liberty, London’s equivalent of America’s Saks Fifth Avenue. We just got approached by the London department store a few months ago and we will begin working together this April.

Biggest lesson learned to date in your career? The biggest lesson learned is to be very careful with whom you bring on board within your company because you never know who you can trust. Make sure you have everything in writing!

Who were/are your mentors? I have had different mentors throughout my career but when it comes to Your Coffee Break, I have to give some credit to my boyfriend. He is working in Finance and has helped me with everything from putting together excel sheets and invoices to contract agreements and contacting clients.

Best work advice? One of the most important yet easy pieces of advice that people seem to forget is making a daily task list and organizing your workload in order to get the most out of your day.

As a publicist, you can’t live without your…cell phone, access to my e-mail, contacts and coffee – of course.

In order to succeed in PR, you…have to have excellent writing and communication skills and know how to pitch! In my opinion, you have to be approachable and outgoing yet professional and confident. 

If you weren’t a publicist, you’d be…a copy writer. I’ve had a lifelong passion for writing.

What is your website, twitter handle, or anything else you’d like to promote?

Twitter: @UrCoffeeBreak

Facebook: facebook.com/yourcoffeebreak

As part of my PR Tools Series—for which I have already covered daily media monitoring tools and free social media management tools—today’s post is about paid measurement programs.  These tools help you identify the activities, content and websites that send the most traffic to your site.  Some also track digital media mentions of your products and services, including sentiment and share of voice.  The catch is you get what you pay for, and these platforms are all about the Bejamins, baby.  So, I’ll jump right into it and introduce PR Tools: Social Media Management, Paid:

CisionPoint – You are probably familiar with Cision, but CisionPoint takes Cision to the next level, designed to handle many tasks at the same time.  With multiple tabs similar to a web browser, you can jump from task to task with ease.  CisionPoint takes you from start to finish of a PR project: you can research target media using the extensive media database, contact the media through lists generated using the PowerSearch functionality, schedule the distribution of press releases, track media coverage of a client, and see which PR campaigns are most successful.  PR agencies can benefit because CisionPoint makes it possible to manage multiple clients’ media relations efforts and communication streams, and track interactions with journalists, including emails, phone calls, press release distributions and personal notes.  Finally, CisionPoint allows PR professionals to guage their PR campaigns in regards to messaging, region, product and brand.  You can prove the ROI in your campaigns and compare your results to that of your competitors.

Radian6 – An incredible social listening tool used by more than half of FORTUNE 500 companies, Radian 6 provides social media monitoring across the web, allowing users to track real-time conversations regarding their product and/or brand.  You begin with monitoring a simple keyword or phrase and end up with intricate pieces of data that you can analyze.  You can view a demo or chat with an expert on their website to learn more.

Sprout Social – Sprout Social is a good product for organizations with relatively simple needs. It has excellent monitoring and listening capabilities.  You never miss a message because of the single stream inbox, so no consumer ever has to go unanswered.  You can post and schedule messages to Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, reporting is unlimited, and keyword monitoring helps you keep tabs on social conversations about your brand.  Three levels of membership are offered: Standard at $39/month, Deluxe at $59/month, or Premium at $99/month, and all plans include a free 30-day trial.

Sprinklr – Known for its big brand name client roster including Samsung, Microsoft, Target, Nike, and Virgin America, Sprinklr is a wonderful tool for companies with large budgets, and since you can customize the reporting dashboard however you want, I cannot tell you what the exact cost is because it depends on how you use it. So, how do you use it?  Sprinklr offers its clients a full suite of social media management tools to help them post across social networks, analytics, and measuring engagement.  Specifically, it offers what it calls the Social Intent Revelation Engine (SIREn) platform, which has two goals: First is to make sure the largest companies can engage at scale with millions of customers (which they termed Social@Scale), and second is to make sure clients can speak using the voice of the brand regardless if the interaction occurs on Facebook, Twitter, or elsewhere.  The downside is the steep learning curve.  It takes a bit of time to learn how to navigate the platform, but is worth the investment—literally and figuratively—in the end.

Trackur – Starting at $27 a month, this tool helps you keep track of conversations online about your brand, allowing you to take action on your data as opposed to just collecting it and creating fancy reports. You can monitor articles and news, proactively reach out to press, and send inbound links to clients. With their “Ultimate Plan” you can create a customizable dashboard for your brand, but you can try it risk free with the free trial before committing to a spend.

Vocus – This marketing & PR software helps with everything from reaching journalists, bloggers and customers to identifying and monitoring social media influencers.  Vocus has an extensive media database, can distribute news releases to targeted media, monitors conversations about your brand, tracks social conversations to engage influencers online, and provides immediate insight into the effectiveness of your campaigns and traction of your competitors. You can sign up for a free trial before opening up your wallet.

So, I wrap up this series by saying that one size does not fit all, and the same goes for PR Tools. Make sure the tools you subscribe to all complement each other with little to no overlap, produce the results you need, and ultimately meet your business objectives. Also, make sure they make your job easier and not harder. Too many tools can make for increased responsibilities that make you less productive.  Remember that you are the most important PR tool there is.

Join @PRSSANational on Twitter on Tuesday, May 14th, for a LIVE twitter chat with me at 9PM EST. I will be answering all PR related questions real time. Just tweet your questions to @PRSSANational and @ThePRCloset. Hope to chat with you all soon!

Is the fashion big in a city like Miami?

Asked by
Anonymous

It depends on what you are looking to do in fashion, but yes, there is a fashion presence in Miami. For example, swim fashion week is hosted in Miami every year, and there are some great agencies like the Patton Group that have fashion clients. With nightlife being so big in Miami, fashion fits into that scene, so you can definitely have a career in fashion PR in Miami.

I am an event management major looking to work in entertainment. During my search for jobs, I've found most entertainment event management jobs are within PR agencies. Would there be a place for me to specialize in events in a PR firm or would I need to cover all aspects of PR?

Asked by
Anonymous

If you worked at a PR agency, you will probably have to do PR, as event planning usually falls within our job description. If you just want to be an event planner, that is fine too, but you’ll have to work for a company that strictly plans events like Olivier Cheng, Abigail Kirsch, AO Productions, Fly Productions, etc. Some large agencies have event planning arms, but they are becoming less popular because publicists can and do plan events as well. 

I have recently started following The PR Closet, as a young, aspiring communications professional. I have been back and forth with what to do with the rest of my life and after many years and much thought, I know that I am meant for the big league in the PR world, (at least some day). I am starting a blog to begin creating a personal image for myself, do you have any tips on what to included or stay away from as I begin this journey in the blogging realm? Cheers! -- Ready to follow my dreams.

Asked by
Anonymous

Make sure your blog has a point of view.

Make sure you actually have something to say.

Blog about something you are passionate about.

Make sure your grammar and spelling is perfect.

Have fun with it!

For BeautyComm, since it's in the summer, does going into your senior year of high school the upcoming fall count as being a senior to attend? Or do you have to be a senior the previous year?

Asked by
Anonymous

If you are going to be a high school senior, you can attend. Hope to see you there!

I am SO very proud to have partnered with longtime friend and beauty vet Tiffani Carter-Thompson to launch BeautyComm Intensive, 2-day interactive communications workshops focusing on how to break into and succeed in beauty PR.

Beauty PR is an industry that, for many, is challenging to break into. BeautyComm Intensive will prepare you to get your foot in the door and launch your beauty PR career with the skills and wisdom that only veteran beauty publicists can share.  Over two jam-packed days (we call it Intensive for a reason), you will immerse yourself in the world of beauty public relations through the eyes of beauty PR experts who have been working in the industry for more than 20 years combined. The 2-day course will give you invaluable tools to help you jump start your career.

In this class, you will learn how to:

  • Develop a targeted, tactical PR plan that generates results
  • Execute a targeted media outreach program geared to the needs of your client
  • Draft attention-getting media pitch letters
  • Distribute a news release
  • Work with traditional and online media
  • Develop a social media strategy
  • Conduct research and measure results
  • Create am impactful PR focused resume that leaves a lasting impression

Not only will you learn beauty PR 101, but you will also be exposed to people in the industry you would otherwise not have access to based on Alexis’s and Tiffani’s unsurpassed relationships.

For more information or to register, visit: www.beautycommintensive.com

We hope to see you there!

Name: Ashley Barrett

Position/Company: Vice President Global Public Relations, Coty Prestige. Fragrance brands include Calvin Klein, Marc Jacobs, Balenciaga, Chloe, Madonna, Jennifer Lopez, Bottega Veneta, ck one color cosmetics, etc.

Where did you go to school? Tufts University

What was your major? International Relations

First internship (what were responsibilities)? In college, I had internships at a magazine called Teen Voices written by teenage girls that was tied to a non-profit to empower young women, as well as in the PR department at the Hard Rock Café. Gaining experience on the editorial and promotions side of the industry has served me well. Internships can unlock so many doors. They give you the experience and contacts to launch your career.

Did you move to NY to pursue your career in PR? Yes. I was working in Dublin, Ireland as a magazine columnist at a young women’s fashion magazine. My work visa ran out, and my column was about being an American girl living in Dublin, so I had to leave before I turned into a pumpkin!

There was never a question that I was going anywhere but NYC. When I got here, I pursued both editorial and PR jobs, but once I saw the scope of what I would actually be able to do working in an entry-level editorial job, PR became my clear choice. I found a job at an incredible, boutique luxury goods-focused agency – Nike Communications – where I say that I earned my Master’s Degree in PR. I worked on all categories of brands, from Jaguar to Moet champagne, and constantly had to make contacts and come up with new press angles. Working at an agency is the best way to hone your craft. Keeping your job depends on delivering results week after week.

Favorite part of your job? The people. I have the pleasure and privilege of working with incredibly talented and creative people from all over the world. It’s a dream come true to work with the fashion designers, celebrities, marketing visionaries and editors that I get to collaborate with every day.

Least favorite part of your job? Negotiating exclusives and protecting our PR assets. Everything leaks!

Brands you think are launching great PR campaigns? I am inspired by what is happening in the digital space and how brands are finding new ways of creating and sharing content about their brands and forging blogger collaborations.

Biggest accomplishment so far in your career? I don’t dwell on the past, but just getting to where I am is a pretty big accomplishment.

I have gotten to live many moments on my PR bucket list – from managing interviews with iconic celebrities, to producing a hit song and running A-list red carpet events. And, the chance to see the world while working is incomparable.

Biggest lesson learned to date in your career? Double check contracts and permits every time.

Who were/are your mentors? Professionally speaking, Nina Kaminer, president of Nike Communications, my entrepreneur Dad, and my current boss, cosmetics industry visionary Catherine Walsh.

Best work advice? Read voraciously. Be a good listener. Don’t be afraid to speak up – either to disagree or propose a crazy idea. You get paid to have a brain.

As a publicist, you can’t live without… my iPhone. My contacts. Coffee. My husband to bounce ideas off of, my daughter to help me accessorize, and my baby boy for the world’s best smiles.

In order to succeed in PR, you… need to thrive on adrenaline!

If you weren’t a publicist, you’d be… running my grandmother’s fine arts gallery.

Follow Coty on Twitter at @CotyInc

Two questions! What do you think about men being in fashion public relations being that it is looked at as being a job with a strong female work-force? And secondly as far as internships go, I'm a senior in high school about to graduate and the college I'm going to is no where near NY or LA. Would you suggest doing summer internships away from home in a larger market like LA or NY.

Asked by
Anonymous

I think there is a place for men in fashion PR and in fashion in general, and I know so many men in fashion PR. I would like to see more men in beauty PR! 

Re: the internships, if you can get internships over winter or summer breaks in NY or LA, or even overseas in Paris, London or Milan working in fashion, then I say go for it! To have a big fashion PR career, you will have to eventually relocate to one of these cities anyway, so break in as early as possible to start making connections who may remember you when you graduate. 

Last Monday, I launched a series called PR Tools and touched upon several tools I thought were great for our day to day media monitoring, so today’s post is dedicated to the social media professionals/community managers. Would it help if you could monitor your Facebook page, Twitter feed and blog from one dashboard? Want to receive alerts every time your brand is mentioned online so you can respond quickly? Need help identifying the demographics and preferences of your online audiences? Well, then, allow me to share with you PR Tools: Social Media Management, Non-Paid.

Facebook Insights – If you aren’t using Facebook for your brands, then you should be. Once you have a page set up and have at least 30 “Likes,” you can begin to utilize Facebook’s free analytics platform, Insights, which provides measurements on your page’s performance. Using Insights is kind of a no-brainer, but I am shocked to learn that a lot of people on the platform still don’t utilize this tool. You can find anonymized demographic data about your audience, and see how people are discovering and responding to your posts. I utilize the tool to experiment with different types of posts to see what my audience responds to best.

Google Analytics – Another tool I use almost daily, Google Analytics is an easy to use reporting platform where you can decide what data you want to view and customize your reports. Google Analytics not only lets you measure sales and conversions, but also gives you insights into how visitors use your site, how they arrived on your site, how much time they spend on the site, when you are seeing the most/least traffic, etc. Standard membership is free, and Premium membership is an annual fee of $150K. That is not a typo. Only brands with big budgets should consider Premium membership.

Feedly – I used to live and die by my Google Reader, but since it is being retired July 1st, I switched my Google Reader feed over to Feedly, and am much happier. Feedly is an RSS feed that helps me keep up with all of my favorite websites and blogs in one place.

HootSuite – A  popular platform in the social media circuit, HootSuite is a management system for organizations to collaboratively execute social campaigns across multiple networks from a single dashboard. Used by 79% of the Fortune 100, HootSuite makes it easy to target markets with the right message, and gather actionable data to optimize your outreach campaigns. Visit HootSuite Enterprise to register for your free demo. You can subscribe for no cost, but there is a paid version as well.

Klout – Do you know what your Klout score is? Measure your social influence on this platform that aggregates your entire social presence and then uses social media analytics to rank users with an official score from 0-100. The higher the number, the more influential you are.

Social Mention – Social Mention is a social media search and analysis platform that aggregates user generated content from across the globe into a single stream of information. It allows you to easily track and measure what people are saying about you, your company, a new product, or any topic across the web’s social media landscape in real-time. Social Mention monitors 100+ social media properties directly including: Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed, YouTube, Digg, Google etc., and you can create alerts for free.

Topsy – I just started using Topsy, and I am already a big fan of this social listening platform. It provides deep, comprehensive analyses of hundreds of billions of Tweets and web pages gathered from millions of unique websites, blogs and social media services. Topsy leverages these social conversations to index, analyze and rank content and trends. You get instant access to conversations from moments ago or even years ago, which allows you to discover new data or info, quantify it, and make strategic business decisions related to your social media strategy.

Like I mentioned last week, you don’t have to utilize every tool. I suggest signing up for the free demos and learning how each of them function to see which ones meet your needs best.

Have any other free social media management platforms you want to share info about? Let me know here or on Twitter at @ThePRCloset.

Tune in next Monday for PR Tools: Social Media Management, Paid Platforms.