In the Annals of Winery PR-ing or How I Got a Client’s Story Told
April 28, 2022
Pass.
It’s another type of expletive of a four-letter word with at least four different meanings. But we publicist-types know it as the meaning we dread the most; as in: “No thank you, we pass” or worse yet in our collective worst nightmarish imaginations: Take that pitch and get that stuff out of here. We’re not interested. We don’t want anything to do with it. And/or: Did you really think we’d bite on that boring, uninteresting story?
Our job as PR flacks is chiefly about sending pitches on behalf of our clients, to media members. The point is to attract attention to that pitch. So that said media person sees the benefit to their readers, listeners, or audience, enough so to cajole them to write a story, taste the clients’ wines, or agree to an interview with the client on a podcast or radio show. Getting a media “hit” ain’t easy. If it were, you wouldn’t need me or my colleagues, who toil every day to come up with a pitch that won’t strike out, but to spin a story that’ll be hit out of the park.
Please indulge me for a few more seconds with my baseball metaphor as I try to get the point across the plate ugh(!): Like a pitcher with a 99 MPH fastball or a 9-to-5 curve, the pitch of a winery story has got to capture the attention, imagination and be newsworthy. Otherwise, a publicist would be batting below the Mendoza line; and worse, be sent down to the farm (the kind where grapes don’t grow).
Which is why I want to tell you about a recent pitch I sent for a winery client to a prominent wine writer, who works for an important media outlet.
After about 10 days waiting for a response (a common occurrence) I circled back with the writer inquiring if he’d had a chance to assess my pitch. After apologizing (something about being swamped), which I always understand, this is how he responded: “It looks like we’ve done several related stories in the past few years, so I would need to find a unique angle into it. Any ideas?”
I took the last sentence as an opening and as a challenge; and I had further respect for the writer, who was sticking with me. Thus, with my journalistic instincts (I’ve been a wine writer for more than 30 years), I put together another possible angle – going deeper than my original missive to him – as a way in for the writer to grab hold, sink his teeth into, and satisfy his editor as to the worthiness and uniqueness of the story. A story that drilled down and went further than the previous pieces on which his outlet had reported.
I’m being cryptic here because it would be unethical and unfair to my client and to the writer, if I revealed specifics of the exchange and details of my pitch, but this is what that writer wrote to me after I sent what I thought he might seeking:
“Ok, it sounds as though she's willing to talk, this is an angle we can run with.”
That, my readers, is what I consider akin to rounding the bases and heading for home. I’m not there yet, because an article – never promised by the writer but by implication, can be construed as my work has at least, brought the writer to the trough (forgive the crude metaphor here), but I can’t make him drink, the wine.
Somewhere down the road – hopefully sooner than later; but patience for a satisfying result is the virtue – my client will get the story she sought; and which in turn, will bring her more wine sales.
As for me: My double skillset of being a journalist as well as a winery publicist -- in this case, my journalistic instincts were activated and my flackery perseverance (as well as the writer’s professional protocols to stick with a possible story) -- paid off. I’m proud to report, it was a good, hard-won achievement.