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.

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WHY NEWSPAPER FOLK MAKE THE BEST FLACKS

Take It From the Deans of Winery PR

By Alan Goldfarb

April 19, 2022

We were sitting on deck chairs, next to the pool in the backyard of Harvey Posert’s house, if I recollect, on Zinfandel Lane in St. Helena. This I believe was in 2009 when I began a slow transition from wine journalist to winery PR flack*. Harvey was explaining – and revealing to me what I took as sacred PR inside baseball secrets – which wine writer was on the “take” (meaning they accept freely, wine, dinners, lodging, etc.) and which media types never take anything; but I’d better watch out, because she’s as an old-school newspaperwoman as there is; and she writes what she believes to be the truth about your wine.