Get Your Products and Stories Featured in Mainstream Magazines – PRSANY Panel

Photo by back_garage

I attended the Public Relations Society of New York event, “Taking the Lead – How to Get Ahead, Get Your Products Noticed and Get in Long Lead Magazines” which was described as, “as magazine sources continue to dwindle, PR professionals are left with a shrinking field of options for their clients. However, clients still want their products and stories to be featured. But how do we best approach them? What makes for a great story or product feature? And how do you build relationships with editors?”

Panelists:

• Ellen Breslau, Executive Editor, Woman’s Day

• Sonal Dutt, Lifestyle Editor, Every Day With Rachel Ray

• Jonna Gallo Weppler, Articles Director, Family Circle

Ellen offered the following:

– Be familiar with our magazine sections

– Desk side good for the health department, find real women for us to cover a health story

– Offer me a reason why you want to see us in person, do you have an expert with a new health study?

– Must have the product in hand and available for them to be able to test and use it for themselves

– I will attend your press event if it is succinct; show me three main points of your product

– Woman’s Day website has 2.5 million unique visitors a month. We do a lot of product testing through the website.

– Woman’s Day has an active Facebook page  http://www.facebook.com/womansdaymagazine

– We are working on iphone  and mobile apps; we also do live chats with editors hosted by The Washington Post

Sonal (Twitter @sonal_dutt) shared with the audience:

– Every Day with Rachel Ray is open to trend pieces for smaller/focused pitches

– The editorial offices have a demo kitchen that enables chefs to cook and bake which the staff gets to sample the food

– She attended four press events today and prefers events held in the morning and evening, she will attend an event if it is succinct (one hour max), informative, and enough to get her out of the office

– All Every Day With Rachel Ray editors have blogs and tweet

– They are looking for ipad/iphone apps and take pitches through those applications as well

– For an item to be included in their holiday gift guide issue it has to be under $150 and offer value

Jonna stated that:

– Family Circle puts out fifteen issues a year with April, October, and November being double issues

– The Food department is active in doing desk-sides and if you do a desk-side with us, shorter is better

– The staff and writers want to try out a product in real life/everyday use, and they do not want to put a product in their September issue if that product comes out later in December

– Some space may be available at the last minute so you may be able to add products

– Jonna does stealth marketing for her friends that are in public relations

– She prefers to attend morning events but since there is so much work to be done back at the office she cannot stay very long

– Family Circle adapts their current issue content for online and posts articles from past issues that readers continually request to the web

– In determining what items to include in the holiday Gift Guide issue they have not decided for 2010 as yet but the item(s) has to be family oriented,  affordably priced, and the item has to be submitted to them by the end of August

You may also be interested in these posts:

How to Get Your Guest or Book on Rachel Ray, Piers Morgan Tonight, CBS This Morning Saturday

Skills that Get the Guest for Your Television and Radio Show

How to Get Your Sports Story or Guest on ESPN, Boomer and Carton, and USA Today

How to Get Your Story/Event/Guest on Bloomberg News

How to Get Your Story or Event on New York News Shows

Get Your Product, Book, Movie On Television and Radio Shows

How to Reach and Foster Relationships with Mommy Bloggers