Not that long ago, interior designers who wanted to get their projects or profiles published had just a few options—mainly newspapers and magazines. Today, the digital revolution has created a plethora of new media hungry for content. How to decide where and what to publish with whom?

In this episode, Gail talks with publishing and public relations expert Kelly Peterson. Kelly has over 40 years of experience in advertising sales and marketing initiatives. Among other publications, she worked at Meredith Publishing on Better Homes and Gardens. Having retired from the Hearst Corporation after 22 years, she now serves as a consultant and public speaker.

Gail asked Kelly which is better for interior designers, to get published in print or in digital media. Kelly said it depended on what goals the designer had for their business and for getting published. Digital media are very effective for building brand awareness and engaging with prospective clients. Print media is where you want to be to show off your design talents and expertise, as well as to gain prestige as a top designer.

Kelly provided a step-by-step approach to getting published, in whatever medium.

• 
  
• Decide the audience you want to target and what your business goals are in targeting them.
  
• Do your research to find out which are the publications or media outlets that serve that audience. Which are likely to be the best fit for your purposes and your designs?
  
• Determine what you want to include in your pitch, such as a project, a story, advice, product review, images, etc.
  
• Choose 3 to 5 outlets to pursue. Review their media kit, if they have one. Find out who to contact regarding submitting materials. Start following them to see what kind of content they are looking for.
  
• Decide how you are going to engage with them. Develop a relationship over a period of time. Contact them multiple times, at least five or more, periodically. Don’t be discouraged if you get no response right away or have your pitches rejected at first. Persistence pays off.
  

Kelly also shared her insights into what editors want from a pitch, how to submit, and when it is worthwhile for a designer or design firm to hire a publicist. For all the details, listen to the entire podcast.

If you’re listening on your favorite podcast platform, view the full shownotes here: https://thepearlcollective.com/s12e10-shownotes

Mentioned in This Podcast

If you would like to connect with Kelly, you will find her on LinkedIn, or you can send her an email at kpeterson@hiptmktng.com.

Note: Transcript is created automatically and may contain errors.

Welcome to the Creative Genius Podcast, Kelly. So great to have you.

Thank you, Gail. It’s delightful to be here. I really appreciate it.

Well, I’m looking forward to our conversation. Everybody talks to me about PR all the time. And before we do that, let’s talk about how you got into the industry and how long you’ve been doing all of this.

You know, I got into the industry actually kind of out of a habit stance in that as a child, I’m severely dyslexic and was actually back in the sixties when you were dyslexic, you were put with mentally retarded children and then had to work my way out of that back into mainstream school. And when I was in high school, I started selling ad space for the choir directory.

And I happened to live next door to a gentleman who ran an ad agency. And he said to me, after two years of me walking up to his door and selling him ads in this choir directory, he was like, you know, Kelly, you would be very good at advertising sales. And I said, well, what is that? And he goes, exactly what you’re doing, only for magazines, newspapers, television or radio at the time. And I said, well, you know, that’s something I could pass in college. Cause I knew where my strengths and weaknesses were.

with education and I really wanted a business degree, but I couldn’t pass the economics and some of the more detailed accounting classes because of my dyslexia. And I could major in journalism and advertising sales and minor in business and understand marketing. So that is where that came from. My first semester, I actually started selling ad space for the Iowa Daily Press Association or the Iowa State Daily Newspaper.

and to make sure that I liked ad sales at the very beginning. And past my first semester called my parents and they were absolutely ecstatic because the doctors had told my parents I’d never go to college and I would never become really anything. So they were absolutely thrilled. I’d passed a semester, I’d figured out how to go to classes and be successful in my own right.

which I credit them for never telling me what the doctors had actually told them.

Thank goodness for that because then you would have had a wrong impression because obviously you’ve been very successful at what you’ve done. Yes.

So then my dream job was to become an ad salesperson for Better Homes and Gardens magazine, which was, went to Iowa State, which is only 45 minutes from the Meredith Corporation at the time, and ended up being hired at Meredith for a experimental training program in advertising sales. They never hired college graduates. And I trained for a year in all the aspects of publishing, circulation, marketing, editing.

I went on the road with advertising salespeople across the corporation. And then at the end of my year, I had a choice between to work on Better Homes and Gardens, my dream job, between San Francisco and New York City. Chose San Francisco and I was the first female hired ever to sell advertising space for Better Homes and Gardens magazine. Ew. Yeah. So it was really cool. It was a very interesting time.

Good night.

for women in business in 1982, 83, and there weren’t very many of us. And now the advertising industry is actually predominantly women. But it’s been a wonderful career and a really fascinating ride of understanding and seeing all the differences that has happened in the industry from the 80s to now.

Well, now I know we have a lot of other things we can talk about, how did I not know you were in Iowa?

I don’t know. I don’t think we ever talked about it. I was only there for the four years. My parents, I went to high school in Jacksonville, Florida. My parents had a deal that they would only pay for school in the state that they lived. And two weeks after I graduated from high school, they moved to Des Moines for my dad’s job. So I reapplied. I was going to the University of Florida, all set to be a Gator. And that didn’t happen. I went to Iowa State.

I don’t think so

Isn’t that funny? Well, I was born in Iowa and lived there till I was seven. My parents were from there. I have, I’m a true Midwestern girl, just transplanted to the South against my will. But you know, you do what you do. luckily I made lifetime friends as a result of that. So it’s all good. We all have good things that we have that come out of everything that is a challenge for us. Right.

It was very interesting. didn’t know that the temperature went below zero. I did not know that ice formed on the inside of car windows as well as the outside. It was very educational for a little girl from the South. But it was good.

All bad. All bad.

Yeah, in Jacksonville, that’s a, I’ve only been there once. It’s a lovely area. we have a great client there. Actually, we have a few clients in that area, so that’s, that’s great.

Yeah, it’s a beautiful city. love going back and visiting. I still have friends there, so it’s really nice. That’s how I fell in love with the coast and actually how I ended up in Charleston.

I see. Yeah. Well, I love the coast and anytime I can go see an ocean, I’m a happy girl. Well, tell me about the changes you’ve seen in the publishing industry over the last several years.

you know, it’s, it’s been dramatic. you know, starting out in the eighties there, you know, there was no voicemail back then. There was, you got a little pink slip of paper when you got a message and we had just gotten Selectric typewriters and the fax machine had just started with the waxy paper. Then we moved into, you know, computers and, car phones and cell phones and email. Yes, the big bricks and email and.

You know, the business as a whole, when I started out in it, it was really five industries. had newspaper, magazines, television. There was no actual cable at the time that hadn’t even started yet. And then you had outdoor and radio. And those were the key areas where advertising took place. Now, if you look across the board, the pie, as I refer to it, has grown exponentially. The interesting thing

that has occurred across all of advertising, not just in the publishing space, is that the budgets and the large budgets as well as the small budgets have remained pretty stagnant over the past, say five to even 10 years. They’d go up a percentage, go down a couple percentage points, that kind of thing. But your proliferation of choice of where to put that money has grown exponentially.

So all of the mediums actually get smaller percentages of the pie. So it’s a very different way of looking at where does the ad budget go. And you really have to be more precise about what it is you’re planning to do, how you’re planning to do it, and which mediums aren’t necessarily your favorite, but which mediums work for the clientele you’re trying to go after. Because it doesn’t matter what you like. What it matters is what the people you’re trying to reach and make an impact on.

as to reaching them in the correct medium that they are taking advantage of. So that’s been a significant, before you could look at kind of like, okay, let’s do a television ad and we’ll do a print ad and we’ll put out an outdoor billboard, split it up three ways, significant amounts of money towards each of those. Now it’s much smaller pieces of the pie. It’s much more difficult to be profitable.

Interesting. Well, and also for people that don’t know that industry is hard to figure out what is the right way to go. That’s where you get an ROI on whatever it is that you choose to do. let’s talk about this from the viewpoint of PR and getting published. How does one go about getting published today?

You know, I would tell you that the first thing you need to do is you need to basically understand what it is, who reads or who is interested in your product, who, who is your target. So research and then your business goals. Those are your first two things before you ever start to develop the PR plan. And then I would say, develop the plan is you really have to understand who’s my target. it women? Is it men? Is it a certain age group? Is it a certain

affiliations, have you been successful in particular areas of like currently as a designer, public speaking, or you’ve been very successful in certain mediums over others, pay attention to that. And then what are those business goals that will go along with that to develop what it is you want to do with PR? Because with PR, are you developing brand awareness? Are you developing where you want to have so many engagements as to meaning they’re going to hire you? So if

the PR plan is gonna be successful, you get hired five by five different people, or you get hired by two, or you make a certain amount of money on each design project. Whatever that is, you need to have a strategy and a structure against what it is you’re doing and why you’re developing the PR plan to begin with. Because once you have that plan in place and you start to figure out where and why I’m going, then you can actually start to do the research on one, the mediums that you wanna use.

because that could be social, it could be Instagram, it could be print, it could be a combination, but you need to know where that audience is going and where you’ve gotten the most return thus far. Then after you do your research, which there are multiple ways to do that, if there are particular brands, to that, on those brands, I would look at, start following them, start finding out what they’re writing about, look at their language, look at their photography, what are they using?

to gain their engagement with their particular audience so that you start to match up and you can say, know what, these match up very closely with what my aesthetic is, but the others don’t. So don’t pursue those. Narrow down that list. So it may be three, it may be five. Don’t go after a huge broad scope because you can’t focus. And then once you figure out what the

the demographics and the profile is of the mediums that you want, then you basically set up a plan. Now that plan could be structured where you’ve got so many times of communicating with those particular editors. And I would put out like a full plan of a six month or year plan. What people tend to do is they will put together what you would call like a package for PR and they’ll send it once, maybe follow up a second time.

And then they’re like, well, nobody ever reached back out to me. They’re They’re busy. And human nature, if you’re not really familiar with sales is you try one, two, three times, you give up. The true people who succeed are the ones that will go on and reach out five, six, 10 times because you reach out with different information or a thought.

Right.

It could be that you put together the package and I have some ideas about how the package should look, that kind of thing for you. But the next time you reach out, you could say, you know, I’ve been following you and you did this, this, and this. I saw this article that might be helpful. You start to make a relationship and a communication that you are not just interested in getting published, but you are interested in communicating back and forth so that your business is better and their business is better. Anytime that you can switch that conversation.

you’ll get more attention from the editor.

And we have to remember that the purpose of the magazine is to sell advertising.

Well, it’s to the purpose of the magazine is to communicate the editor’s viewpoint and focus as to what they can do. Now, what consumers will tell you about magazines is it’s the only medium that consumers love to look at the ads. All other mediums consumers really try and get away from the advertising. But the ads in magazines are always typically, if they aren’t, they don’t typically look at it, but they’re typically on focus with whatever the editorial content is.

So like in a design magazine, you see furniture, see faucets, you see things about design. So consumers like that because it gives them ideas as well as the edit.

Yeah, it’s so interesting because we, over the years, I’ve talked to Meredith, I’ve talked to the people there and all, but that’s how they pay for their magazine and for the publication. You’ve got to really satisfy the advertisers because that’s what generates the activity to pay the salaries and all of the printing and all the things that it takes to publish a magazine.

Yeah, initially it was back in the 70s, 80s and early 90s, advertising only was what paid the revenue, was how the revenue models were structured. As things became more difficult and more mediums became available, it began to actually separate between circulation and they started asking consumers to pay more for each of their magazines as well as advertising. So it went from circulation, say bringing in maybe five to 10 % of revenue

to now it brings in 50 to 60 % of revenue as ad revenue has diminished. Then you also have what’s happened in the digital side of the house where magazines have their digital components and they’re making revenue off of the digital. The other area that’s very interesting to be aware of, and I bring this up with designers because the editor, if you’re looking at the editor’s side of why they pick a story over a different story or why they pick a project, it has really a lot to do with.

with what is referred to as affiliate marketing. So affiliate marketing, editors over the past, I would say now 10 years, affiliate advertising and affiliate mentions has become a profit center for brands. So if an editor writes a story, an example is when I worked on Good Housekeeping, the editor that was writing on textiles needed to do a story.

on pillows. So she wrote the story on pillows and at the Hirsch Corporation, if the editor’s stories are not in the top five of Google search, it is reflected on their performance review. all their stories have to be up into the top five of Google search, anything that they write for digital or print. So, cause it’ll have a connection on print that you can go and look at it too. So she was noticing after she wrote this particular story,

that it wasn’t resonating. It was like number 10, number 12 on Google search. So she went back to the data scientists at Hearst and asked them, when consumers are searching for pillows, what are they putting in for search words? Because I’m not using the right words in my language, in my story. They gave her a new language. She redid the story. And that story stayed at number one in the search for the next 12 weeks.

wow.

So it’s a huge thing and the editors are again, are evaluated based on affiliate search. So if a designer can submit a project and talk about what the things are that could be extra affiliate search for that editor and understand the editor’s side of why she’s picking a story over another one, that could actually improve your opportunity to get published.

And it’s a little bit of background that most people don’t know about the edit side and the PR side of the business. You look at it like, well, if I just put together a cool package and I send a bunch of photos, that’ll all work. I went to the editors when I was putting together some of these thoughts and I said, what is it you would recommend that they send you or how they communicate with you? And they were very specific about do not send an FTP site.

send two to three photos, not inundate them with multiple photos because it clogs up their email. Send a short and brief up email with bulleted points as to what the project is. But get very intimate about who you are or what your story is or what the story is about the project that brings it to life. Because that’s what differentiates you from a standard designer submitting a particular story.

So it became become very intimate for the editor to say, this is something don’t send photos you don’t want produced and don’t send multiple brands that compete with each other at the same time. Be very sensitive to that. If you have published any of the photos or a blogger has published them, don’t submit them to a magazine editor slash digital editor. They won’t, they won’t publish them. So those are some of the

tips, tricks of the trade that could help when they’re putting together what it is they want to submit.

Well, here’s a question, of course, that’s assuming that somebody is doing their own publicity, but should they hire a publicist or can they do this themselves?

You know, there’s two schools of thought. I liken this back to how profitable is your business and how much do you require an hour? Like if you’re going great is 400 an hour, does it make sense? you’ve got a profitable business that you’re running and it makes sense that you can farm out the things that you aren’t as good at or that waste quote.

spend up time that you’re pulling you away from the time where you’re making that money, then you should hire. If you are starting out, then you need to figure out how you’re gonna layer that in until you get more profitable. Because the publicists are not cheap and you need to figure out, again, kind of going back to what your business goals are, what’s the reason you’re doing the PR campaign and why? What’s the revenue you’re gonna bring back from it?

And if you can look at say, okay, I want this is X and this is Z. If I get this much out of it, I can hire a publicist for this. Then that makes sense for your business. But if you can’t, then set up a kind of your own smaller PR plan and start building it as you go, just like you’re building your business. So it really depends. They can be great, but they can also take up a lot of money that you’ve got to look at for your profitability.

Well, and for example, the New York people are five to seven thousand a month. Yeah.

It’s a lot of money. And if you are pulling that in, I know for my own business, I have developed what I’m referring to it. It was a new article in the New York Times is a portfolio consultancy. And so I have a portfolio of clients. Well, when I took on my last one of recent, I hired a remote assistant because I was like, I cannot, my hourly rate, my time is worth X.

and I can’t be the person who’s spending time dealing with a database and updating a database and sending out some mass e-blast and things like that. Now I pay a remote assistant to do that. And it’s streamlined my business. I’m able to focus on where I can make the most money the quickest and what’s my strength and forte versus what I know I could do, but I’m not really fond of that I can farm out. And she does much better and much faster.

Well, we all have those areas that we need to give to somebody else because we’re not good at it. Mine is just scheduling. I’m terrible at that.

Well, Hazel’s there to help.

thank God for her. 11 years of this she’s put up with me. So what should somebody have in place in order to hire a publicist?

If you’re looking to hire a publicist, again, I would have a very specific, what are the goals that you want this publicist to do? Because you can go into a conversation. If you just tell a publicist you want PR, that’s gonna be like an open book and there’s a lot more they could charge you for versus a really set plan. I would ask for say, I basically on my business, I am doing X amount.

I want to grow my business X amount. think a publicist, want to be published within a year, two to three more times that I don’t know. Whatever that goal is that you set up, the more specific you can be to the publicist, the better your plan’s going to be because you want them to come back with a plan as to how many communications are they going to do? How are they going to do the communications? Are they going to use any of your current photography?

or you have upcoming photography or upcoming projects that they can pitch because a lot of those stories need to be pitched a year, sometimes a year and a half out before you’re going to see any fruition from what you’ve done. Knowing what timelines are, the timelines on digital, Instagram, things like that to get published are much quicker than the timelines on printed publications. So the timeline as to how, when they’re planning, when they’re writing the stories,

All of that varies and the publicist should know all of that and actually put that into the plan for you so that you know what it is you’re looking for. But the better you can get the publicist to give you a complete plan, do check-ins, check back on what they’ve done and getting confirmation on what they’ve done to make sure that your money is being used wisely would be my main recommendation.

There’s a lot to working with a publicist and you have to be responsive. So if you’re starting to work on a project with them, if you’re not answering them quickly, you can lose your chances of getting published by a magazine and you don’t want to burn bridges because it’s way too important to have an ongoing relationship.

It’s that infamous, you only have one chance to make a first impression. once you’ve got a partnership, that’s just amazing. The editors, if they know they’ve got somebody who is responsive and who gives them the information they need quickly and concisely, they will go back and back to that resource. They are very partnership oriented once they’ve found people that they really like their work. Another example is photography.

That’s right.

Look at who the brands are using for their photographer. If you really are set on trying to get with one brand, hire that photographer to give that same stylized and feel. Another thing that the editor said to watch when you’re doing photography to submit is be very careful about the time of year. Don’t make it look holidayish or don’t make it look fall or spring. Try and keep everything as…

minimal so they can if they have to move a story from a spring story to a fall story they can. They’re very cognizant of that fact when it looks too much like a holiday unless it’s specifically bought as a holiday shot.

Well, and one thing that I think is important to mention is that if you don’t have top quality styling for a lot of the magazines, it’s probably not going to fly because today the magazines aren’t paying for that. You have to pay for that. And in many cases, you need to pay for your own photography because the magazines don’t have the budget for it. So it’s really important to have the right level of styling as well as the right level of photography for your projects.

I’ve got a great example, one of my clients who’s there, you know, very large company at this point, and I’m not even sure how many on their team, maybe 25 or 30 people. They tried to start their own magazine, which was great. And that was a great idea. But the problem was they couldn’t get published in a regular magazine because they created their own magazine. That was number one. Number two, when people when the publicist looked at it and somebody who was wanting to help them with a book.

She looked at it and she said, you’ve got to hire a better photographer. You’ve got to hire a better stylist. And it costs them hundreds of thousands of dollars to go reshoot all of their work. But they have this beautiful coffee table book. They’re ready to go to their second one. And that’s a great way to get business. But you also have to invest a heck of a lot of money in doing a book. Like half a million dollars is a reasonable budget. So you’re not a small company when you do this.

Right, and taking that and actually making that photography work for you and be multipurpose. So you got it for the book. What are the other ways you can do to do outtakes, to do different shots, to do angles, so you can use it in Instagram and you can use it in social, you could use it in other aspects of what it is you promote your business. Really multipurposing any of the shoots or any of the things that you’re doing so you get it across.

your platforms. It’s not just good for one thing.

Sure. How important is it to be in print versus digital today? Which one would, if you were to choose one, which would you choose?

Again, think again, it really matters on what it is you’re looking for as a focus for your business, what your goal is. Because if you’ve found that your following is primarily on Instagram, then I would push for Instagram. But if you’ve been printed in print, first off, I try all the different mediums to kind of see, depending, know, especially at a higher level designer, I would go after trying to get

Publishing the different ones and then try and see how your play is as to what the engagement factor is It’s not really likes anymore. It’s engagement factor in that they’ve engaged with it They’ve spent time with it and they’ve maybe even communicated back with you You know what how much are you willing to spend to get that? Communication back with you and talk to that consumer to say yes. I’d like to come and do a project for you Because in the end you’re trying to grow the business

That’s the ultimate goal. Although we know that some people it’s for ego. They want to do this because it’s a big deal to be in architectural digest or Lux magazine or any of the big magazines.

And if that’s the purpose, that’s your goal. So it’s a very different, it’s a different way to look at it. Then I would, if I were looking at, know, I want that prestige of saying I was in Arc Digest or Lux, then I would go for print first because it maintains and stays longer. Then, you know, the Instagram is very quick. The different social mediums are much quicker and you still would be able to use the outtakes or some other things to get on there.

But if you’re looking for prestige, then I would go with print first.

Okay. How do you research a magazine so you know how to pitch to them?

So there’s a couple of ways. First off, look up the magazine online and you can say, know, like all the Hearst titles are under Hearst.com and or you could go to Condi or for Arc Digest, that kind of thing. Each one of them has their own website. Within the website, if you look up at the top, you can see things called like a media kit. So you would want to go and look at the actual media kit. In the media kit, you will find the demographics of that magazine.

You’ll find the household income. You’ll find what the circulation is, how it’s distributed. You’ll find what the website reaches, what their Pinterest reaches, what their Instagram, all of the different social components are all listed in the media kit. It’ll go into a lot of detail, probably more than you wanna know, but it gives you a picture of who that reader is. And that’s where you would start first.

Then I would also look at the print magazines and I would look at the websites, their Instagram feed, their Facebook feed, really do a little research. Most designers already know there’s three or four brands that are like their love, their go-to because it’s where they get inspired. So I’d start with those, then really start to figure out, okay, who’s my clientele? Where have they come from me before? How did I meet them? What kind of projects am I doing? And then start to see where that matches up.

because you can get the actual magazine, look through it, sign up for the Instagram, follow, watch what they’re doing to the point of how are they doing their shots? Are they doing their angled photos in it one way versus another way? When they do before and afters, are they exactly the same shot each way? Some brands do that and some brands don’t. Personally, I get very frustrated with the brands that don’t because I want to see the exact same shot. But there are brands that mix that up. Know that before you go in.

and start to pitch stop so that you know that your photography matches up with what they’re doing. So that’s how I would focus. So research both looking at it, become a follower, and then look up their media kit and really get dive into that and analyze, bring it down to three, depending on how much time you’re gonna put into your PR plan, three to five that you’re gonna contact on an ongoing basis. And this should be at least quarterly if depending upon how

heavy you’re trying to make this happen, you could do it a little more often, but definitely do not give up after two to three communications and come up. what I do when I put together these kinds of plans is I use my calendar on my email to tickle me and say, you know, a month from now, send this e-blast to this magazine. And it just reminds me and it keeps me going versus not having something to remind me that I need to do something. but

you can start to do the research that way. That’s how I would go.

Okay. And this question is more for, I think, I tell people, wait till you’re about two million in revenue to be able to do PR, just so you have the money to be able to afford it. But is PR only for well-established designers?

No, truly if if it’s somebody that’s just started out and they’ve got a real perspective of what their design aesthetic is and there’s a brand that you’re like I’ve matched up so well with this brand go for it then that that may be just the one person you go after and say and tell them I’ve been following you I’ve been watching you this is my aesthetic here’s several pro here’s a couple shots of several projects I’ve done could we work together?

Always ask the question, could we work together? I want to work with you. Make direct statements. Don’t infer. If anything, and I interview kids and adults, I mentor about 18 people with their career paths. And it’s phenomenal to me that I’ll ask them in a negotiation for salary or negotiation for a job or a project, like, did you say directly?

I want to work with you. I want to be a part of your team. And they’ll say, well, it’s inferred. I’m like, no, it’s not inferred. You say directly, because that makes a statement that you want to work with them.

Well, and we have to remember all of us are salespeople, whether we want it to be or not. That’s what we do. And you just happen to be somebody who loves sales, which is a gift and something that’s very unusual. I do. Well, and it’s great. So always we ask the same three questions. What are the three takeaways you’d like to share with everybody? And maybe there’s a question I forgot to ask. And if something else you thought you wanted to mention, please share.

You know, I went through this and I kind of from, from my talk, the main takeaways, I really just to focus, if you’re, looking to do this and get published is do your research, have your business goals, figure out the mediums you want to pursue, what you want to include in your pitch, how you’re going to engage, and then really just remember to ask for the order and to go.

back and forth more than three times.

Excellent. Kelly, this has been so illuminating. I really appreciate you being on the podcast today. And we will have show notes here. And if you have any information you’d like to share, just let us know. We’ll be happy to attach that.

Thank you. I really appreciated your time and you asking me to be on it. Thank you very much.

it’s my pleasure. Thank you, Kelly.