Smoking Gun Beating Heart

Getting yourself in high gloss colour isn’t as hard as you may think, however there are some sure-fire ways to blacklist yourself from ever even having the chance. I asked some of my more editorially inclined pals, what to do and not do in the hunt for your name in ink. 

1.  Read my publication. If I’ve never written about products, you better give me a very compelling reason my readership would care about yours.
2. Don’t tell me you’re going to send a racehorse to my office and then not. That was the saddest day ever.
3. Understand that sending us product does not mean a positive review or a review at all. Send at own risk (and know that we may just use it to get drunk/fed/pretty in the office)
4. Do be early with your submissions. Sometimes it’s a cool idea, but too late for us to fit in.
5. Understand that your product/event/service might be incredible, but just not right for a story – don’t take it personally or decide that means you should slag off the magazine for lack of coverage (it always gets back to us).
6. Have a nice long think whether you would give a shit about this product event if you weren’t the poor schmuck stuck with getting press coverage. If you wouldn’t care as a reader, we don’t care as a reader.
7. Make the facts clear. Don’t write the story for us. Whilst it’s great to be given story angles, don’t write the whole thing for us an expect to replicate. That road is the path to disappointment.
8. Cut the flowery bullshit.
9. Do include relevant links where we can find out more information or where we can source images. If it saves us time and is clear you’ll get on our ‘good’ list.
10. Learn how we work. I spend most of my email time explaining over and over to the same people that we don’t accept freebies, and it unfairly makes me think badly of the client before I’ve even set out to do a critique.
11. Don’t call me, I’ll call you. Do follow-up your email though, I really do miss some, but don’t be a dick about it.