Any JOURNALISTS, EDITORS, PR people out there? Can I pick your brains please?

[burek]

Hi
Wondering if anyone of the relevant background can give me some pointers...

We've just launched our company and are doing our marketing so was wondering if you could advise on how to contact the right people in the UK press. Our company takes people to remote and normally inaccessible areas of the central Bosnian mountains. Very briefly, on the tours you get the most stunning views, all typical food and drink prepared by our own chef, lots of culture and history, and camping in real wilderness. It's family friendly and it's a real 'get away from it all' trip.

Our next step is to try and get a story in a UK broadsheet, since we think the trip and the destination is unique and different from aything else on offer. Would I be right in thinking that the simplest way to do this is to try and directly contact Features Editors and try and 'sell our story' so to speak?
We may also have some potentially good human angles (but this might just be a matter of opinion!). Stuff like: 2 Brits + son sell up and leave it all behind to set up a self-sufficient smallholding in Bosnia; struggling against Bosnian bureaucracy to set up a company; bilingual household (welsh and english) learning to speak Bosnian; doing our bit to bring tourists back to post-war Bosnia; the other side of the company coaches local professionals in Business English to prepare them for international trade (a service which has never been available in this region before); DH came here for the first time during the war so has seen massive social, cultural and political changes take place in the last decade. There are more but you get the gist! Do you think that it is worth mentioning any of the human angles? Be honest with me, because I'm only trying to think of ways of attracting their attention from the off. If it's all 'been done before' then I'll keep the private stuff to ourselves!

We've already tried contacting some of the specialist magazines but the response has been poor, so I want to get the approach right before going for the broadsheets. I'm sure they get thousands of emails every day!

If anyone can give us some tips, I'd be very grateful .

sounds like you should get in touch with travel editors.

Travmedia is a facility that sends travel industry press releases to journo's and editors, you could try them. www.travmedia.com

just checking out travmedia - very interesting, thank you

I have my list of travel editors's emails ready to roll. Which reminds me - does anyone think that it would be more effective to make a phonecall than to email? It would be majorly expensive form here but if it is worth it, well...

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I'd email first, then follow up with a phone call later if you think neccessary. CAT me if you like and I'll try to help more.

Don't send it out to all of them, be selective, try your no. 1 first.
Email, then follow up give them a few days on the phone.
I wouldn't go overboard on your own story, beyond the brief outline. Pitch has got to be about the experience rather than you.

great, thank you, very kind of you indeed! will start with the emails then... and am thinking that I could get my mother to make some introductory phonecalls - she has the type of voice you wouldn't dare put the phone down on!

thank you for the comments, icod - the encouragement really helps!

on a cheeky aside, I could think of some great human angles if I wanted to contact the tabloids - my fvourite being 'ex copper escapes bullying colleagues to live life as a farmer in bosnia' ....but now I'm just being silly!

Thanks bakedpotato, good tip. Am not that keen to go for the personal angle tbh but since it's a bit different I thought it might help. You are right, the offer should be the main point.

a free holiday always used to work...

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well, funny you should mention that FMV, but we had the idea of auctioning off a holiday for 2 on e-bay as a stunt, with a very very low starting price - may try it soon I think

are journalists actually allowed -officially - to accept free holidays, anyone know?

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We used to have a policy that if we accepted a freebie we had to write about it (ie not just take the holiday and feck off) but we had to make it clear that ''FMV travelled to Batley as a guest of McCoffinDodger Holidays etc etc''

Mind you, as you can see from my example (which is not altogether ubrealistic)
a) It was a dreadfully parochial local newspaper
b) Noone ever offered us anywhere very glam and exciting
c) I was too junior to qualify for any of the even remotely nice trips anyway

I go on press trips all the time but it is always very clear that I don't have to write good things if the experience/product is crap.

Hello I work in PR.

"Features editors" is a very broad church so best to be as specific as possible. I think you need to contact the travel editors or the editors of the travel supplements.

You could also pitch a slightly different article to the family supplements/family editors about what it is like to relocate a family to a foreign country/balance family and business etc.

And maybe a third article on what it is like to own a small-holding to the homes/bricks and mortar supplements - a la Relocation Relocation style.

Your "pitch" will be very important. What I would do is prepare a press release about your company/why it is unique/basic facts/contact details (try to keep it to a page).

Then prepare a "pitch" email outlining the particular story you feel they might be interested in (eg travel stuff for the travel eds, family stuff for the family eds, small-holding stuff for the home supplements). Try to keep it brief. Explain the slant and the key facts. Bullet point salient points if need be. Concentrate on what is unique/unusual about your story. The question you need to answer is why should they cover YOU as oppose to all the other millions of stories out there.

You also need to decide whether you want to write the piece yourself or be interviewed. If you can write then the former may be much more attractive to the editor, particularly if they are a small magazine or local paper - it is a free, ready-made feature they can just slot in, probably for free. But you can't make it too much of an ad, obviously.

Good luck.

oh and don't employ too much of a skattergun approach - try the three or four you really want first, then work down the list if they don't get back to you.

IME journos tend to get back to you within two or three days if they are interested. No news is not good news and they rarely come back to you to say "no thanks". However a polite follow up call to enquire about your pitch won't hurt.

Generally better to email first then call - then if they are interested they have all the info in front of them, otherwise they may just say "sounds great but send me an email" and you've wasted an expensive call.

Hi

I'm a freelance journalist - if you want to get in touch I will be able to place your story in one of the women's weekly magazines - please email me on [email protected] if you're interested (no hard sell, I promise - I'll just let you know what's involved). If you don't fancy a women's mag, good luck with your efforts to get it in the broadsheets.

I work for a national news organisation. Your best bet is to contact travel editors and offer them a free trip.
A good place to start is the Press Association, the national news agency. Their travel editor's name is Jeremy Gates. CAT me if you want his number.
if they send someone on a trip, that person will write it up and then all the nationals, regionals, broadcasters etc will have access to the article, so it could easily appear in multiple publications.

actually, i'd suggest an entirely different approach. all newspapers have bits of 'furniture' that they put in every week and they can be an absolute bugger to fill, believe me.
things like Relative Values, THis Much I Know etc etc. i'd do the travel ed thing too but if you've got an interesting relationship story then don't forget the furniture.
buy all the papers one weekend and circle things you might be able to crowbar yourself into, then phone and ask for the person who writes them. it may turn out to be a freelancer, so be prepared to send a little email with your story in about 200 words max so that they can forward it on. it's free advertising, basically, you'll get a big picture out of it and the images will presumably be what will sell your product.

I agree with Aitch.

(although what do I know...)

lol MI, what do either of us know? it's all made up out of our heads.

also, look at foodie furniture too, be prepared to talk about how much you love bosnian cuisine etc and provide a couple of recipes from your chef. anything to get that all important italicised 'for more details call...'

Eve magazine has a 'Wome doing their own thing' feature every month, with a main article about a business set up by a woman, plus 3 (usually) smaller side bits on 3 other ones. Might be worth getting in touch with them.