How did you decide to be a publicist?
That is a great question. It started when I was younger. I always loved to write and interview people nonchalantly. I wanted to go into broadcast journalism and be the next Barbara Walters. While in school, I realized that I knew a lot of people and that I loved to network which led me to realize PR as my true calling. After much back and forth and always having some sort of PR role built into other roles, I decided to go full-fledged into just PR.How did Natasha Dressler PR & Marketing start?
I was laid off from a marketing agency that I was with and I took that as my sign. I said okay, now is the time that I branch off on my own and if I fail, I fail, if I succeed, I succeed. I took this time, about three or four months, where I was working on myself and my business plan. I officially launched Natasha Dressler PR in January 2020.What does a publicist’s day look like?
Every day is a little bit different. It all depends on the clients you have and what active campaigns you are working on. I would say pre-COVID versus post-COVID experiences are kind of different. I wake up and start my day by reading the news for about two hours. I like to digest the news from different sources. I make sure I am not only reading left and right news but I am reading nonpartisan news. I’m seeing what the trends are and I do so because I want my clients to be set up for success. I read things that aren’t necessarily newsworthy like politics and active news. I like to read Lifestyle, which covers trendy topics such as cooking techniques, and different popular books, also what is Oprah’s new favorite thing. I usually jot down some notes and then I start to tackle emails and look through text messages. I am really big on setting boundaries and have dedicated office hours. Even if I do work outside my office hours for clients, I try not to let them know directly. I try to establish some boundaries so I can get some work down for them, uninterrupted. Sometimes my days are packed with zooms and calls and some days I have down time where I can do some research and development work and look at some new pitch angles. I will start to reach out to new contributors and editors that I don’t know and see if I have a story idea that they would like. I start to work on a relationship from there. I usually wind down my day, depending, sometimes it’s five o’clock and sometimes it’s six, or it’s two in the morning. It depends on what kind of campaign I am working and who I’m working for at the time.
What’s the most challenging aspect of your job? What’s the most exciting?
I would say what’s most challenging is learning to set boundaries because I’m definitely a yes woman. I like to make people happy and I do tend to go out of my way. It hasn’t been an easy year as we all know so there’s been a lot of, I know we are all sick of the word, but pivoting. I also had to wear different hats for clients. I have a background in marketing, so, whether it was coming up with a better content strategy which would result in a better PR effort and getting noticed or keeping clients motivated when the press may be slow to roll in. Patience is a virtue in PR. The most exciting thing are the people I work with. I love who I work with and love meeting new people. I love connecting. I also love a challenge, so it’s great to set my eye on a prize and say “I really want to get published there and get a publication.” My goal was to get into the LA Times. It is a harder publication to get into and I wanted to get a certain client in the LA Times. I was able to do it and it was a big success. Seeing my clients succeed makes me so happy and fulfilled.How do you find interesting angles to pitch?
I would say that a lot of it has to do with research. Like I was mentioning earlier, block out time to do research, develop work-product, and take notes. When pitching, I think if I were the reader would I want to hear about this story. Then I am able to pitch it to an editor I know or contributor or even people I don’t know. I am very unapologetic about pitching. I know a lot of people get nervous if they are just starting out but it doesn’t hurt to just say “hello” and introduce yourself. You might know someone that isn’t on your roster and you can send it to them. Also be prepared to get ghosted a lot in PR. I always say you have to be used to getting ghosted. You might think that you are pitching into a black hole because nobody is reaching out to you. And that could be for one of two reasons. One, your pitch might not be resonating with them or it’s not the correct format. Two, something a lot of people don’t know is, most contributors and editors, especially senior level editors, get at least two or three hundred pitches a week. Some of the time, people will file your pitch away and if they have a slow week or some downtime they’ll go through that email folder and say “I wonder if I had any stories I can write about this week that weren’t assigned to me.” This is something to keep in mind as you are working through your PR strategies. It’s easy to get hard on yourself and feel like it’s me, but sometimes you can’t control the state of the media. At all. Another thing is, I take the time to get to know my clients. Not just on a business level, but a personal level. We talk about things that they have done in the past and maybe there are things that they are doing now that they feel aren’t a big deal, but I can pitch it at an angle. I had a client who was really nervous in the beginning of COVID. She decided to completely redo her backyard and plant a sustainable garden. She bought a rain tank and much more. I had a reporter reach out to me and ask if I knew anyone that has done something totally off the wall for themselves during covid? I told them that I did know someone and it was kind of funny how it worked out. I work with an all-female roster. I’m very fortunate to work with females that are leading the charge and are very vocal in a lot of social issues. It is something I am very passionate about which makes us a great team. It’s nice to get behind them and support them.What’s something you wish your clients knew?
I think one of the first and most important things to know is that PR is not sales. While advertisements directly link to sales and metrics, PR is meant to enhance brand awareness and build brand authority. Whether a person is a thought leader or it’s a brand for a product, PR is meant to give you authority. If you need to get funding or you want to be on CNN to interview, you need to build somewhat of a press base in order to be reputable. I always tell my clients that PR media is earned not deserved. It’s all about establishing relationships and authority. You start small to go big. The second thing just happened to me yesterday. I had a client who was very eager and anxious and was looking for immediate press because they were investing their own money into PR. I let them know that I could do some short pitches, but press normally takes a month or three or even six months sometimes to get picked up. Unfortunately because of COVID, they had to break their contract. Yesterday I got an email three and half months later that an article I pitched was being picked up by Entrepreneur.com. I try to remind clients that we are at the mercy of the editors, writers, and publishers. We can’t be pushy because they can always cut the story. This is a great example of how to help them understand the process. That was something that I wish I would’ve probably discussed with clients more and was a big lesson for me this last year. And then the third thing is to set boundaries. Boundaries are really important. I come from corporate America. I have worked in very fast paced industries where you are working 24/7 and work is your life. Work is still your life when owning your own business, but it’s healthy to establish boundaries and take a few hours off mid-day if needed to go do something. My clients are always able to reach me, but there have been times where I have had clients abuse the boundaries and contact me very late at night or early in the morning or on the weekends. Reminding them that I have set office hours and we can connect outside if needed is important. I try to be as flexible as possible, but things do come up.How does COVID-19 affect your work?
It was interesting, so when COVID happened in March, it kind of hit California. My clients were doing really well, and I really didn’t have any issues until about August. I didn’t have many clients directly related within the COVID specialty or medical field, but my clients were still getting picked up a lot by the media and press. I would say that COVID-19 mostly started affecting them financially in August. A lot of my clients were struggling, worried about money, and business. We just needed to regroup a little bit. While some clients needed to pause, which was totally fine, I understood because I put myself in their shoes. As far as the media goes, there were a lot of really crazy things that happened, like a lot of writers were furloughed and others were redistributed. If they were an entertainment or sports writer, they were writing about politics. This made it really hard for me and my group of publicists to get through sometimes. It was a real test on your patience and your relationships. I feel like now I’m starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel. I know COVID is nowhere near over yet. With COVID and the election it was a very, very crazy time and now we are kind of getting back to a semblance of normalcy, if you will. The media is starting to pick up again where they are publishing the holiday stories, the feel good stories, and the “new year, new me” stories. Things are getting back into motion and I am feeling a bit better now.
What is your favorite story that you worked on?
This is a good one. When the George Floyd protests started happening and the Black Lives Matter movement began. I had a client that jumped on it the first week. She wanted to have a conversation and set up a panel. I wanted to help, even if it wasn’t PR. We set up a panel of five black women and had a very candid conversation about racism in America. After that, the feedback was so great and rewarding. People wanted us to keep this conversation going and add different ethnicities to the conversations. We had three different series. I took that and used it to pitch stories. My client went above and beyond before people started doing diversity training or diversity panels. That is how she ultimately got into the LA Times. The LA Times saw that and thought it was remarkable. It had been a few months since then, but her third series was coming up and the LA Times wanted to get the story published and promote it. The cause was really near and dear to my heart.How do you measure the results of a PR campaign?
A lot of my clients are thought leaders or small businesses. We start by looking at a story to publish on their Facebook or Instagram. We will also publish it on their LinkedIn. Then we look at the metrics. We look at what type of audience they are getting questions from, the interest from potential clients, or how much business they are getting from their stories. They are able to use the information for leverage to close deals. Then I use that for bigger feature articles. So, there’s not necessarily any direct metrics in PR, but there are ways around it where you can see how many times a post has been viewed. I will sit down with my clients and discuss the type of interest they received from a post. I also discuss when I write a press release, who is picking it up, and if it was fully published. I will also look at it as sort of like a pitch angle and how to get it into a featured article.In what direction do you see the PR industry heading?
I see PR definitely playing a big part, larger than advertising ever has, with getting more people into the news, articles, or finance deals. I have a client who has a very unique product, and she is using all the press and her VC pitch deck. I see more people investing in it versus advertising dollars, because advertising dollars are very, very expensive. You can pay someone in PR to get you onto a podcast, a written article, a published article, on tv, or a speaking panel. This will set the tone for your brand as an authority in that space.About Voices in PR:
Voices in PR is a platform where we discuss relevant issues regarding PR and social media. We get insight from influencers and PR leaders about useful and trending topics. Check out our video as well, linked to this blog. If you like this program, or would like to share your thoughts, please comment below. Headquartered in New York City, Bao Communications is a full-service bilingual PR Agency specializing in social media, media relations, content creation, and influencer marketing. We serve local, national, and global clients in the United States and China.