Getting coverage is the holy grail for any PR but with the plethora of glossy consumer magazines it’s often difficult to know where to start. At Gorkana, we have a secret weapon when it comes to spotting coverage opportunities, knowing which journalist to call and how to pitch.
Tor Sandars, one of Gorkana’s specialist senior consultants, has nearly 20 years’ PR experience, including running her own agency for four years, and has worked on brands including Tefal, Patak’s, Tilda Rice and Jus-Rol. If there’s a PRable opportunity to be found she’ll find it.
Working behind the scenes, Tor and a team of 19 researchers spot and list thousands of PR opportunities from consumer magazines and nationals. Between juggling phone calls, Gorkanapr managed to catch up with Tor to hear how she goes about finding the hidden gems to help PRs stay on top of their game.
Thanks for your time – we know how busy you are.
It’s a pleasure although I’m not used to being the subject of stories!
Firstly tell us a bit about your role.
When we asked our PR clients what they wanted from Gorkana they all told us they were stretched and they wanted us to help them save time on day-to-day tasks. One way we can do that is to take the legwork out of finding PR opportunities in the glossies and nationals.
When I ran my own agency I would encourage my team to spot at least one new PRable opportunity a week in one of the nationals or magazines our clients wanted us to target. We’ve taken that concept and adapted it for Gorkana.
What do you actually do?
I work with three news teams and literally trawl through the most popular consumer titles page by page and look at whether there are any opportunities for PRs to feed in such as products, spokespeople, case studies, reviews, etc.
We then get on the phone and speak to the journalists who put these pages together to find out exactly what they are and aren’t interested in covering, how and when they like to be contacted and anything else we think will be useful for PRs. We also list accurate journalist contact details, as well as background notes, to help PRs pitch stories to the right journalist at the right time.
Sounds very time consuming?
It is time consuming but if we take the legwork out of finding the right contact details and PR opportunities, it leaves PRs to focus on getting that all-important coverage.
Are there really lots of PRable opportunities out there in magazine land?
Absolutely! We’ve been through 100 weekly and monthly consumer magazines and found more than 1,000 PR opportunities.
The opportunities are grouped into 16 different themes from product pages, reviews to profile opportunities. We’ve spotted them across nine consumer sectors including beauty, fashion, travel and food and drink.
Looking at the Sainsbury’s magazine for example there are at least 18 opportunities for PRs that we’ve spotted and listed.
Is it only consumer magazines covered?
We’ve pulled together opportunities for consumer weekly and monthly titles and we’ve also looked at the consumer sections on all the nationals.
We also have seasonal lists including Christmas and Easter.
How often are the opportunities updated?
We aim to try and update them on a six-monthly basis but obviously when national newspaper supplements/ consumer magazines are relaunched we look through these immediately and update the details there and then.
What’s next on the list?
We have called in the top 100 regional newspapers (the Gorkana office looks like Wapping!) and the team is going through them as we speak. We expect to have them all finalised and loaded up by early next year.
And finally what’s your favourite magazine?
From a personal point of view, I enjoy reading Marie Claire. From a PR point of view I have always found the team at Red magazine very approachable and they cover a wide range of topics so there are lots of PR opportunities within!
Thanks so much for speaking to us Tor – happy hunting!
If you are a Gorkana Media Database client contact Gorkana Support on feedback@gorkana.com to find out how to access the lists.
If you are not a database client click here to request a free demo or call the Gorkana sales team on +44 (0)20 7420 6854.
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