How to Pitch

I remember when I was in middle school, I wanted to work for the fashion industry... so bad.

I was determined to make it in the fashion world and be successful in it. I subscribed to fashion magazines, made a fashion blog, a fashion youtube channel, and bought books and movies that had to do anything and everything with the high fashion industry. And don't forget buying what was currently trending, too. Granted, I didn't have a job at the moment, so every dollar I invested into my collection and closet, was precious. Birthday, Christmas, and "beg my parents" money was the way I got what I needed in order to inform myself of the fashion world, and look stylish while doing so.

After some reading and researching, I had decided to pursue a career of fashion magazine editor. During high school, my passion for fashion was still very much present, but the desire to pursue a career in it was not as strong as it had been before. I was discouraged at how hard it could be to make it as a magazine editor. So, I settled for pursuing the most broad major I could find: Business.

After my first two years of community college, I realized how much I liked my marketing class and possibly changing my focus to fashion marketing.

You might be wondering where I'm going with this, telling you my whole life story. Well, I'm currently taking a Public Relations class in college, and I'm currently learning about pitching. Information that I wish I would have stumbled upon when I was interested in writing for the fashion world. So if you love fashion and writing, this blog post is for you.

According to Ed Zitron in This Is How You Pitch, "...pitching is the bedrock of PR". You might be wondering, what IS pitching? Well, first off, when you have a great story to tell a certain audience, for example: Fashion brand, Rebecca Minkoff, is having an unbelievable 50% off every item on their website! Working in PR means persuading journalists to write your story because it's newsworthy. PR professionals have to pitch their story to journalists: bloggers, reporters, bloggers (hey, that's me), editors (hey, that was my dream job in middle school), and even social media influencers. Pitching is a short and to-the-point, yet interesting spin of your story to send to these people in order to capture their attention and, hopefully, capture your story and write about it. According to Zitron, the pitch is the story you want them to write. 

In trying to write a pitch, there are four paths you can take, according to Zitron: company story, company news, trend pieces, and sourcing. The one I will focus on today is company story.

Back to our example, Rebecca Minkoff is having an online sale of 50% off all items. We can steer the pitch towards company story. If we add that Rebecca once, as a child, wanted to own a designer bag, but couldn't afford it. Now, everyone has an opportunity to snatch a bag for a much more affordable price.

To wrap this up, I will finish with showing you a pitch outline from Zitron's book:

1. It's under 200 words.

2. It must be direct and free of jargon or fluff.

3. It's written, not copy-pasted. Write each pitch individually, for each person, each time.

I hope you learned a thing or two on pitching. Pitching doesn't pertain solely in PR, but in other areas like marketing and selling.

Happy pitching!

Xo,

Stacy.