Media Relations for Interior Designers
Interior design is an industry dominated by solopreneurs, partnerships and micro-sized businesses. Which is fantastic. We’re one of those :)
BUT…if you want to grow your interior design brand & business into something bigger and better…you’re going to need to invest some time, thought and money into your media relations.
To make our job a little bit easier, I sat down with David Lasker from David Lasker Communications and asked him a million questions about media relations for interior designers.
Here’s what David had to say:
Douglas Robb - Interior Designher: What is media relations & what role should it play in an interior designer’s public relations campaign?
David Lasker - David Lasker Communications: As a specialist in media relations, I procure coverage for my clients in the media, which in turn means that I get feature stories published about them in so-called traditional media: magazines, newspapers and their respective websites, which not only duplicate features stories appearing in the hardcopy edition of a publication, but also include web-only extras. “New” media venues such as blogs and freestanding websites are also on my media contact list.
Douglas Robb - Interior Designher: What role should media relations play in an interior designer’s overall marketing campaign?
David Lasker - David Lasker Communications: Successful media relations gives you a presence that builds brand awareness and prestige because getting published in a respectable journal is a form of third-party endorsement. Your project occupies real estate on the page because it has been deemed newsworthy by the editor, who pays a staff or freelance writer to write the story based on the materials in our media kit. In this sense, editorial is more credible than advertising because anyone can buy an ad. Moreover, advertising is merely tooting your own horn.
Traditional media outlets have been badly battered by the defection of advertisers to Google and Facebook. Consequently, magazines and newspapers have fewer writers on staff and lower freelance budgets. Now more than ever, journalists rely on, and are delighted to receive, a comprehensive, well-written media kit, so that they can cut-and-paste whole bleeding chunks of text from the press release into their stories, finish early and sip sherry at the local pub’s happy hour.
Indeed, our press releases have often published verbatim, word for word, comma for comma, as a feature story in trade journals.
Where does media relations stand with respect to other marketing tools? Media relations is a one-way broadcasting tool. Social media (LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter etc.), on the other hand, is a two-way conversation. It works in a complementary way by interacting, building relationships and connecting emotionally with clients.
By far the biggest chunk of smaller design firms’ marketing budgets goes to pursuits: responding to requests for proposals. For government and large commercial work, typically, responding to proposals is how one gets the gig and keeps the cash flowing.
However, you cannot grow your firm by favouring proposals alone. Firms that favour proposals over building brand awareness eventually lose their way. They become less visible and salient. They’re no longer perceived as major players.
Douglas Robb - Interior Designher: Can you explain the difference between an effective media relations campaign & a poor one? How do you build a good media relations strategy? What are the elements of an effective media relations strategy for an interior design firm?
David Lasker - David Lasker Communications: Here is a generic explanation of the steps in a typical public relations marketing campaign.
Step 1: Information gathering and project planning:
Working with our client, David Lasker Communications (DLC) will determine project schedule, information gathering and approval protocols.
Step 2: Creating the media kit:
This is a basic tool that can serve many different purposes. It contains comprehensive information about your firm, you and projects you have undertaken in a concise, readable and organized format. It also contains high-res images. Here are a few ways it can be used.
Its initial use is with the media. Obviously, a media kit makes it fast and easy for press to write a story about you. It is usually sent out with a press release, which contains news—a new project you have landed, completed etc. When the press approaches you, it will save you from having to answer a lot of routine questions.
Reformatted for a non-media audience, it becomes an information kit that economically provides information a prospective client needs when deciding whether to use your services.
The information it contains can be used to refresh your website, in brochures and as content for your social media channels.
Media kit components:
Media kit components typically include:
Brief introductory letter to editors
Press release on the project du jour
Biography backgrounder on you, the designer
Backgrounder on your firm
High-res images and thumbnails of photography, plans, drawings
David Lasker Photography can provide suitable photography.
Cutlines (captions) for photos
Contact sheet of thumbnail photos
High-res headshot photo
Step 3: Creating the media contact list:
Target media
Who should your media kit go to? Where would you like to be published? We will identify the appropriate media contacts. We will not send a media kit just to a publication, or to a section at a publication, but to a person—the right person—at that publication.
Each time we do a media campaign, we will validate the media contact list because journalists tend to move around. The editor we spoke to at a certain newspaper for your last media campaign may no longer work there.
Step 4: Sending the media kit to media contacts:
We will send a personalized email message to each media contact that includes a few project photos and a link to download the complete media kit from our FTP site.
Publications like to have exclusivity, so we prioritize the contact list, send the media kit to one publication at a time, do follow up, and wait one week before sending the media kit to the next publication on the list.
Project fee:
Our fee is $150/hr plus GST. A media campaign typically ranges from 25 to 35 hours. The first media kit requires more hours than subsequent media kits because after the company backgrounder and bios are written, they rarely require major modification.
Douglas Robb - Interior Designher: What can a good media relations strategy do for interior designers...how potential clients perceive them, how it can change who their clients are, help them grow the biz & make more money, etc?
David Lasker - David Lasker Communications: If your work is widely published, your firm will be perceived as prestigious. You will be able to bill accordingly and recruit the best and brightest staff members.
Douglas Robb - Interior Designher: Who do you consider media in 2022? Newspapers, magazines, tv news vs bloggers, podcasters, Youtubers
David Lasker - David Lasker Communications: They all have their place, but for me, magazines and newspapers hold pride of place.
Douglas Robb - Interior Designher: Can an interior design company successfully create & run their own media relations strategy? Can’t a designer DIY their media relations campaign using HARO?
David Lasker - David Lasker Communications: Create your own campaign? Remember, it’s critical to make it easy for journalists to write about you; they don’t want to have to jump through hoops. Many designers are poor writers, but that’s not the point. You may write well, but do you know which information belongs in the press release versus the cutlines or a backgrounder? And do you know the protocols for each document? A media kit presents your information and images in the format that editors expect and can use. A media kit bears no resemblance to a brochure, for instance.
Douglas Robb - Interior Designher: How does (or how should) a company’s media relations impact the rest of their marketing strategy? How do you align media relations with the rest of an interior designer’s marketing efforts?
David Lasker - David Lasker Communications: To provide clients with the 40,000-foot, big-picture view, we’re part of the team at Oomph Group, which helps architects, engineers, planners and interior designers tell their stories through integrated marketing and business development plans and campaigns.
Douglas Robb - Interior Designher: When you begin working with an interior designer…
How does the process work?
What do you do for them?
What would be expected from them?
How do you describe success...what should they expect...best case scenario?
What would it cost & what kind of return on investment could they expect? I want to differentiate between money spent vs ROI.
David Lasker - David Lasker Communications: I look at photography of their projects to see what’s newsworthy: “cool,” original, different, inspiring. If it’s unpublished and relatively recent, it’s fodder for a media campaign.
It’s easy to calculate ROI on advertising or social media because publishers can give you their circulation figures and Hootsuite Insights provides analytics and performance statistics for social media.
Determining ROI on media relations is difficult if not impossible because the return can play out over years. For instance, many people who are contemplating a kitchen renovation accumulate a bulging scrapbook of clippings from articles in newspapers and magazines before picking up the phone and hiring a designer.
Douglas Robb - Interior Designher: Interior design is traditionally a highly local business. When developing a media relations plan for one of your clients, how do you approach local vs national/international media sources?
David Lasker - David Lasker Communications: The point of media relations is to get press hits in publications your clients read. It’s likely that they don’t read European, Asian or African design and decorating journals.
Douglas Robb - Interior Designher: Can you include some examples of interior design clients you have worked with. If privacy is an issue, feel free to refer to them as “an interior designer from Toronto”. If however, you/they want to be in the article, I will link to their website/socials in the article.
David Lasker - David Lasker Communications: Notable interior design firms and interior design departments at fully integrated design firms that have been our clients include:
Douglas Robb - Interior Designher: How important are your relationships with members of the media to the success of your clients’ campaigns?
David Lasker - David Lasker Communications: It helps to be on cordial terms with editors who are the gatekeepers at your target publications.
Douglas Robb - Interior Designher: What goes into a good media relations pitch?
David Lasker - David Lasker Communications: Of necessity, this varies depending on the project at hand. There’s no one “secret sauce.”
Douglas Robb - Interior Designher: Many designers use a blog as a way of building brand through content marketing. How does media relations impact a designer’s content marketing efforts? I want to highlight the SEO differences of a media website vs the designer’s blog
David Lasker - David Lasker Communications: Google recognizes not just that your name is mentioned, but also where it’s mentioned. You will rank higher in a Google search if you have been published.
Douglas Robb - Interior Designher: When it comes to brand building, do you focus on the company as a whole or do you highlight the principal designer? I am curious about the practice of portraying designers as thought leaders in the industry. If framing a designer as an industry thought leader is important…how do you do it?
David Lasker - David Lasker Communications: Regarding thought leaders, Johanna Hoffmann, President of Oomph Group, and I have developed our proprietary, trademarked Industry PacesetterTM program, which puts you back, front and centre, with clients, prospects, industry colleagues and other stakeholders. Industry PacesettersTM are design thought leaders whose expertise brings high visibility in the marketplace. They’re the ones everyone quotes and namedrops, who keynote the biggest conferences, land the TV interviews and write the bestselling business books.
Depending on the size and scope of your firm, you may already be a fledging thought leader and you may have one or two more on staff. Our program will help identify the best candidates, raise their profiles and, in turn, increase the prestige and influence of your firm.
Douglas Robb - Interior Designher: How important is video in media relations? In social media, video is becoming dominant over text & images…does this apply to all media?
David Lasker - David Lasker Communications: Video is an important component in your social media channels; less so with traditional media.
Douglas Robb - Interior Designher: What are media companies looking for? I want to address the concept of helping media with their job vs just sending out a press release or bragging about their latest interior design project
David Lasker - David Lasker Communications: What is the editor of the newspaper or magazine you want to appear in looking for? Read a few issues from front to back and you’ll know! Next, give them what they want.
About David Lasker
David’s extensive media relations and expertise in writing and photography help ensure effective PR campaigns and strong results for our clients in the A&D community. Before starting his own company, David was Vice President at MarketLink Communications, where his clients included Artemide, HBF, HOK, IBI Group, Nienkamper, Teknion, Sylvania, and Global Group, Canada’s largest manufacturer of office and healthcare furniture. One of his assignments for Global was to write the firm’s 40th-anniversary history book.
David’s design stories have appeared in over 100 periodicals, from Architectural Digest to Zoomer. He has held key roles at major design publications in Canada and the U.S., including Interior Design (Canadian correspondent), where one of his cover stories introduced Yabu Pushelberg to an international audience; The Los Angeles Times (design columnist); The Globe and Mail (founding Fashion and Design Editor); Canadian Interiors (Editor‐in‐Chief); Canadian House and Home (editorial board); and OfficeInsight (Canadian correspondent).
He has been a speaker at trade shows and conventions for: Association of Registered Interior Designers of Ontario (ARIDO), Association of Architectural Technologists of Ontario (AATO), Construct Canada, IIDEX NeoCon, Ontario Association of Architects (OAA), and SIDIM Salon du Design.
As an architectural photographer, he has worked for high-profile firms including Johnson Chou Design, Kasian, and +VG Architects.
Away from the office, David continues his first career as a musician, performing with orchestras and chamber ensembles around the GTA. (He emigrated to Canada, after graduating from Juilliard and Yale, to play principal bass in the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra). He can be heard as the solo bass player on Canadian Panorama, world-premiere recordings commissioned for the Winds of the Scarborough Philharmonic Orchestra, on Cambria CD-1227, distributed by Naxos.
About David Lasker Communications
Let’s say you want to see your new project published in influential journals. Do you have the time, energy and ability to create a proper media kit, delivered in the format that editors expect, with a press release, backgrounders, images and cutlines?
Design and A/E/C (architecture, engineering and construction) associations typically offer marketing seminars and coaching videos to their members. However, these courses address business development, networking and branding, not media relations.
When designers hire a PR firm, they quickly learn that few are design-literate. That’s why designers often find themselves muddling through, dictating the press release.
We, on the other hand, speak your language and are at home in your milieu. When we chat with you about your projects, we can finish your sentences.
We have created publicity campaigns for some of the world’s largest design-related firms, including HOK, IBI Group, Global Group, and Teknion. Our client roster includes one-person boutiques, too. (See examples of our work.)
We are working journalists. This gives us a competitive edge with editors because we are intimately aware of their needs and how to fulfill them.
We look for the story-within-the story of our clients, finding new angles that trigger media interest. To that end, we work with clients in an interactive process to position them in ways they might not have discovered on their own.
Based in Toronto, we offer a full range of diversified, bilingual communications services for Canadian, American and international markets. Our network of seasoned communications professionals allows us to serve clients in every aspect of communications, from advertising and branding to graphic design, market research, media buying, media training, new media, photography, speech writing, social media and videography.
Contact David Lasker Communications
Website: www.davidlaskercommunications.com
Email: Contact David
Instagram: @davidlaskercommunications
Facebook: @David-Lasker-Communications
Linkedin: @david-lasker
