Starting a fashion brand is rather tricky these days when the whole media, magazine and TV platforms are run like an "in club" where money talks and anything real, desperately trying to break in, gets ignored or deleted unless you have money to spend on advertorials. I find it really sickening to my stomach that people like Kelly Brook open a new restaurant and the Daily Mail have three different made up stories about her, giving enormous coverage and exposure for her opening night. I also see Kim and Kanye making millions daily for their brands, (the Yeezy site is down but hey why run your own business when you've got Adidas doing it for you) just because their faces are splattered all over the place and the truth is who really gives a fig? I don't but I do give a fig about the sustainability of UK business, the planet and all those small businesses, like mine out there struggling to make it alone in a hashtag world.
The reason the high street is dying, the fashion business is stuck and the newspaper magazine businesses are over is because they have flogged the same old, same old, wannabe celebrity faces over and over again until it is hard to know what is real and what is just made up for some paid exposure. Fashion magazine editors in ivory towers and young inexperienced wardrobe stylists are all enjoying endless rounds of never ending goodie bags, offering fake lovey dovey tweets in return for the freebies, that no one reads because they are all too busy talking about themselves to even notice.
It makes no sense whatsoever to keep using the same wannabe celebrities over and over, until they have to invent completely untrue stories in order to fill the pages of a newspaper or magazine. It is clear to me as a businesswoman the drop in sales (unless you're Amazon), and retailers struggling like never before, this kind of journalism is just not cool or read by anyone with a brain.
One of my goals, no joke is to get someone like George Clooney to agree to have lunch with me on an outside table at Scotts restaurant, so far I've managed Michael Barrymore, the paps would click away and my business would take off like a rocket to the moon. So all I need to do now is hunt him down and beg him to let me buy him lunch. Sad sad world we live in when this unattainable, pie in the sky idea is all I can hope for when it comes to getting some much needed free press.
P.S. If anyone has his number or a way of contacting George tweet me @venuscow because I am listening, more than happy for Amal Clooney to come too and delighted to pay.
My advice to anyone constantly writing press releases or stalking journalists in the hope of a bite you're barking up the wrong tree love. Unless you've got an in with the editor you've got no hope, as they make all the decisions, the reason journalists NEVER ring you back. Quietly make your money and then pay a PR agent, an ad agency or the paper or magazine directly for advertorial. The days of independent journalism, writing about something just because it's amazing, fantastic, original are over so make sure when you are reading an article exholing the virtues of some product or other you take it with a pinch of salt.
The one place you can still get some free exposure is on the news if you can think of an angle connected to a big current news story pitch away. I have had a lot of success getting on radio and TV this way.