In A Great Fashion Press Release, Your Products Need To Speak For Themselves

To gain valuable earned media exposure and bring your new product or brand to top-of-mind awareness among news media, and through them, your customers, a press release targeted to fashion-industry influencers – journalists, bloggers, fashion editors, and website curators – must be exciting, visually interesting, clear and specific. It’s imperative that your news content and the all-important accompanying images thoroughly detail your product’s unique features. Importantly, make sure the images don’t make your models the star, but instead focus attention on the product itself.

To gain media and consumer attention, tout your products unique attributes and beware of allowing your models to gain more exposure than the fashions they’re showing off

Using attractive models in product images is a tried-and-true way to attract attention to your product, with the idea being that customers can imagine themselves in the picture. However, rather than using typical advertising-style images, keep in mind that journalists are looking for legitimate news on your product, not pretty pictures of beautiful people accompanied by advertising-style copy.

A newsworthy press release promoting a fashion brand or product – from clothing to shoes, accessories, handbags, even watches and jewelry – must be crafted in the correct style to show journalists that you’re not looking for free advertising. Instead, your press release should provide interesting information and details that make your content fit in the “news” category instead of advertising. This requires a completely different strategy than the typical fashion brand advertising campaign.

Fashion is a visual industry. Photographs always are important in creating newsworthy content and are especially important when publicizing a new fashion brand or product. It’s imperative to provide a selection of professional product images that will quickly grab the attention of journalists and help fire up the imaginations of readers. Unless your models are more than beautiful people – for example, your brand spokesperson is famous for something other than just their physical looks or celebrity – it’s important that the images specifically focus on the products’ unique and noteworthy features, not on the person you’re using as a model.

Use an image like the first one instead of the second one

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Remember, you’re not selling the model, but the product and the feeling customers get when they wear, carry or use your brand’s new offerings. Although fashion marketing often is aimed at helping customers create a lifestyle, journalists are not interested in this focus, but instead on how your brand’s new offerings are different from – and better than – other similar products. There’s always a newsworthy angle for fashion, from unique materials and styles to famous and sought-after designers, or the use of sustainable materials and green manufacturing practices. Even the price point can be a newsworthy angle. Be prepared to outline all the features that make your brand and products stand out from the competition and be sure to include high-quality images that focus more on the products than the people modeling them.

As with every press release, follow these seven steps to creating newsworthy content that journalists can use without spending too much of their valuable time re-writing.

1. Determine your angle and write a concise headline and one-sentence summary/sub-headline. Be sure not to repeat the same information in your headline when creating your summary.
2. Write a newsworthy lead paragraph (between 30 and 50 words long) that includes answers to the important questions of what, who, when, where, why and how. The lead must be interesting enough to persuade journalists – and through them, potential customers – to keep reading.
3. Follow your lead with two to five paragraphs with supporting details and at least wo professional-quality photographs that do not include an obvious sales pitch (large logo, store signage, etc.).
4. Don’t forget to include your company website or landing page for readers to find additional information or purchase your product online.
5. Include at least one good quote from a company spokesperson. Additional quotes from happy customers – including their full first and last name and the city and state (or at least the region of the country, such as Mid-West, New England or West Coast) in which they reside – will add credibility to your content.
6. Finish up with your company boilerplate.
7. Be sure to include complete media contact information for follow-up questions or an interview, including name, title, email and direct phone.

In A Great Fashion Press Release, Your Products Need To Speak For Themselves – THE NEXT STEP

FaselisGrowth is a superior way to get your press release into the inbox of just the right selection of journalists and influencers. To help you produce professional newsworthy content that will garner the most earned media, Faselis offers a variety of industry- and product-specific press release templates to make certain your content includes all the important information in the style and format journalists demand. Plus, including images is a snap – Faselis’ platform allows you to provide journalists with an unlimited number of images and videos as thumbnails that won’t clog up their inbox, yet provides for easy downloading of high-resolution files.

by Jill McCoomber