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Word PR stars find their way HOME...

NEWSLETTER / April 2023

CHRISTMAS IN APRIL The much-anticipated 2023 Big Sky Journal HOME arrived with all the fanfare – and weight! – of the old Christmas toy catalogs we pored over as kids. A Montana house by JLF Architects is the cover story, designed as a series of connected structures that reflects the contours of the mountains and gives “a built-over-time look,” writes BSJ. The plan creates a “corridor that runs all the way through the house to the great room window” that interior designer Sophia Cok calls “a really powerful element.” Elsewhere in the issue, also by JLF, a Jackson Hole house “In the Shadow of the Tetons” created with design-build partner Big-D Signature receives raves, including for an antique cabin revived as the primary bedroom suite with remnants of 1880s newspapers once used as insulation still stuck to the logs. The “history of it is fascinating,” says the homeowner. “It brings you back in time.”

KITCHEN ENVY Client Jeremiah Young, owner and creative director of Kibler & Kirch, has a star turn in Big Sky Journal HOME, discussing how the pandemic shook up ideas about how we use our kitchens, but also “how we want our kitchens to feel,” the magazine writes in The Heart and the Hearth.” For Young, that feel comes through materials that gather patina to look better with age. “I want a kitchen with soul,” he says. And the pandemic brought fresh intentions around function: "The prospect of actually cooking day in and day out, means that everything needs to be considered just that much more carefully," he tells BSJ. Word PR client Envi Interior Design Studio’s owner and principal designer Susie Hoffmann talks 2023 design trends in the new BSJ HOME as well. “I think design in Montana is on the leading edge of design nationwide,” she says.

BE THEIR GUEST A cunning Jackson Hole guesthouse by clients WRJ Design is the star of a story in the new May/June issue of Mountain Living. “Rush Jenkins, co-founder of WRJ Design, was charged with packing as much charm as possible into the two-bedroom space,” the magazine writes. While the mini-me cabin follows the natural palette of the client’s main house, Jenkins used layers of texture for a special sense of welcome. “All of our projects are focused on the importance of creating a tactile experience,” he tells ML. “In the mountains we can use mohair, cashmere, wool and fur—fabrics you might not ordinarily use in more metropolitan areas.” WRJ Design also was honored with a feature in the new Big Sky Journal HOME, where “A Yellowstone Story” shares the design tale of an unusual Montana house that the magazine deems both “seriously elegant and irresistibly playful.”

 

PR TIP OF THE MONTH When in Doubt, Follow Up

PR guru Michael Smart is a favorite with Word PR for his practical, relationship-forward approach to media that treats editors and journalists as people, colleagues and collaborators, the same approach that wins us success for clients month after month. In a recent webinar for PR pros, Smart put numbers to a favorite Word PR tactic – following up on pitches to editors and journalists – sharing data that “80% of placements come only after follow up.” Smart also related some anecdotes of major PR placements that literally took years from the initial pitch to the final payoff of a big story, another experience we’re familiar with.

As we tell prospective clients, PR is a relationship business. Winning the trust of editors and writers with truly targeted pitches takes time, but it gets future pitches read and considered—and part of that art comes from not giving up when a first outreach gets no response. Following up requires a confidence that skips the weak “sorry to bother you” openers that can leave an editor feeling bothered and instead offers a useful story idea tied to an understanding of a particular contact’s publication or writing with a fresh angle or current trend connection to sweeten the deal. We like Smart’s term for that combo of confident persistence and real value that gets clients important coverage—and is a Word PR best practice: “diplomatic tenacity.”


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