'Where is my full feature?!'

By Melissa A Vitale

With MAVPR, public relations efforts lead to a variety of on-target placements in top tier outlets. Secured coverage can manifest in the form of featured quotes, inclusion in a roundup of relevant products and brands and, the Mac daddy of all media relations, full feature coverage with standalone articles in a number of top tier outlets. 

To give you an idea of caliber that receive full features contingent on their timeline: Time Magazine published a cover story on Barbie on Feb. 8, 2016 about how the brand launched their entirely new creation. The brand was doing a multi-million dollar brand overhaul, an year-plus marketing and PR campaign and was transforming an iconic figure in culture, and for more on this, I cannot recommend enough taking an evening to dive into Hulu doc, Tiny Shoulders: Rethinking Barbie. 

Any brand doing a similar brand overhaul with a comparable high caliber of name recognition can say “when” and they’ll get that full feature whenever you want. 

Anything else requires a combination of carefully laid pr messaging, strong relationships and journalist interest at the time of being pitched. Which can change heavily depending on the journalist and news cycle. 

Anyone with less brand-name recognition than Elon Musk or Kim Kardashian, asking for a full profile is often a ball game of media interest. There may be the perfect journalist that would make the most beautiful feature coverage. There may also be someone who can tell the best story of an individual brand of executive but that person may be swamped with storylines in the coming weeks or even months. It’s not unusual for someone to come back to a pitch six months later. Actually it’s very common which is why carefully laid media plans have better long term success than not. 

Typically, with MAVPR, full features come in within the 2-3 month mark. For a publicist, these are the best moments in our career: a full feature. Our clients are happiest then so for us, it’s the main goal too. 

But let’s manage some expectations. 

Writers have to serve national and global audiences with diverse interest base. Not everything an individual does has the ability to capture an audiences attention in a full feature and press are constantly worried about their engagement numbers. 

Along with that when there’s a busy newscycle in the industry, evergreen (a PR term for non-time sensitive) get pushed aside to save man hours - those full features are written by humans who have their own schedule I cannot control. A national event can bring every editor and writer on deck to get the news out. 

Now, just because someone is interesting or is doing something innovative, doesn’t mean it will automatically get a full feature. Press often require full and exclusive access to their subjects. If there’s something that can’t be shared, one can argue that’s the most interesting aspect to readers. Not including the juicy details means their readers aren’t getting an incredible story: they’re reading PR wishwash which you can read in any press release if that’s what you want as a reader.

Events that don’t always achieve a full top-tier feature (but can get a niche industry publication if indicative of a bigger trend): 
- Hiring announcements
- Profiles of Individuals
- Re-branding (unless you’re Barbie or another household name brand) 
- Standalone brand event post-coverage 

The topics of the above often don’t garner enough attention at a top tier. 

Another great example is that Elon Musk was recently on the cover of Wired Magazine; the reporting for the 6+ page feature was done over 18 months in advance. 

When you hire a bigger PR firm, they compensate by having junior staff focus on blog, regional and niche placements that fill end-of-month-reports but often have no tangible ROI in the long-run of the campaign, while senior staff go after the top tier, longer leads that clients actually want. The result: using a big PR firm, you will not only get large placements, but you get many placements frequently.

But every big PR firm I’ve seen has about the same rate with top tier features. I typically don’t focus on niche outlets for profiles because my clients have come back to me disappointed: “we want you focusing on top tier.” Clients of global firms may have their names mentioned immediately in press, but rarely a full feature until a few months in. 

A standalone story often takes planning, multiple interviews and lots of image assets. For this reason some of the longest full-features I’ve worked on have taken 6 months.

Full features do not happen over night. I truly wish they did. I would have so, so much less stress day-to-day if that were the case.

Unfortunately that is not how the media environment works, especially with freelance publicists. Larger $15K a mo PR firms are quicker with repeat full features because they have multiple people with multiple contact threads. Those interested in regular full-features at that caliber should select a PR firm that advertises to meet those expectations. 

At MAVPR, Placements per month per client varies heavily based on newscycle, account strategy, deliverables and editorial timeline. Typically, clients start with a full feature in a top tier outlet within the first two months of engagement as well as other press opportunities including inclusions in roundups and commentary in feature articles within the first month months of press strategy.  As the brand is introduced to more media, and their editorial calendars align with the brand’s expertise, it usually ramps up to between 2-8 inclusions or features a month, over 6 months, either full features, commentary or inclusion in roundups. 

Managing expectations of media industry is a regular part of my job. I hope I didn’t sell myself short by saying a full-feature doesn’t come everyday at MAVPR; because top tier coverage is still a regular occurrence for clients, sometimes its brand-inclusion or trend commentary or industry predictions, other times its turnaround feature stories, but part of my brand has always been transparency to clients and this goes to that regard. 

Current clients of MAVPR are encouraged to seek updates to see the standing of potential full-features with the brand. 
To learn more about what we specialize in, please visit: https://www.melissaavitale.com/about.html