End-to-end outreach workflow
Table of Contents
- The best beauty PR pitches don’t sell products — they package products inside a larger trend or cultural story journalists can actually run with.
- Most beauty outreach fails because PRs rely on mass product blasts instead of understanding how individual journalists actually work and what stories they need.
- Relationship-building in beauty PR has been replaced by volume and influencer marketing, even though responsive, honest relationships still drive the best media results.
- Brands get more coverage when they acknowledge competitors and explain what makes their angle meaningfully different instead of pretending they invented the category.
- Journalists who matter most today are looking for timely expert commentary and trend-driven angles — not standalone product announcements.
Few people know this, but one of my first jobs was marketing for a tooth-whitening client that played well in the beauty space.
I really wish I had known Claire Coleman back then because my results were not pretty…
Claire is a freelance editor and journalist in the beauty space who has been featured in major publications, including Elle, Stylist, the Daily Mail, and Women’s Health, among others. She’s also a brand consultant and has a fantastic Substack called Beauty Geekery.
In this episode, we talk all about PR and the beauty industry.
Here is a slightly edited transcript:
Have you always been a freelance editor or have you worked in-house too?
Claire: My very first job out of university was work experience on a website, working across features in a whole range of things. It was at the tail end of the dot-com boom — I don’t think anyone had really figured out how it was going to be monetized, and in a lot of ways it was ahead of its time.
I made myself indispensable and stayed for a year and a half, and then when about 90% of the staff got made redundant, I was out on my ear.
At that point, I just contacted everyone I knew in the industry and started doing a little bit of work here and there.
I thought I’d freelance until a proper job came along, and then by the time a proper job came along, I was loving freelancing too much. I very much enjoy the diversity and flexibility it gives me.
What does a day in the life look like for you as a freelancer?
Claire: I genuinely do not have anything like a typical day — that’s actually what I love about it. Some days I’ll decide it’s going to be a pitch day and go through a load of emails. When pitches come in, I might scribble down ideas, think “that makes me think of another thing,” and if three things line up as a trend I’ll pitch that straight off.
Other days I might be researching work for one of my consultant brands. Right now I’m working with a dermatologist helping her write a book, and I’m working with an aesthetics brand helping them write a trend report. I’m also keeping an eye on emails coming in and thinking about what might work for my Substack or for various clients.
When you’re asking about the difference between what I do and what someone in-house does — I don’t have the same rhythm to my days and weeks that they might. In a newspaper, you know there’s a features conference every day at 11 a.m. In a magazine, you know you’ll have a features meeting every Monday.
Those rhythms are something I really encourage PRs to understand: get to know the rhythms of various publications, and know when a good time to pitch is.
For me, there isn’t a particular good time of day or week. Something might land right when I’m looking to pitch a story, or I might put it on the back burner and come back to it later.
Have you written more in print, digital, or is it a mix?
Claire: Historically, my background was print, but now there isn’t so much differentiation. A lot of what I write for the Daily Mail, the Telegraph, or Metro will end up going online as well — sometimes behind a paywall, sometimes not.
I’ve gone through that whole evolution where people used to ask, “Is it going in the paper or just online?” and now I’m getting, “Is it going online or just in the paper?”
Print used to be king. But what’s most interesting about the changes I’m seeing is that, particularly here in the UK, newspapers were relatively late to paywalls and the expectation of free content may be a lot higher here than in the States.
Because of that, a lot of newspapers are increasingly commissioning in a different way. They want a really grabby headline or a brilliant before-and-after image to put behind a paywall and pull readers in.
That’s actually part of why I set up my Substack — the geekier, more in-depth beauty pieces that I used to be commissioned to write a lot more aren’t getting commissioned in the same way.
I still believe there’s an audience for them; I’m just not sure that audience is still looking to traditional media to provide that kind of information.
Vince: That makes a lot of sense. It seems like people are changing the way they interact with media, and it’s easy to blame AI, but I don’t think that’s the full reason.
Claire: No. I think the minute that media started giving content away for free, that’s when the problem started.
Part of the reason I point to the UK specifically is that we’ve always had the BBC as a free news source, and I think that has fed into this idea that content can be free.
Why is the fashion/beauty industry so difficult to get coverage?
Claire: My experience of the way PR has evolved is that the relationship-building aspect of it seems to have been forgotten.
I understand why — things like hybrid working, where junior people don’t sit next to senior people and don’t see them picking up the phone to have difficult conversations with clients and journalists, have played a part in that.
But I also think there has been a real shift in the fashion and beauty space toward paid content on Instagram and similar platforms. Traditional journalists may have been overlooked in the rush to get someone with 100,000 followers to talk about a product.
Just as journalists are asked to do more for less, I know my PR friends are being asked to do more for less.
Trying to keep very disparate groups of people happy is a very difficult thing to do.
And I know there are websites that won’t include a product in a roundup unless there’s an affiliate link — which is depressing, but that’s where things are going.
What kinds of pitches do you get?
Claire: Largely it’s about product PR.
And that’s really problematic for me, because I think it comes back to people not having enough time to work out who they’re targeting.
I understand that blanket emailing gets results for some people — I don’t think it gets the best results.
It’s really easy to tick a box and tell your client that you’ve sent the mail out to a hundred thousand people and however many have opened it.
But I don’t feel like that gets the same results as looking at who the most relevant people are for your client, and looking at how your client might be covered by those individuals in very different ways.
You can make a list of people doing product roundups every week, and maybe this week it’s peptide serums, so you send out all your clients’ peptide serums and you might get some hits.
For me, it’s just another one where I’m hitting delete.
What I have the biggest problem with is the idea that a scatter-gun approach is going to be appropriate for everyone.
It feels lazy.
What makes a pitch land?
Claire: The best features come out of a PR saying, not “I’ve got a product to sell you,” but “I’ve got a story to tell you.”
It’s not about ignoring your competitors — it’s about looking at trends. I’m not going to write about a new lipstick just because it’s a new shade. But I have written about a refillable lipstick that was presented to me this way: “There’s a trend for refillable lipsticks. Dior is doing refillable lipsticks. So-and-so is doing refillable lipsticks. And this industry trade magazine referred to them as the new heirlooms — instead of watches.” That’s interesting. You’ve given me a bunch of data points, told me this is definitely a trend, and I don’t even have to do very much work — I can package that up in my own words and pitch it to an editor. And that’s exactly what I did, and it made a story.
Vince: So if someone listening has a beauty client with a new product, the message is: don’t focus on the product’s features alone. Focus on what the story is going to be around the product — connecting it to trends, finding timeliness.
Claire: Exactly. The idea that people are going to write about one product or one brand these days is so, so rare. And pretending your competitors don’t exist isn’t helpful, because I’m going to be across your competitors anyway. What’s your USP? What are you saying that nobody else is saying? What is the story that you can tell that nobody else is telling?
Numbers are not what’s relevant — what’s relevant is the story those numbers tell. Taking things to the next level, working out why those sorts of things are going to be important to my audience. Rather than giving me something that makes me think, “So what? What’s new?”
Can you elaborate a bit more on the competitors?
Claire: I mean — one of my big bug bears is getting a message like, “I see you wrote a piece about peptides, could you put this product in?”
That’s a fundamental misunderstanding of how I personally work.
Once that piece is written and gone, I’m done with it. I’m onto the next thing.
I’m still in a print mentality, and also as a freelancer I don’t have access to a CMS — none of that is relevant to me.
It’s very rare that a product is a true first-to-market product doing something completely new.
Don’t try to pretend that’s the case, because I will call it out.
What you’re better off doing is saying, “We know this isn’t the first to market.” What did I get a press release for today? A wet-to-dry straightener. Traditionally you can’t straighten wet hair because it’s damaging.
But I can think of at least two or three brands who have now come out with versions of this.
So what is your product doing differently from your competitors? Do you think your product does it better? Then challenge me to do a tried-and-tested. Put it through the wringer.
You have to be okay with the fact that I might find it wanting — but those are the kinds of things I mean when I say consider your competitors.
Do you appreciate when PR professionals reach out without anything to pitch?
Claire: I don’t vehemently object to them, but I don’t love them either.
“Do you want me to set up a chat with someone?”
No — unless I’m working on a story, I’d be wasting my time and their time.
But if you’ve got something to talk about and you can bring them in to talk about it… sometimes it’s serendipitous.
Maybe it lands when I’m researching a piece and it’s bang on, and I’ll say, “Can you let me know what they would think around X, Y, and Z?”
I’m not saying don’t send those emails, but don’t be offended if I don’t respond.
Vince: It sounds like you’re more about utility — if there’s a breaking trend and your client can add commentary to it, that’s going to land better.
Claire: Exactly.
Go talk to your client and find a story for them to comment on — that’s what I’m hoping people would do.
GLP-1 stories are clearly doing really well for newspapers right now.
If you’ve got a different angle on a GLP-1 story, I’m probably interested.
I actually got pitched a story about what GLP-1s can do to your intimate area.
I probably wouldn’t have been that interested in talking to a gynaecologist out of the blue — but suddenly you’ve given me a story where I know there’s a market for it right now.
I’ve got my story, I’ve got my expert, and now I have that person in my back pocket for next time.
Vince: Where people miss the mark with relationship building is thinking that because you have a relationship with someone, they’ll cover everything you send them.
Claire: Yes — the peers I have the best relationships with are the ones who will pitch me something and I’ll say, “It’s not for me, and here’s why,” and they’ll say okay. Or they’ll pitch me something and say, “I’m not sure if there’s anything you can do with this.” It’s a relationship of honesty.
I’m not going to cover all of your clients. But if I know that when I was in a bind and needed a quote within five minutes flat, you found me someone to talk to — then you are going to be my first point of call. You are going to be someone I rely on.
Are there ways to build relationships beyond just sending great pitches?
Claire: I think those are old-fashioned tactics but I do think they work. Back when I was active on Twitter — I don’t really touch X anymore — there was a skincare brand called Sam Pharma, targeted at young people just starting to use product.
When it first started, the PR pitched it to me and I just wasn’t interested in teen or kids’ products.
But then I would find that the geekier tweets I put out, the founder would respond to — not in a weird way, but in a way that showed we were thinking along the same lines.
So I rang up the PR and said, “Set up a meeting, because this guy sounds interesting.” That’s an example of a brand doing it directly rather than a PR, but it works.
I think increasingly there’s a quid pro quo element.
I have my Substack — if you want to support me, subscribe.
You want me to support you, there’s that kind of exchange going on.
And beyond that, it gives you an insight into how my brain is working.
If you’re looking at my Instagram at @featuresjournal, that’s where I post the stories I’m working on. In my stories I’ll say, “I am looking for someone to comment on X” or “I’m looking for products that fit this brief.”
I know it’s hard to keep on top of everyone on social media, but you don’t have to.
Pick three people who you think would be the best outlets for your clients, engage with them, and look at what they’re doing.
Building relationships is so much harder than it was pre-pandemic, and harder than when people worked on magazines and you’d go out and have your nails done together.
But there are still ways to do it. It involves an investment of time, energy, and thought — but it does pay dividends.
What is your Substack newsletter about?
Claire: I work in various ways with PRs and with brands.
With PR agencies, I do workshops — a lot of younger PRs don’t necessarily know how print newspapers work, so I work internally with agencies on pitching, angles, and leads.
On the brand side, I love working with brands on NPD or new ranges coming out, helping them take great science and distill it in a way that the consumer can understand, and working out what’s going to be genuinely interesting to that consumer.
And Beauty Geekery on Substack is where I’m having an awful lot of fun writing all the geeky beauty stories I know there’s a market for. It’s been really enjoyable to get back to writing those kinds of pieces. You can also find me on Instagram at @featuresjournal.
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