Contextualizing Coverage in the Wall Street Journal

Context around how Leaf Shave Handles PR

Every three months or so I panic because I realize Leaf Shave doesn't have a PR strategy and I wonder if that's important to the longevity and health of the business. Don't get me wrong, it's not a barren wasteland out there. We've had positive, if not limited, coverage in press publications including The NY Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Boston Globe, Byrdie, Health, Men's Health, Harpers Bazaar, GQ, and more.

But it's been nearly all inbound. I've simply been too busy running the business to figure out how to find journalists or editors (is that even who you go find?), pitch them, and build relationships.

At least, that’s what I feel like a press strategy needs to entail. Relationship building.

Am I wrong?

Here’s my Press Coverage Story

This is top of mind this week because we just had one such opportunity present itself and I wanted to share what the results looked like. Four weeks ago, an editor from the Wall Street Journal reached out with this message:

Hi Adam,

I hope you're well. I'm getting in touch from the fashion team at the Wall Street Journal's weekend Off Duty section. We're working on an article about the best high-end men's razors.

For this story, our writer will be test-driving several premium razors with good reputations to see what they're like/how they feel in-person.

We'd love to test a Leaf razor; we were wondering if it would be possible for our writer to test a sample? And if so, what would be the best one you'd recommend for men? (We wondered about [this] one...)

We would need the sample to be sent to our New York office by the end of this week. Can you let me know how that sounds?

Thanks so much,

That message hit my inbox at 11:07 AM and I had responded by 11:30 AM with an enthusiastic yes.

This was my thinking... we've had these types of articles before, they're more common for Leaf Shave than a feature article. We'll appear along side a handful of others in this space, I could have guessed which ones would be there with 100% accuracy. I trust my product's performance that there was, in my mind, little risk that the article would present it unfavorably. Typically, in had-to-head situations, Leaf Shave's razors are going to come out as the top if not top one or two options against the bevy of options available.

Additionally, hey maybe I could use this opportunity to build some relationships within the Off Duty section. I don't know if that's a thing that happens... but it was a thought. They were asking for a sample of our single-edge razor, The Twig (which is typically the razor that face shaving customers grab) -- and we have two other very different, very awesome tools (a triple-blade razor for body shaving, and a facial razor / dermaplaner). I thought that perhaps, if we play ball here we'll be top of mind for future opportunities in other roundups.

The editor and I exchanged a handful of other emails coordinating logistics with their team, and I got product out the door the next day expedited to the reviewer's office.

Two weeks later, the journalist who had been assigned to this piece reached out to me. He had a few background questions that focused on market trends in the shaving space. He asked me about my company's trajectory over the past 5 years as well. I provided him as much information as I could, being a private company we don't disclose too much about how big we are, revenue, growth etc. So I was up front about what I could, and could not, provide.

He let me know that while he couldn't share the content, that he really enjoyed our razor and that I should expect to see favorable coverage. I was happy to hear this!

In the week after working with the journalist on his additional questions - the editor's team had a few additional logistics questions for me related to links, pricing and availability. This took a half dozen emails back and forth to narrow down and make sure they got what they were looking for.

I provided them links to the razor alone, as well as our razor kit. I was hoping to get them both included in the article. I made sure to UTM tag the links so that I could look at the incoming traffic that came from any digital placements. I was unsure whether this piece was going to be digital-only, print-only, or both.

It turned out to be both. Which is the best case scenario.

To be honest, I'm not sure if it is either typical, or even okay, to provide UTM tagged links. But I wanted the data if I could get it, so of course I shot my shot.

Spoiler Alert: they used my UTM tagged links. 

This gave me traffic data from the online article. I also noticed that my links were the only ones that carried tags. (Totally a miss from my competitors that they didn't offer their links up with UTM parameters.) At least, I think it's a miss. I'm not sure if I'm just dumb (for context, I am often uninformed about things) and perhaps they got their data some other way.

After another week of waiting, they let us know when the article was going to go live (Saturday). And the team touched base to confirm that we would have inventory of the item on our site.

See, since sending them a sample, that particular product had gone out of stock in many of the color variations including the one that WSJ was going to be writing about and linking to. Stock-outs are common, they happen when demand exceeds forecast or we hit some delays in production / lead times. And we just happened to be about 2 weeks away from receiving a large re-stock.

I immediately alerted our Director of Operations and asked her to check in with our manufacturer to see if there was any product boxed and ready to go. The article was going to drop in 4 calendar days.

Yes! There were some ready to go.

We had our manufacturing expedite out a few hundred units so we could at least stock up that color (classic Chrome) with a little buffer.

I had already confirmed with WSJ team that we would be stocked and ready to go for Saturday. There was no way in heck I was going to have them link to an out of stock variant -- I would have gone live with phantom inventory if I had to and just soft-toed the fulfillment of those items.

But no need to do that, we received the boxes of inventory on Friday and were in-stock with the Chrome single-edge Twig and Thorn razors jus tin time.

The WSJ Article went Live

[read it]

I can't help but be a little annoyed at the title of the article, although I understand why they would use a title like this: "We Tested Six Expensive Men's Razors. One Stood Out."

I've seen variations on this theme many times in our press coverage over the years. I mean, this razor is like $50 bucks which isn't THAT expensive. Heck, I think I dropped $30 on a Harry's starter kit not too long ago and their refills would have cost me $80 a year forever.

Leaf Shave razors flip that script... you'll pay more upfront but you'll save forever after with refills that cost pennies, not dollars.

Anyways, that's besides the point.

The article was favorable. I think our Leaf Twig razor probably came in a close 2nd to a competitor’s razor.

S H R U G. That's fine. I'm fine.

The Twig is our least important hero product anywho. It’s a killer product! But we have two bigger, badder heros. I'm okay with my #3 product line losing out to someone's #1.

Anyways, us small-brand razor companies aren't really enemies. We're more like frenemies. We're lifting the tide and all of our own boats against the establishment. I wish the other co’s team nothing but the best :).

Did Anyone Come from the Article?

Remember how I UTM tagged the heck out of those links? Well here's where the fruits of my labor come born. Here are the traffic numbers through those links for the first week of publication. In our experience, this type of article will continue to send traffic our way in perpetuity. It's a strong piece to have out there as a trust-builder, and a lead-generator. It's not making or breaking anyone's year, but it's a nice taste.

SESSIONS
Day 1: 854
Day 2: 2,155
Day 3: 1,793
Day 4: 1,209
Day 5: 809
Day 6: 750
Day 7: 451

Was this WSJ Article Impactful?

This piece was worth north of $10k in revenue to Leaf Shave in the first week. That volume is in the noise week-to-week for us, so it wasn’t anything I was popping champagne over but as a bootstrapped brand I’ll take revenue and new customers anywhere I can find them. Especially if they don’t cost me anything more than the COGS of a single razor kit.

Okay that's my story for this week. I hope this was helpful to see how something like this played out within the context of my business.

-Adam