Andrea Werbel on Why Every PR Pitch Her Agency Sends Is Tailored to the Specific Outlet

Andrea Werbel’s story started like those of so many other Americans studying in Paris… and ended with her running her own top-tier, hospitality-focused PR firm in Manhattan.

Before landing back in her hometown of Manhattan, Werbel spent time as marketing director at the legendary French culinary school Le Cordon Bleu and a period managing PR at one of the best-known hotels in sunny Beverly Hills before stepping out on her own and founding Parasol, one of New York’s leading luxury hospitality firms.

Also on Mediabistro

How to Find a Job Before It’s Posted

10 Instagram Accounts Every Media Professional Should Follow

Here, Werbel tells us how a love of all things French turned into a job translating with top media outlets in Paris, a stint on the Today show and an offer of bigger things in London — one she turned down.

In short, we think you’ll agree the “how” in Werbel’s story is every bit as fascinating as the “what.”

Name: Andrea Werbel
Position: Founder and managing director of Parasol
Resume: Began working as a researcher for Time Inc. and NBC in Paris before moving into publicity at Columbia Tri-Star Pictures and working as marketing director for Le Cordon Bleu culinary institute. Returned to the United States after 10 years in Paris to work as the PR director at The Peninsula Beverly Hills before returning to her hometown in New York City to launch her own brand marketing and PR firm, Parasol, which specializes in the luxury lifestyle and hospitality industry.
Hometown: New York City
Education: University of Colorado Boulder
Media mentors: Sandra Fathi, founder of technology specialty firm Affect Strategies. “Sandra is super-savvy, she’s grown her business quickly and her client and media relations skills are great. I admire so much of what she’s done as a solo female business owner.” Also: Terry Rooney, founder of financial PR firm Rooney & Associates. “When I wanted to try something outside of hospitality, I worked for a short while at a firm specializing in investor relations, where Rooney was head of the financial division. He reinforced for me the importance of building media relationships, and he was a great mentor in that respect.
Guilty pleasure: Buying lots of very beautiful shoes
Last book read:Selling to the New Elite by Jim Taylor
Twitter handle:@Parasol
What career route led you to the PR/marketing industry?
I initially wanted to work in broadcast news journalism, either in front of the camera or behind it as a producer. I started my career in Paris. I fell in love with the city while studying French film and literature in college, and I wanted to see if I could live there and get a job for six months. Little did I know it would turn into 10 years!

I was ready to do whatever it took, so I went to the French-American Chamber of Commerce, bought a directory of U.S. companies with operations in Paris, and sent handwritten letters and resumes to each of them. I landed a research position working with top journalists at Time Inc. thanks to a combination of tenacity and being in the right place at the right time.

And how did you land the job that really jump-started your career?
The American expatriate journalist community is very tight-knit, and through it I was fortunate enough to meet Ted Albert, who was at the time the bureau chief of NBC news in Paris. I basically begged Ted for a job. I told him I would take his garbage out with a smile — I just wanted to be in the newsroom. One day he called me and said, ‘You are so tenacious; you have what it takes,’ while hiring me for one of two bilingual research positions. I later had a fantastic opportunity to work on the Today show during its on-site coverage of the bicentennial of the French Revolution.

Do you now second-guess any of the decisions you made during the first phase of your career?
NBC eventually told me ‘We’re closing our Paris bureau and we’d like to offer you a job in our London office,’ which I turned down because London wasn’t as cool then as it is now. In hindsight, I probably should have taken that job, but I followed my passion to continue to live in Paris instead.

I landed, miraculously, in the publicity department at Columbia Tri-Star Pictures in Paris, promoting American films in France. This was my first foray into publicity. It was an invaluable opportunity because, as I now say, my graduate school was a live playground in Paris.

One thing led to another, and I ended up finding a position with Andre Cointreau, heir to the Cointreau liquor family, who had recently purchased the famous culinary school Le Cordon Bleu. He hired me as his marketing director overseeing his Paris and London schools.

I will be forever grateful to Mr. Cointreau because he put a lot of trust in me; the only limitations I had were my own. I ended up introducing an entire summer abroad program where American hospitality students could receive a portion of their culinary credits at LCB. It still exists today and proved to be an extremely valuable way to expand their market and increase their annual student base.

What brought you back to the States?
I almost had a relationship with Paris, and right around the time that I was falling out of love with that city I got two opportunities in the States. One would have brought me back into journalism with Fox News in New York, but I took a position as the PR director at The Peninsula Beverly Hills, which expanded my experience in the public relations and hospitality industry.

And what inspired you to go independent and start your own business?
My company found me in a sense. A former boss had been teaching at the Cornell PR School and invited me to talk to his class about hotel PR before encouraging me to explore opening up my own company. I’ve always been adventurous, so I thought: if it fails, I could just get a job somewhere else.

I deliberately didn’t call it the Andrea Werbel PR and Marketing Agency because it’s not about me. It’s about our clients. I called it Parasol because it’s a French word that means umbrella — and under our umbrella of integrated services, we help companies grow.

Like many communications pros, you started in journalism. What do you think of the relationship between the two disciplines?

The purpose of both professions is to tell a story. At Parasol, we wear two hats: the hats of marketers working for a client and the hats of the journalists we work with, who are always hunting for a story. The difference? Media relations is more proactive. You always need to think like a journalist and understand their calling, and every pitch that goes out of my agency is tailored to the specific media outlet.

[Client Phulay Bay’s placement in The New York Times‘ “52 Places to Go in 2014” story] took months and months of hand-placed story crafting, and part of that process involves determining what would make the story fit with that particular outlet.

Do you have a specific example of this principle in action?

In one case, a client wanted to promote a new afternoon hotel tea menu, but there’s really no news there. So I went back to this client and said, ‘Why don’t we look at the behavior behind the story?’ We identified a trend: there were more men conducting afternoon tea, which is no longer reserved for ladies who lunch. So my pitch to the Sunday styles section of a local newspaper was “Men do Tea,” and was essentially a great piece of describing how more and more men are conducting business over tea.

This is the kind of out-of-box thinking that I encourage my employees to explore and cannot underscore enough.

What is your day-to-day like, and have your responsibilities changed in the digital age?

I’m old school: I like to pick up the phone and talk to people, and I like handwritten notes and good manners. I value relationships. Some agency bosses just tell employees to ‘Sit at your desk and work,’ while I say we need to score one-to-one meetings with journalists whenever possible.

I almost relate it to dating: a relationship is not a text or an email. You need to go out there and meet these contacts on behalf of your client and your agency because the experience is so much more valuable in the long run, particularly with the type of media we seek to secure for our clients. That coverage often doesn’t take place with a press release and email.

Of course, as captain of the ship, I also have the unfortunate responsibility of saying ‘OK, you did great; now how can we do better?’

What advice do you have for prospective employees or young people trying to break into the communications field like you did?
Our business is dissecting media, and I can’t stress the importance of consuming that media enough. Being savvy at media relations requires years spent reading about the industry in which you work. It also develops your ‘nose for news.’ It’s something I value very much.

If you’re working in hospitality, and you’re not reading the travel section of The New York Times on a weekly basis, then you’re doing yourself a disservice. I don’t require everyone to read the Times cover to cover, but I personally scan five newspapers every day. The habit trains your eye to not just understand what a given journalist is working on but also to understand what’s going on in the industry at large. I don’t know how many people take the time to do that today.

What makes a job applicant stand out to you?

Evidence that they understand the media landscape and that they can harness that knowledge. From a distance, Conde Nast Traveller and Travel + Leisure may simply look like two travel magazines — but to a media relations specialist they’re completely different in terms of their editorial approaches. An appreciation of those nuances is crucial.

Strategy alone can be very boring and creativity alone can be very sloppy, but when you have a fine combination of the two, it’s brilliant.

Patrick Coffee is the editor of PRNewser and AgencySpy. Follow him on Twitter @PatrickCoffee.