Pitching Oprah Magazine: How to Get Featured in O Magazine & Instantly Skyrocket Your Sales
Posted: Thursday, June 07, 2007
by Susan Harrow
PR Secrets
Getting featured in O, the Oprah Magazine, is like winning the Academy Award. It's a distinction that validates your product like no other publication.
In fact, getting featured in O helped raise one entrepreneur’s sales by 60% in just 30 days. But that was just the tip of the iceberg. The mention brought much needed awareness to a cause close to her heart--breast cancer. Thanks to Oprah magazine the issue is now visible on a grand scale.
Here Are 3 Things You Should Know If You Want to Be Featured in O, The Oprah Magazine:
1. Your product packaging must be beautiful.
If your product packaging and product itself isn't an eye-stopper, it's most likely not going in O, The Oprah Magazine. Jeanine Boiko of J9 Public Relations, who placed her client Bonjour Fleurette in the magazine three times for three different products, has this rule of thumb:
"For a product to work in O, ask yourself this: if you walked past your product on the shelf somewhere, would it catch your eye and make you stop? It must have unique, attractive packaging that will photograph well. My advice, especially to new business owners, is to not play it cheap with packaging. At the end of the day, it's all about the draw of your packaging."
2. Your pitch must be meaningful.
So, before you make a pitch, heed the advice of The Oprah Magazine Executive Articles Editor Dawn Raffel who says the magazine teaches people how to live their best life: "It's about realizing your own greatest potential and also about making a contribution to others."
Whether you want to write about yourself, be written about, or write about someone else, ask yourself these two questions :
- Are you making a difference in a big way?
- Are you making a difference in a way that is important to Oprah?
Genevieve Piturro, founder of the Pajama Project, gets a "yes" on both counts. Her charity gives new pajamas to abused and poor kids, many whose mothers are in prison. Some of these children never owned any pajamas, and certainly not new ones. When you think about children going to sleep at night in a fresh pair of pajamas instead of tattered, dirty clothes, it conjures an image of safety and home.
Pitturo scored big on two points: She tapped into one of Oprah's key areas of importance: abused children. And she created a remarkable endeavor that attracted many people's interest, given the story’s emotional pull. It made me want to hurry and buy pajamas and donate money to this worthy cause.
3. Your pitch must be well-written.
O's readers expect the content to dig deep into emotional, physical, and spiritual well-being on many levels. Oprah's magazine delivers on this expectation by seeking out top authors and freelancers from the best national magazines and newspapers in the country. They look for writers from publications like the New York Times to Wired to write on topics as diverse as women slavery to how men really feel about breast implants to the death of a beloved dog.
You can either be interviewed by these experienced writers or write a feature on a topic that touches the heart of the O magazine reader.
It may take you 1 to 2 years to get published in O, The Oprah Magazine. But I've haven't met one soul who said it wasn't worth it.
Henry David Thoreau said, "If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours." So if getting in O is one of your dreams, keep advancing toward it with all the steadiness of a tulip reaching toward the sun.
About the Author:
Media coach & marketing strategist, Susan Harrow, author of Sell Yourself without Selling Your Soul (HarperCollins) can help you understand what it takes to get into O magazine. To learn secrets from top publicists about how they got their clients in the magazine and to discover Oprah’s 10 hot buttons - topics that the editors are looking for, go to http://www.prsecretstore.com/otheoprahmagazine.html
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Top-level comments on this article: (4 total)Yes, because I have been researching writers' guidelines for O, and wondered why I hadn't found any. No wonder! But like you said, if you really want to accomplish something, you have to persistently try!
Hi Susan. Great article and filled with ideas and insights. Thanks for sharing this to us. Welcome to Searchwarp. Best of luck to you. ~Nenita~
Susan, Oprah....I wrote a book called "ANY OL' JACK" and it's a kind of book that I feel wrote itself. You know when you get the calling to do something and you surrender to being the instrument to do your work? Well, I did this and I somehow put together the black book for every gay men in the world. Google Any Ol' Jack, Jack Dexter and it's all over.
I was once confused, hated myself, and never wanted to admit my truth and come to grips with possibly being gay. There are many like myself who are SEARCHING for a book like ANY OL' JACK and the only problem is they don't know it's there. I'm a back-to-college kind of guy and don't exactly have all the funds to make my message worldwide. You do, though. You and Oprah.
I'm 28 years old and I wrote ANY OL' JACK the past five years while being a personal driver and assistant for a millionaire and billionaire - sometimes stopping and not touching the book for months, but nonetheless I never stopped. I completed what I started because it HAD TO BE AVAILABLE to all could benefit from its content and have trust in its value.
It takes the reader on an A-Z adventure of everything - and I mean EVERYTHING - about living in the gay world, experimenting, losing your virginity, sexual explorations, and building confidence in its readers to live their life in the most honest way possible, and never live your life in the dark - willingly.
Life's too short and ANY OL' JACK has the ability to save lives. I'm an author who has an influential message and benefit to deliver to readers. I hope you believe in what I wrote as much as I do.
Be apart of spreading PRIDE. Thank you.
-Jack Dexter
I'm considering advertising my book, National Repair, on O. It an argument for reparations told through a Brockovitch type suit vested in a time transcendent Young Indiana Jones love story. Now available on Amazon.
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