Media Relations for Craft Chocolate Makers: Identifying Your Company's Stories

Welcome to Bean to Barstool's Media Relations for Craft Chocolate Makers series!

I’ve been a full time food and beverage journalist for about a decade now, and my wife and business partner, Melinda Guerra, has been a freelance PR professional helping brands tell their stories and connect with media for even longer than that, and in this series, we’ll be sharing what we’ve learned over our careers to help craft chocolate companies of any size identify their stories, communicate them to media members and outlets, gain new customers, and keep the ones you have curious.

In part 2 today, David and Melinda talk about identifying stories, understanding what constitutes a story, and what the different types of media coverage are.

Media Relations for Craft Chocolate Makers series:

Podcast Episodes
Why You Need a Media Plan
Identify Your Company's Stories (you're listening to it!)
How to Build and Manage a Media List
All About Press Releases
How to Maintain Media Relationships and Communicate New Stories
How to Get Started, and Common Pitfalls

Blog Posts
Why You Need a Media Plan
How to Identify Your Stories
How to Build a Media List
Adding Industry and Unexpected Outlets to your Media List
How to Write and Send a Press Release
How to Maintain Media Relationships and Communicate New Stories
How to Get Started, and Common Pitfalls

Check out David's book Pairing Beer & Chocolate: A Guide to Bringing the Flavors of Craft Beer and Craft Chocolate Together.

Follow Bean to Barstool on social media!
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Sign up for host David Nilsen's beer newsletter for regular beer musings, and the Bean to Barstool newsletter for pairings, collaborations, and maker profiles.

Transcript

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SPEAKER_01 1:00

Hey everyone, welcome back to our Media Relations for Craft Chocolate Makers series. I've been a full-time food and beverage journalist for about a decade now, and my wife and business partner, Melinda Guerra, has been a freelance PR professional helping brands tell their stories and connect with media for even longer than that. And in this series, we'll be sharing what we've learned over our careers to help craft chocolate companies of any size identify their stories, communicate them to media members and outlets, gain new customers, and keep the ones you have curious. In part one, which you can listen to now or read in blog form, we talked about why media relations is so important no matter the size of your chocolate business and why you need to have a strategy for this. It doesn't matter if you are your only employee or you have a hundred employees. This is relevant and accessible to your company. Today we're going to talk about identifying stories, understanding what constitutes a story, and what constitutes media coverage. So let's start with that last one. When you think about media coverage, you might have one particular thing in mind, but media opportunities are a lot more varied than you might be thinking, both in terms of the topics that different media outlets are going to cover and the format or medium of different media members or outlets. There's legacy media, local media, broadcast media, print media, online, social media influencers, bloggers, podcasters. You've seen a resurgence lately in independent print media within the food and beverage space, which I'm very excited about. So you might think of just talking to a reporter or reaching out to your local newspaper, but there's actually a wide range of potential options when it comes to working with the media. Some of those will be very general in their coverage, some are craft chocolate specific, some are local to you, so there's an immediate connection. For some, you're going to need to do more work to identify why they should cover your brand. If you recognize the importance of leveraging media members and outlets to share stories about your company, you likely have specific things you want them to share with their audience. It can be easy to think about media coverage as a form of free advertisement. And while it's true, there can be some overlap in the benefits between media coverage and advertising, most notably visibility, they aren't the same thing. And it's important to understand and have accurate expectations when you're going into this. In Melinda's work as a public relations professional, she works on her clients' behalf to get their stories or news out to media outlets. Depending on the needs and desires of a client, that might mean paid placements, or it might mean seeking organic coverage of some kind. It's important to understand the differences. So here's Melinda to explain what's what when it comes to broad categories of media coverage.

SPEAKER_00 4:22

As a publicist, my job is to help clients get their information or stories to their intended audience through the media. This is media coverage that reaches current customers and potential customers and makes them think positively about my client. Media coverage can be paid or it can be free. Paid coverage generally takes the form of an advertisement. Sometimes you're getting an advertisement as part of a sponsorship package, but usually you're paying for it directly. An advertisement can be an audio recording or short script that's read live, a static visual like a photo or a graphic, a video promotion, text, or some combination of those. The advertisement runs on radio, television, print media, streaming service, social media or website, or even more than one of those, depending on the outlet. In exchange for payment, the client gets complete control over the message in an advertisement. They get to choose the photos, title, tagline, actual language for the ad, and often even the day that the ad runs. For TV and radio, they can even zero in on a time of day to reach a certain target audience. So paid advertising can be an important and guaranteed way to reach customers. Free media coverage is different. When you get media interested in a story, they tell that story for you for free. You lose control over the copy and the details and those specifics, but you gain a reliable messenger, and that's really important. Customers pay attention differently to stories that are run by the media. When you have a media outlet that's publishing or airing your story that tells the public that this third party thought you were interesting, so maybe you are worth paying attention to. It's earned because it takes work. There's some work to gathering interesting potential stories, figuring out what media outlets or journalists might be interested, researching how to contact them, and then pitching them your stories in a way that makes them interested. It's work, so when you succeed, it's not just free media like it's a thing that fell into your lap. It's earned media. You put in the effort, and now your story is getting covered. There's also actual news coverage. So maybe your company is hosting a major event or is doing a big release in conjunction with the city, and they're going to be VIPs there, or maybe even the mayor is going to be speaking at your event. Sharing this kind of news still requires some work. You have to know who to contact and how to contact them, but you're sharing an actual news item, and that's often done through a press release or a media alert. So when you're beginning to think about media coverage, you're wanting to keep in mind these three potential types of coverage: paid advertisements, earned media, and news coverage.

SPEAKER_01 7:26

Advertising can obviously play a really important role in getting the word out about your craft chocolate company, but it's not what we're focused on in this series. Advertising theory and best practices is a complex field and one I am not professionally qualified in to give you much advice on. In this series, we're focusing on the latter two categories that Melinda talked about earned coverage and news coverage. The line between those two things can be a bit blurry, but the easiest way for me to think about them is that news coverage generally has an identifiable call to action. A call to action is something you're hoping a person will do based on the information you've just presented to them. So maybe you want them to attend an event or checking out your new location or purchasing a new product that you have. Earned coverage usually does not have a specific call to action, though you obviously hope people will become customers because of it. Instead of a call to action, you could say earned media coverage has a call to curiosity. To oversimplify this division, you could say news coverage primarily answers the classic questions what, when, and where, and earned coverage primarily answers who, why, and how. It's a difference in goals between buying and buy-in. Again, that is an oversimplification, but it helps a little bit to keep them separate in that way. I understand it sounds like I'm presenting an obvious bias toward earned media coverage. And it's true, I think this type of coverage has a deeper longer-term impact. It's what I do a lot more of in my own freelance writing, but both are very important. It's just essential to understand what you're after when you're looking at these different categories. In the next episode, we're going to talk all about how to build a media list. So who to put on it, what to understand about them and what they cover, how to contact them, all that kind of stuff. But first, we have to understand what it is we want to communicate to the media, or more critically, what stories we want to tell before we initiate those interactions with the media, or if the media contacts us. The media ecosystem in craft chocolate is not terribly robust. There isn't much in way of dedicated media outlets just focused on craft chocolate. Cacao Mag no longer exists. Rest in peace. That was a beautiful publication. Chocolate Professor, whom I do some writing for, focuses a lot on craft chocolate, not exclusively. But honestly, that's kind of it in terms of classic standalone media devoted to craft chocolate. But there is a very robust and enthusiastic grassroots media ecosystem for craft chocolate with bloggers, influencers, podcasters, and these are very important to pay attention to. So we'll talk about them more in the next episode. Provided, of course, that they are reputable and responsible. These can be a huge resource for you. Bean to bar stool falls into this category, among others. In order to get much reach beyond this, though, you'll have to get coverage from non-chocate specific outlets or journalists. And what will be required for doing that highlights what's so important about developing a storylist. And this is your main homework from this episode. When I was first getting started as a freelance beverage writer about 10 years ago, I was almost exclusively focused on craft beer. And I remember pitching a story to an editor, a story that got rejected, and the editor did me the service of explaining that existing on its own is not a story. The fact, in this case, that a brewery existed and made good beer was not a story. It was good that it existed. It's great that their beer is good, but there had to be a narrative angle that made us care about that in order for it to be a noteworthy story worth publishing. The fact that your craft chocolate company exists isn't a story. The fact that you make good chocolate isn't a story. But saying that can be a little misleading because there are foundational aspects of the existence of your chocolate company and your chocolate that can be stories if we look at them from a different angle. We're at a unique time in the development of craft chocolate as an industry and as a subculture. Most people still don't know what it is. So your existence might be someone's introduction to the idea of craft chocolate. Things that feel foundational to the very concept of craft chocolate that we have trouble separating from the existence of craft chocolate as an industry, as an idea, are quite unique when you take a peek from outside the craft chocolate bubble. So things like, and we're going to get into this list in more detail in just a moment, but things like cacao sourcing, farming, how chocolate is even made in the first place. When we're working in craft chocolate day after day, especially those of you who are in production, so you actually are a maker, you're working in a chocolate factory making chocolate, it can be easy to gather up all of those details of your work into a single indivisible concept, an irreducible complexity where it feels like, well, without all these things, there's no such thing as craft chocolate. So those aren't really unique. But any one of them, or even all of those individual details, might be noteworthy to somebody unfamiliar with how and why craft chocolate is made. Any one of those might be the hook that grabs somebody's curiosity, even though they seem somewhat mundane or routine to us. The trick is to step back from what you do every day or every week and start looking at your business, your work through the eyes of someone who's never heard of craft chocolate or who is new to it and just discovering what's involved? What would make them pay attention to you? What is it that stops you from scrolling to pay attention to a business or an individual on social media in a field that you're unfamiliar with? What was it that originally hooked your interest in craft chocolate or in a particular craft chocolate business? Existing isn't a story, but sometimes we gather up too many details into the concept of existence and we erase potential story ideas in the process. The purpose of doing this is to develop a story list. This is a massive list of things that are interesting about what you do and might be of interest to a media member or outlet and get their attention to help tell that story. Usually, the way creating a list like this works is you start out struggling to think of a few things, and then you start seeing all of the different threads and angles, and suddenly you're thinking of ideas faster than you can write them down. And that's awesome. And you should write every single one of them down. This does not have to be in one sitting. You should start it and add to it on an ongoing basis. As we discussed in the first episode of this series, chocolate intersects with so many other aspects of life, and all of those intersections provide potential points for stories to grow. These might become part of a story that is already in process. If you're in relationship with media members, and we're going to talk about that in a later episode in this series, you can find out what they're working on or give them threads of ideas that might be part of a larger story they're writing. Or this might mean pitching an idea for a story in which you can be either the main source or a primary source. All right, so now let's talk examples. I want to run through a pretty extensive list of things that you can be thinking about when you're filling out your list of story ideas. A lot of these won't be unique to your craft chocolate company, but again, this is one way in which craft chocolate's visibility problem in the broader culture can actually work to your advantage because you can be the point of entry for a media member or outlet into these different aspects of the industry. Agriculture. Obviously, this is of foundational importance to not just to chocolate making in general, because any food or beverage is going to have agricultural roots, but very specifically to craft chocolate with the importance of farming, uh, paying farmers and farm laborers and where cacao is grown, different origins, all of that is of potential interest. Details around agribusiness, even just the botany of cacao could be something you could be a voice for. Ecology, not just farming, but sustainable farming. The fact that so many commodity crops are grown in a very extractive way that is harmful to the climate or just to the soil. That is obviously true with cacao. So you there is possible stories around sustainability within that, how climate change is impacting cacao and by extension craft chocolate, how waste is handled on farms, especially if you're a tree-to-bar company. But even if you aren't, even if you're a bean to bar craft chocolate company here in North America, production waste. What do you do with your cacao husks? That's a waste product. Do you uh work with a local gardening co-op to provide them as mulch? Do you sell them as a sideline product to breweries for making uh chocolate beers? Have you turned them into their own product and started offering cacao husk teas? Uh, that is turning a waste product into something useful and profitable. That's potentially of interest. Sensory science, the idea of how our chemical senses work and interact with our thoughts and emotions, and how we actually experience flavor, that's not unique to craft chocolate, but it can be one potential point of entry because it's not something most people understand. Also, judging. How does chocolate judging work and how does that fit within sensory science? Food and cooking, this is an obvious point of connection, but as a producer, you have to look at things like food production, supply chain, uh, how you source ingredients, the different culinary traditions that you might be involved in, either culturally or geographically, flavor formulation, how you how you bring different flavors together to create a finished concept. Any inclusion ingredient that you work with, even looking beyond cacao, that has its own stories and connections culturally and geographically. Collaborations. If you partner with another business, and we talked about this, of course, extensively in the collaboration series that I recently wrapped up, that partner business's stories are potentially stories that you can be involved in telling, as well as whatever ingredients you worked with together in that collaboration. Art and design, craft chocolate makers get so creative with packaging decisions. How does your package help uh tell people things about your business? How did you design that? What went into the thinking behind your logo? Do you work specifically with local artists? If you have a public-facing cafe or uh chocolate shop or something like that, what went into how you uh decorated that and designed that? What materials do you use in your packaging? Those and many of these that I'm listing are of potential interest as stories way outside of craft chocolate. Chocolate might be incidental to uh who you're telling these stories to. Branding beyond just uh art and design, but your general branding decisions, your business name, your color scheme, even how you name your bars, those can have potential stories behind them. Local history and architecture. The building you're in, whether it is public facing or it's just your production facility, has its own history. Now it might be a recent building, so maybe not, but if it has any kind of uh history behind it, that is something that you can potentially share, as well as the history and culture of your neighborhood, your city, local foodways that you intersect with, finance and business and economics. This might seem kind of dry, but you're running a business. So things like tariffs and taxes and shipping and local laws and the cost of ingredients and all that kind of stuff that is not the fun part of what you do, those things affect you though. And there might be reporters or news outlets that are interested in hearing from a small business owner, and that gets you out into that story and in front of an audience that maybe would never have even heard of you otherwise. Same with manufacturing, the processes you use, the equipments you use, is do you use used equipment versus buying new equipment? The DIY process of adapting equipment for your needs, uh, the use of solar energy, all those kind of different manufacturing things, as well as labor and management. Do you do unique things when it comes to training or developing leadership in your employees? How are you handling succession planning down the road in craft beer, which is an older industry than uh craft chocolate is? This is something we've been seeing over the last decade is breweries that were started in the 1980s with no end in sight for those founders, suddenly those founders are at or past retirement age and the businesses might not be super small anymore. So it's not as easy as just, yeah, my kid's gonna take this over. What are you doing down the road, even if you're running an extremely small chocolate company? What's your plan? If retirement is 10 or 15 years away, if it's something you've thought about, that's something that could be of potential interest in a story. Nonprofits or community organizations that you've worked with, there's an obvious story there when you're getting involved with those types of causes. Awards, chocolate awards. Did you win awards for your chocolate company or were you involved in judging chocolate? That can have local interest to your local media specifically. And then looking at people, which are the most important part of your business, the founders. So if you're a founder of your craft chocolate company, your professional and educational backstory is of interest. Your hometown is noteworthy, especially if you have left it. Your personal or cultural journey or identity, if you're part of the LGBTQ community or you're a part of a minority group, maybe you're an immigrant, if you're a member of a group that has an awareness month, that is potentially noteworthy to media outlets or members within those communities or that are covering those communities, even if they couldn't care less about craft chocolate at the outset of this, the fact that you have a voice to share in that could be of note to them. How you journeyed to starting this business, if there is something noteworthy in that. Any creative outlets that you're involved in outside of chocolate, so subcultures and hobbies that you're a part of, whether it's quilting or painting or music or roller derby or ultimate frisbee, if there are any kind of media outlets, even on a small level around those things, they might find your professional work of interest as well. And then this mushrooms out very, very rapidly from the founders. Your staff members, if you have employees, with their permission, any of the above as it pertains to them can also be potential stories related to your business. And then, and I alluded to this at the beginning, craft chocolate itself. Some of this ties in above with some of those different categories I got to, but craft chocolate itself has a story and stories, and you can be the conduit of delivering that overarching narrative to a media outlet or member for the first time. These are just examples. There are so many more. What I want you to do, your homework project for this, and I would say is where you need to start. The reason we're doing this as uh the very second episode before we get into actually directly working with the media, the most important thing you need to do right now is start a giant, no-wrong answers, sprawling list of potential story ideas. Just a wild list of ideas, everything you can think of. Use those jumping off points that I just gave, but you obviously can think of more things beyond that. Start thinking about anything that is potentially noteworthy or unique or interesting about your business, as well as the things that aren't necessarily unique to your business, but might be new information for somebody encountering craft chocolate through you for the first time. You're gonna be thinking about topics that aren't chocolate specific necessarily, but still tie in with your business. Don't just make this list by yourself. You can make start this list on your own, but then ask your staff, get some uh ideas from your employees. What are the things that they find interesting about their work or about your company? When a friend finds out that they work for a craft chocolate company and says, Yeah, that's cool, what is it that they say in response that kind of verifies that? Like, yeah, it is. I get to do such and such, or did you know such and such? Reach out to your staff and ask them for ideas. Also ask other shareholders that aren't maybe directly involved with the business. So your family members or close friends, people who uh have an investment in the business, whether literally from a monetary standpoint or just uh socially and emotionally, um, but aren't directly tied to doing the work every day. Ask them about the things that they think are interesting or noteworthy or what got their curiosity initially about what you do. You can even ask some of your best customers, those customers you know on a first name basis who are loyal and come in regularly or order from you regularly, you interact with online all the time, whatever it is. Ask your best customers. What is it, the things they tell other people when they're talking about your business or the things that uh makes them come back to you that makes you different from another maker? Uh, source this from a pretty wide group, as wide a group as you're able to, and just make this massive list. This isn't where you're gonna stop. Now you have a huge, massive sprawling list of way too many ideas, but don't make any of these wrong answers and keep them off the list. Add everything to it you can. The importance for most of these things is going to fall into potential stories in that earned coverage category that we were talking about earlier, but we also talked about the fact that news coverage can be important as well. The when it comes to news coverage, making a list does not work quite the same way because, again, we're looking at a specific call to action typically in that case, and it has a shorter lifespan. So, what I would encourage you to do if you want to be prepared for pitching those types of news stories is to look at your calendar going forward. Uh, look at things like events you know you're definitely going to host or that you uh are probably gonna be involved in, seasonal releases or seasonal changes in your business, anything you know coming down the road that is going to have a uh time-sensitive news quality to it, you can go ahead and right now, before you get to the rush of that, go ahead and start making that list so that you can be prepared for sharing and pitching those types of stories as well. In the next episode in this series, it'll come out in two weeks. We're going to talk about a second list you need to make before you're ready to really connect to these things, and that is a media list. So, this is a list of media members and outlets that you can potentially be reaching out to with these story ideas. How do you find those people? How do you find their contact information? How do you organize that? What kind of information goes to which types of members and outlets? This is where I feel like a lot of people start to struggle because it feels overwhelming. It's one thing to think of your own ideas for stories, it's another to suddenly have to start now building connections and making this media list and figuring out who you're gonna send things to and all that. So we are going to walk through that in detail and help you figure out how to start building out that media list. And then we're gonna talk in the episodes after that and how to bring these two things together. What is it that you should be sharing? How do you actually begin those relationships? How do you maintain them? How do you send pitches and press releases and all that kind of fun stuff? So thank you so much for listening today. I hope this has been helpful. If you have any questions at all for me or Melinda, please send those along and I will do my best to respond to those. Thanks for listening. Cheers.