Interview with Crosby Noricks: Founder of PR Couture

Monday, September 19, 2011

Interview with Crosby Noricks: Founder of PR Couture

There’s currently an avalanche of runway photos, trends, and street-style being pinned as the fashion industry makes its seasonal migration from New York to London and onwards to Milan and Paris. And as “fashion month” ensues, we decided it was the perfect time to interview the travel-happy, animal-loving, newborn-hiker Crosby Noricks, founder of PR Couture.

Her blog was one of the first to discuss fashion’s relationship with social media as it evolved, and now it’s a hub for industry news, interviews, tips, and articles on brand management, freelancing, internships and more. As expected, we got some expertise, suggestions, and of course a few stories about her boards!

Hi Crosby! First, can you tell us a little about yourself?

Like Elle Woods, I am a Gemini vegetarian. Unlike Elle Woods, I am a curly-haired brunette that prefers kittens, mini ponies and pygmy goats to tiny dogs. I was born in Santa Barbara, and I moved to San Diego for graduate school and have been here for the last seven years, which is longer than I have ever lived anywhere. It’s not a place I never thought I would end up, and luckily I am able to travel quite a bit, most often up to San Francisco, my favorite city in the world thus far. However, I have come to appreciate the gorgeous weather, preponderance of bougainvillea, proximity to the gorgeous Hotel del Coronado and beach, and the storybook-style one-bedroom yellow casita I currently call home.

In 2006, I started PR Couture, a blog that explores fashion PR, marketing and social media from an industry perspective. I currently work as the director of social media at Red Door Interactive, working with consumer brands on their digital strategy. Luckily, this sometimes means I get to play on Pinterest for work.

Crosby’s “Vacation” board

This year, I decided it was time to spend less time online and more time outside, and have enjoyed exploring that world. Much to everyone’s amusement, I now own shoes explicitly for hiking. I am currently fantasizing about having one of those fancy blenders that would allow me to make watermelon gazpacho in seconds, turning my favorite Instagram photos into canvas prints, and getups for an upcoming trip to Palm Springs.

There are a lot of fashion-lovers on Pinterest, but the fashion industry can be a little mysterious: can you give us some insight on what a fashion publicist does on a typical day?

A fashion publicist is primarily responsible for managing the relationship between her clients and the media, but what that means on a day-to-day basis might include everything from developing a strategic plan with key messages and seasonal strategies, to stuffing gift bags or keeping track of media and celebrity sample requests. A fashion publicist is always thinking of innovative ways to position not just her client’s products but the brand story itself and the various mediums in which that story can be told. As the lines continue to blur between traditional PR, marketing, social media, customer service, etc there are more opportunities than ever before to become involved in the overall business direction of a brand, as well as close engagement with today’s social customer.

In the past couple years, globally recognized labels are creating social campaigns left-and-right: any trends you think will happen as the fashion world gets better acquainted with the web?

“MOVE” Rachel Roy Spring 2011 from Dominique Palombo on Vimeo.

I think that they key to a successful social campaign is pairing the right content and message with the right opportunity for the consumer. In fashion, this is emerging with the influx of short fashion films, fashion bloggers or customers curating and creating content, and unique opportunities for the social consumer to experience the brand in new ways. I think the challenge for many fashion brands is still how to integrate social strategy with other digital strategies as well as offline activities – in-store, events, the products themselves…

You work at an internet presence management company; opinions on sites and networks must be on your mind a lot. So lay it on us: what do you like about Pinterest? What can we do better?

A few ideas

When I’m not logged in, I see a variety of pins, but when I login they disappear. I’d like to better understand how to navigate back to this original view
My biggest challenge is discovering new people to follow – a recommendation engine “People who like this person’s pins also like X” would be great, as would a search recommendation “we see you are searching for kittens, you may also want to search for cats, or pets.”
When repinning something where the person has left a comment, it’s not clear that the comment is from that person, and not from me. I’d like a clearer distinction to indicate what comments are mine and what was there before. And what is the protocol on deleting/keeping other people’s comments?

And finally, what do you think someone can learn about you from Pinterest?

Crosby’s “For the Living Spaces” board

I think that Pinterest is a great way for people who might only know me through PR Couture to learn more about my personal aesthetic – whether it’s a gorgeous steel and wood modern farmhouse dining room table, a bright red canvas teepee, or a gold vintage clutch. It’s also a way to see what’s on my mind – my vacationing board came about when I was inspired and excited about an upcoming trip to Hawaii.

Thanks for the pinterview, Crosby! And, to answer your questions:

The page of pins anyone sees when they’re not logged into Pinterest is generated from the Everything section. If you find something there that you want to interact with, you can open the pin in a new browser window/tab and then log in. If you refresh the page with the pin you like, your browser will detect that you’re logged in so you can comment on it, repin it, etc.

And as for proper repinning conduct: you definitely don’t have to keep the original pinners’ descriptions. The original pinners are all linked automatically and given credit when you repin, as well as the original source-link.