Snackbox Services: Media Desk Sides

Looking to land an interview with Popular Science, Better Homes & Gardens and Cooking Light? We can help you with that.

It’s a common misconception that a firm located in New York City is automatically going to have better relationships with reporters, leading them to land more national coverage because the team is based directly in national media’s “backyard”. This misconception could not be further from the case.

Major publishers like Time Inc. (publishes more than 90 titles) and Meredith Publications (known for titles like Better Homes & Gardens) have set up shop in cities outside of New York City … and they’re just as important as the titles based on in the Big Apple.  And, for our food and beverage clients, those desk sides taking place outside of New York City are just as important for the growth of their business and brand.

Here at Snackbox we pride ourselves on having strong connections with national media, not only in New York City, but also all over the United States.  One of the many services Snackbox provides is something commonly referred to as “desk sides”, which is essentially a trip to your preferred media outlets (in most of our client’s cases it’s food/beverage and national consumer) to demonstrate your product or service in an effort to secure coverage.

“At Snackbox, we’re all hands on deck when preparing for desk sides”, said Jenna Oltersdorf, Principal of Snackbox. “Our team not only creates story angles and the accompanying media materials, but we also coordinate meetings with reporters, plan travel and handle all follow up. It’s important to us to provide seamless services that appear effortless to not only our clients, but also the reporters we’re serving through these desk side trips.”

Over the past 10 years our team has worked desk sides down to a science.

Leading up to the trip we carefully coordinate meetings with reporters, travel details, car service, and spend time preparing our client for meetings with mock interviews and suggested questions for reporters. Once our client, who is accompanied by one of our team members, arrives in the city, we work to ensure things run as smoothly as possible. Once the meeting concludes, we leave the reporter with a creative physical reminder designed to not only provide additional information, but also keep our client on their radar.

But that’s not where it ends. When we return home, the work continues. We spend time following up with media in an effort to give our client the best chance of coverage possible.

Over the years, we have received great feedback from our national media contacts, many of who have been quite vocal in their adoration for team Snackbox. They tell us they many prefer to work with Snackbox because of our storytelling abilities, seasoned team, and intriguing clients (who actually have interesting stories to tell).

If desk sides are something you’ve been considering, we’re happy to walk you through our process and assist you in evaluating if desk sides are a public relations tactic you should consider.