Hack Your Own PR

Still think PR can't make the world a better place? You haven't met Meg Harris, founder of MHPR, mumma of twin toddlers, and one of Australia's OGs in 'Conscious PR.' Meg earned her PR stripes working in Sydney and London across big brands such as Nestle, Amazon, Spotify, Covergirl and Johnson & Johnson.  But after wrestling with the ethics of promoting consumer clients in a world of animal testin...

Cara Waters is the startups and technology editor at Nine's mastheads The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age. She's also the lead of coverage for the recently launched Entrepreneur section published in the business pages every Tuesday.   Cara has a robust CV of covering the startups and tech landscape - she previously edited SmartCompany and was a journalist at the Sunday Times and Financial Times...

Velvet Garvey is not too shabby when it comes to telling a story and sourcing the essential ingredients to conjure up a firecracker of a headline. It is of no surprise then, when Velvet pitched to Channel 7 during Hack Your Own PR that her story snowballed into a viral success. Velvet is the founder of Train My Mate, a platform that offers housework classes for men. She came up with the concept af...

Leigh Campbell is the executive editor of Mamamia and host of the podcast, You Beauty. She's also a snack influencer - yep that's a thing and mamma to her little man.   Leigh has worked in lifestyle media for 15 years, holding positions as Beauty Director at Cosmopolitan, Head of Lifestyle for HuffPost before joining Mamamia in 2018.   At Mamamia she oversees the whole editorial offering but still...

Annabel Bower is a Hack Your Own PR graduate who's been featured in Sunday Life (The Age/Sydney Morning Herald), Mamamia, ABC Conversations.   But she didn't just end up there by chance: she actively sought out this media coverage.   After experiencing a devastating still birth with her fourth child, Miles, Annabel was confronted with a totally unique experience of grief that few people could rela...

Outside of the big-name media outlets, there are dozens of local news agencies that tell the stories of their local communities. David Kirkpatrick is editor-in-chief of my own local news source, The Northern Star, which has been in business reporting on the happenings of the Northern Rivers in New South Wales for a whopping 145 years. He's been doing his thing as a journalist and, briefly, a publi...

As a beauty editor, Amy Clark has tried everything - including poop stools, snail jizz and colonic irrigation - in the name of a great product review. This journo isn't afraid to put herself in the firing line when it comes to road testing the latest and greatest - and the downright weird. But there's one treatment she'll never try (more on that soon!)   I got into the fun and fabulous world of be...

Who do you hire to do your PR when you work in the media business? Well, if you trust the opinion of executives at Clemenger BBDO, Leo Burnett and other world-class agencies, you turn to Katy Denis.   Katy is a PR specialist with 20 years experience, and the founder and CEO of Extollo, an agency that works hard to raise the profile of media professionals among their peers. Representing personaliti...

So you wrote a book - amazing. But the work's not done yet. How do you get people to write about YOU and what you created? Publicity for books is a topic that Isabelle O'Brien of Allen & Unwin knows inside and out. Despite swearing she would never go into PR, thanks to her mum's own career as a book publicist, today Isabelle is the Publicity Manager at Australia's largest independent publishing ho...

How do you go from PR Newbie to headline winning machine? Melissa Packham is what I would happily call a true and legitimate thought leader. The founder of A Brand Is Not a Logo, Melissa is a brand and marketing strategist. With over 15 years under her belt, she's managed household name fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) brands like Campbell's, Arnott's and Parmalat. Since establishing A Brand Is N...

National fashion editor has to be up there as one of the dreamiest job titles. Throw in The Age and Sydney Morning Herald as your employer, and you're in heaven, right? I got to ask Melly Singer just that when this super glamorous, super talented human joined me to talk about product PR in fashion, pitching timelines, online versus print and so much more. Melly has worked everywhere from glossy ma...

As technology editor at The Australian, David Swan's name will be familiar to anyone who lives and breathes the latest in startups, apps, gadgets, Silicon Valley and innovation. He got his first media gig at 15 years of age writing mobile phone reviews, but has spent the last six years of his career writing for The Australian, picking up numerous awards along the way at The Lizzies, Australia's IT...

Sam Koslowski is the co-founder of the social-first news platform The Daily Aus, read by 88,000 Australians each day. Creating news recaps and explainers in a social media-friendly format that prioritises Instagram first, The Daily Aus is on a mission to arm millennials with the tools and information to begin their own deep dive into the news. So, what did Sam have to say about Facebook's sudden b...

Georgie Quigley is a dream publicist. Working on brands like Avène, Pukka Tea, Klorane, Outland Denim, Le Tan, Vittoria Coffee, Georgie is seriously well-connected, a breeze to work with and consistently generating amazing results for her clients, all while making it look completely effortless. The reality, as always, is that there's some serious hustle going on beneath that calm and polished exte...

It's been a huge month for technology and journalism in Australia, with hardline stances by the government, multi-million dollar deals between NewsCorp and Google, and that Facebook dummy spat. But before all that went down, I got to speak to the people who write about tech news for a living. It was a massive nerd-out moment for me - and I'm sure you guys feel me. Kicking off our tech journalism s...

Lucy Blakiston is one-third of the team behind Sht You Should Care About, the game-changing social media account that's delivering the most important news of the day to Gen Z in a format they know and understand. Using memes, witty banter, visual storytelling and snack-sized updates on important topics, Sht You Should Care About is a bit like the town crier of the 21st-century. And people are list...

Throughout my teens, my sisters and I would fight to steal the Good Weekend magazine from the kitchen table on Saturday morning. We would savour the intellectual commentary on societies emerging issues, satiate our thirst for knowledge of the culture beyond the four walls of our young existence, and we were fascinated by the interesting dynamics and relationships featured in the Two of Us profiles...

Katelyn Swallow is the editor in chief of the Australian Strong Fitness Magazine - part of the global Strong franchise. Strong Fitness is a digital and print publication, that provides evidence-based training and nutrition advice to Australian women between the ages of 20-50 years of age. As Katelyn shares in this episode, it's all about evidence for Strong Fitness - they're looking for the resear...

Handle your own PR, hack your own PR - whatever you want to call it, sharing the fundamental skills of public relations with small business owners is the thing I live for. But it turns out I'm not alone. That theory about no original ideas being left in the world was shown to me to be true recently, when I found out about Handle Your Own PR, a Melbourne business that's been offering PR mentoring t...

Eloise Keating is the editor of SmartCompany and along with a small but mighty editorial team, this niche business publication has become one of the most engaging, useful, and practical resources for small business owners.    Eloise shares her tips to secure headline coverage with Smart Company including what not to include in a subject line, who the editorial team specifically want to feature and...

Want to know the secret to scoring a story in Women's Agenda? Angela Priestley is the Founding Editor of Women's Agenda, and as a classic journalist and editor entrepreneur and business owner, she starts the day bright and early, and says getting that pitch into her inbox for first thing will give you the best part of her brain -- that's 4.30am for Angela! I'm so delighted to share this conversati...

Yatu Widders Hunt is a proud Aboriginal woman, communications professional and founder of online community, Australian Indigenous Fashion. Yatu is a Director of Indigenous Social Change Agency, Cox Inall Ridgeway and works freelance across the media landscape.   In this episode, Yatu shares how she wishes to change the PR industry for the better by adopting more indigenous practices like deep list...

Future Women is a thriving platform connecting female leaders with stories that inspire their ambition and desire to grow and flourish in their careers. Somewhat of a hybrid model, the modern media brand hosts considered articles, a thriving digital community, and pre-Covid, incredible networking events. These days, the platform connects women with incredible leaders spanning media, politics, spor...

Sophie Lord is a good human. Truly her values run deep and one of the most lovely things about this beautiful human is that she doesn't shout from the rooftops about all the awesome things she does, instead, she just makes value judgments and strives to be better than she has had shown to her in her career as Art Director for the likes of Bauer Media and Pacific Magazines. Sophie unequivocally rej...

Alison Izzo's CV reads like a dream for anyone who loves glossy women's magazines. From Harper's Bazaar and Elle to Cosmopolitan, Dolly and Cleo, Alison has worked at some of Australia's best loved titles doing everything from fashion styling to managing huge digital footprints that attract millions of eyeballs each week.  Alison's current role as digital editor at body + soul has her overseeing t...