SDH200: Gaining Success by Following Your Passion with Crosby Noricks

How do you break into a career field that barely exists? What resources do you search for? Do you know where to search? Who to contact for guidance? Crosby Noricks has access to those answers! Crosby is the founder of PR Couture, which is the PR sourcebook for fashion and lifestyle communicators. With her business, she aims to support individuals, brands, and agencies with strategy building, job leads and finding business partners and collaborators. They also created the Bespoke Communications Awards, which focuses on recognizing overlooked, high performing players in the PR industry, such as the 2017 winners Rue La La and J Public Relations. Always having a passion and love for the fashion industry, she couldn’t have been more excited to find that she could mix her two loves of PR and fashion into a profitable career. Though when she began networking in the PR fashion industry, she found it hard to connect with the right people and find sources to learn from. So she took to the fashion blogging world with PR Couture and used her platform to shed light on the decisions being made, and the communication strategies being developed by the behind-the-scenes PR reps. Launching in 2006, she saw that most PR agencies only had an online Splash page with their phone numbers on them, and relied heavily on selling themselves through a cold call. Feeling like she was too introverted and nervous to let a phone call seal the deal, she networked and built her audience by hunting through LinkedIn and Google for PR reps in fashion, entertainment, and lifestyle. Via email she introduced her blog and asked them for some tips and tricks about navigating the industry, and what their work looked like in the day-to-day. She then used that material and advice for PR Couture’s posts. While running her blog, she still held a full-time position at a digital marketing agency, where she managed the social media department.  She used that role to further promote PR Couture by using conferences for the agency as a networking opportunity to gain knowledge on different social and digital marketing techniques; as well as community building centering through branding. With all the opportunities and intel she accumulated through building these relationships, she was able to self-publish a book in 2012 and began to career coach young entry-level talent on how to break into fashion PR. With these other platforms, she continues to help them set career goals, and connects them with PR professionals that she feels they’d clique with, and provide the best assistance to. Since she has added a job board and an agency directory, that has provided several strong internships and full-time positions at companies across the industry such as Greenlee Swim and Zoi Agency. This has kept them at the top of the search engine results for PR jobs in fashion, entertainment, and lifestyle; which has led to increased traffic and trust from visitors. Crosby has also launched an affordable entry-level course, called Prism, a 3-month online program that teaches personal branding, PR skills, and offers more guidance in career planning. Hear more about how Crosby continues to expand PR Couture brand, like with their new reality PR web series and helps young PR reps find their place in fashion!! In this episode, you will… Learn how to support newcomers in your field with your brand and company Find ways to build a network in your field See if your business’s brand will flourish with or without you as the face of it Understand the power of email acquisition, segmentation, and personal and professional support Know if your brand has one or multiple target audiences Figure out how to positively dismantle stigmas about your career with business and brand INSIGHTS “I had a lot of questions because when you learn about public relations in college it’s [a] very academic perspective…if you’re a girl sitting there with these big, big dreams of fashion, lifestyle, entertainment, you’re not getting a lot of useful information. I was just so curious. I wanted to know what the work actually looked like in the day-to-day, and so that’s really where the blog started.” -Crosby Noricks “There was no clear-cut path…the success that had happened was very masculine in approach…I started [PR Couture] because I wanted to share information, and I figured if there were people out there seeking this information like I was, I would take the lead…I will be the person to try to provide these answers.” -Crosby Noricks “There’s still this lingering perception that because fashion is considered to be a little bit superficial, that those who work in the industry are also superficial…[and] without depth, and that’s been something that I’ve really tried to challenge by featuring the stories, and insights, and boosting the credibility of many of the women that I know who work in the field…and giving them space in the site to showcase their thought leadership.” -Crosby Noricks RESOURCES PR Couture Website Crosby Noricks Profile PR Couture Facebook PR Couture Instagram PR Couture Twitter PR Couture LinkedIn The Living Room Strategy by Tara Gentile