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Olivia Lott

Outreach Manager

About this Author

Liv is an Outreach Manager at iProspect UK. She loves dogs, design, Earl Grey tea, escape games and the Cornish coast.

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Interview with a journalist - iProspect meets Holly Brockwell

Freelance technology journalist and founder of female-focused tech title Gadgette, Holly Brockwell, is a very busy woman. Winner of The Drum’s 2015 Woman of the Year and Campaign’s Best Use of Technology, Holly’s work is regularly featured in Gizmodo, TechRadar, Evening Standard, the Telegraph and the Guardian among several others. When not writing about tech, Holly’s taking care of her adorable pet family that consists of birds and cats, living in total harmony with each other. Thankfully there’s no Tweety-Pie-vs-Sylvester feuds in her household. She also has one of the coolest handles on Twitter.Our Outreach Manager, Olivia Martin, catches up with her to talk pitches, press packs, and all things journalists working in the tech sector want. OM: Talk to me about the components of a great PR pitch HB: A good pitch gets to the point in the subject line. It gives me the meat at the top of the message, then detail below. And it includes images via Dropbox or Google Drive. OM: How about a bad pitch? HB: A bad pitch is some long, rambling thing, where by the time my inbox cuts it off for length, I still don't know what it's about. A terrible pitch outright lies – I had one today titled 'urgent' and it absolutely wasn't. A bad pitch misses out details I might need to write the story; with news stories, I'm often not going to have time to go back to you and ask questions, so if it's not all in there, I'll just move onto something else. A terrible pitch gives me some vague idea of the story and asks me to email back expressing interest to find out what it actually is. OM: Is there such a thing as the ‘perfect time to pitch’? If so, when is it? HB: There's no perfect time, but I do news for Gizmodo UK on weekday mornings, so pitches that come through in the afternoon are more likely to be missed. That said, I do still read them and will often keep things for the next day's shift. OM: Is it commonplace for you to work with PRs on a story idea before the campaign is even created? HB: Not usually, because I mostly work with online media and quick-turnaround print. It's quite funny when I get emails asking about my ‘content calendar’ for the year and suchlike. I often have no clue what I'll be doing next week. I'm not sure if this is commonplace but I very often go from pitch to acceptance to submission to publication within a couple of hours, so I really don't have time to be chasing quotes and images. OM: If you could give one piece of advice to a PR wanting to get their client featured, what would it be? HB: There's no magic bullet. If you're representing a headphone brand and I'm writing about hard drives, there's nothing you can say about your client that'll get it included. It's not always a case of bad pitching or targeting – sometimes I just can't do anything with it at that particular time. But I do often search my inbox for keywords and come back to things I might not have responded to at the time. Assuming it is a relevant product to what I'm writing, a weird tip I would give is to make sure there are colourful images available. I often write a page for the Evening Standard, for instance, and a spread of dull black tech isn't going to make anyone stop and read. It's quite a hard page to compile because so many tech products only come in black, white and grey – because the Standard uses cutout images, I can't add colour around the product. I think the same thing as a consumer too – more colour choices please! OM: What are you looking for out of a meeting with a PR? Does anyone have time to ‘go for coffee’ anymore? HB: I'm going to be really honest here. When I was a salaried full-time reporter, I would go for coffee meetings, because I was still being paid. They were lovely and I really enjoyed meeting people and having a chat, but honestly, I didn't get anything out of them that I couldn't have got through email. Now that I'm freelance, I don't tend to meet up with PRs anymore because I could be using that time to earn. It probably sounds really harsh and mercenary, but I have specific targets worked out for every day, week and month that I need to hit to pay my bills. You need this kind of thing to motivate you when you're freelance. Choosing to spend three hours (assuming 1.5 hours talking and 45 mins travel each way, which is about average in London) chatting over lunch or coffee just doesn't make economic sense when I could have knocked out a commission or two in that time. I still get to chat to PRs at industry events and on social media. Coffee meetings were a lovely break in the day, and I do think they help relationship-wise – but there are just too many things competing for my time, and the first thing to go are unpaid ‘nice-to-haves’. That said, I always appreciate a friendly, personal email, and often get into chats with PRs that way. It's not the same as a face-to-face of course, but it is nice to have emails popping up that aren't just: "Write about my thing! K thx." OM: What are your favourite websites for inspiration and why? HB: Like all nerds, I'm absolutely obsessed with the personal blend of topics I've put together in my Reddit homepage. I often find things that haven't been covered much emerging on Reddit and Twitter. Twitter is an all-round great source for journalists – everything from stories to quotes to contacts, and for embedding people's tweets to illustrate breaking news. Publication-wise, I'm a big fan of The Verge's down-to-earth, TL;DR approach to tech stories. I love the British snark on Gizmodo UK (my colleague Gary Cutlack writes some of the funniest subheads on the web). And – perhaps unusually – I really like email newsletters. For instance, James Whatley writes an excellent weekly one that's full of gems. 0 5 min read

The UK's favourite Christmas chocolate box is finally revealed in the 2019 General Selection

You’ve heard the phrase; life is a like a box of chocolates, you never know what you’re gonna get. Well, now we do. In a bid to uncover what chocolate box provides the most value and give the British public a view on what the likelihood is of pulling out their favourite treats, iProspect has analysed 1,299 individual chocolates to reveal the truth behind the four big Christmas boxes: Roses, Quality Street, Heroes and Celebrations. To put a lid on the topic about which is the best, iProspect also surveyed almost 600 people across the UK to find out which box and chocolate is the country’s favourite.The ResultsWinners and Losers Let’s get straight to it. Our data reveals that the 2019 winner is Celebrations, which takes the official crown as the UK’s favourite tin. Coincidentally, it also has the most chocolate content, with an average quantity of 71 chocolates per tin. This compares to Quality Street’s 67, Heroes’ 63 and Roses’ 58. Celebrations may be 2019’s winner but it’s highly contested between 2nd and 3rd with less than 1% in it. Celebrations - 36.98% Heroes - 23.88% Quality Street - 22.98% Roses - 16.43% Different areas of the UK have different tastes. This map shows regional favourites from each tub. Overall, in terms of the favourite chocolate across the 38 available to the British public, the winner by a clear distance is the Maltesers Teaser. It secured 49% of the vote, but as the fourth most common chocolate in a box of Celebrations, there is only a 11.5% of picking out a Maltesers Teaser first time. If we’re talking about the chocolates that are usually left over at the end of Christmas, the UK has decided that Quality Street’s Coconut Éclair is the least favourite, with just 2.5% voting it as their number one. This is despite it being the fourth most common in the Quality Street collection. Talking About My Generation When talking about votes, we’re after a majority, right? Well, although the UK have decided Celebrations is the overall winner, there is a quite a split when it comes to the different ages. The over-55s voted for Quality Street as their number one tin, and those Generation Zs (under 18) said Heroes are their favourite. Roses fare quite well with the over 65s, although they take joint 1st place with Heroes. Rank Under 18 18-24 25-34 35-44 45-54 55-64 65+ 1st Heroes Celebrations Celebrations Celebrations Celebrations Quality Street Roses & Heroes 2nd Celebrations Heroes Heroes Quality Street Quality Street Celebrations Quality Street 3rd Quality Street Quality Street Quality Street Roses Roses Roses Celebrations 4th Roses Roses Roses Heroes Heroes Heroes Chocolate Improvements Whilst everyone loves the current selection, there could be some tweaks made for future boxes. We received over 300 suggestions for both new and returning flavours, but it’s the old classics which people want to see make a return. The Top 10 most wanted flavours are: Coffee Mint Salted Caramel White Chocolate Truffle (most notably, the Galaxy Truffle in Celebrations) Dark Chocolate Nuts Praline Chocolate Orange Peanut Butter Whatever your favourite, it’s easy to see there’s an obvious divide to whichever tin – and chocolate – you open on Christmas Day. Use our handy guide to discover the chances of getting your favourite variety during your chocolate tin adventures this Christmas, and best of luck in avoiding the leftover Bounty come Boxing Day. If you’re interested in our content, creative and Digital PR services then contact us today. 0 3 min read

Liv is an Outreach Manager at iProspect UK. She loves dogs, design, Earl Grey tea, escape games and the Cornish coast.