Five takeaways from our Instagram Live interview with Francesca Simons.
London-born, New York-based fine jewelry publicist Francesca Simons has made a name for herself by securing her clients extensive press coverage and getting their jewels worn by celebrities. Working with groundbreaking newcomers to the US and award-winning independent brands, Simons has a wealth of experience on how to support her clients’ exposure.
Here are five highlights from her interview on our Instagram account @rapaportjewelrypro.
1/ The key qualities
“Obviously communication goes without saying. That’s a given. But I would say a little bit of OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder). So, you know, everything is streamlined and in a certain way that works for me. Every publicist is different and they have their own orders that make sense to them. [You need to be] someone that really has great initiative, perseverance, tenacity, and just constant persistence in what you believe in and what you know. And I’d say just being fast. That’s another thing here — you have to really keep up with the needs and wants of clients, editors or stylists. You need to be really quick.”
2/ Publicists are multitaskers
“There’s so much that goes into PR in terms of consulting with clients, designs, trends, pricing. I’m an extension of my clients, for sure. I want them to feel in-house to me. It could be writing the press releases. We do that day to day when there’s collaborations and there’s launches going on. We’re shipping out packages of jewelry. We’re tracking those shipments of jewelry. We’re looking for press; we’re clipping press. We’re looking for new contacts to pitch to. We’re constantly looking at all the events that are going on in the US, in Europe, premieres, red carpet events, etc.”
3/ Going it alone
“You definitely need to have enough experience to be able to start your own company. But you can start and launch with one brand. I launched my company with Spinelli Kilcollin, which everyone is pretty familiar with now. He [Yves Spinelli] was my bread-and-butter account and I wouldn’t be where I am today without him. That’s really what put me on the map. […] You build your own relationships with your designers after having enough experience in the jewelry marketplace. And then I think networking [is important] as well, finding new accounts on Instagram and doing your own market research. There are so many jewelry designers in, you know, in the US, in the UK, obviously emerging brands, tons in Europe. You can find a brand and sign with them pretty easily in the sense that there are enough brands to go around.”
4/ Every client is different
“I don’t believe there should be any conflict of interest when it comes to brands. Each one of my brands has a very strong brand DNA. You can really see the difference between, say, Bea Bongiasca, Anita Ko, Grace Lee, Ashley Zhang, Jacquie Aiche, Marie Lichtenberg. They all have very individual, strong brand DNA. You can instantly recognize Bea from Rainbow K, for example. I do not ever represent brands that have conflict in collections. So that being said, if I have a diamond-heavy line like Anita [Ko], she would be my only diamond-heavy line specifically. Just because it doesn’t make sense [to represent another diamond-heavy line] and I think that it would confuse editors and writers and stylists. It would upset them and it would upset the client. So I think it’s important to really have individual designers that are all really different and have a strong brand identity.”
5/ Keep a celebrity hit list
“With the red carpet events, we have a target list of the attendees and we look at the attendees from last year as well. And we have a lot of admin lists — we work on these day to day and update them. Firstly, you would look at who has an annual contract and we look at all the celebrities that have an annual contract with a fine jewelry brand. Then we look at who they were just contracted for, just for a one-off event. So based on our research of who is contracted annually and who is contracted on one-off projects and so on, we know who we go off to and who we pitch to, where there is the possibility that they can wear an emerging brand and no placement and payment is involved. So it’s really important to know which celebrities are contracted.”
The full interview is online on the Rapaport Jewelry Pro YouTube channel:
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