Nora Wolf + Kirsten Larson
Nora Wolf + Kirsten Larson
Co-Founders, Wolf Craft
Brooklyn, NY
www.wolfcraft.com
instagram @go.wolf.craft
pinterest
WHAT DO YOU DO?
“We’re an à la carte PR shop for creative businesses.”
Nora: At our sister company Wolf PR we've been getting press placements for our retainer clients for over a decade. However, we know retainer PR services aren’t for everyone, and that there still aren’t a lot of other options. We set out to fix that. We help our clients understand how to do effective PR research, pitching, content creation, and asset development.
What we do:
+ Create useful, actionable self-guided courses and guides
+ Build in-depth research reports to help businesses improve their media and content strategy
+ Support other PR firms with custom media lists, influencer lists, and trainings
+ Consult one-on-one with creative entrepreneurs
+ Publish a free bi-weekly newsletter to help you understand how PR works
WHAT STEPS DID YOU TAKE TO GET TO WHERE YOU ARE NOW?
Nora: I’ve worked in PR her my entire professional life and have been running the boutique public relations shop Wolf PR since 2011. My undergraduate degree in art and design continues to inform/inspire my current work as a design publicist. Wolf PR specializes in furniture, textiles, lighting, and collectable design. In 2020 (during the Corona outbreak, no less!) I decided to launch this second business, called Wolf Craft, to address PR needs that my first company, Wolf PR, was not designed to do. I’m particularly excited about working one-on-one with other small businesses to help them tell their stories.
Kirsten: My path was quite different from Nora’s although we’ve worked together on and off for over a decade and been friends for going on 15 years! I’m an architect and I’ve worked on several multidisciplinary design research projects across the arts, architecture, technology, and urban research. When Nora asked me to help her put together some content for Wolf Craft I suggested we become business partners and we hit the ground running.
How do you stand out in your field?
Nora: We use design thinking methodology to undertake all things PR strategy. When researching other DIY PR companies, we saw a lot of the advice was fluffy, and not actionable. While they were presenting good concepts, they missed all the steps on how to execute on these concepts.
Everything we do is rooted in research and broken down into clear stages. This structure makes overwhelming and unfamiliar processes much more manageable, small victories at every stage.! Most importantly, we give specific action tasks for every stage. Instead of “build relationships with editors!” we actually go through *how* to do that.
WHAT ARE YOU WORKING ON RIGHT NOW?
Kirsten: Spinning a lot of plates at the same time. One thing we’re particularly excited about is our newsletter, which we launched in August 2020 and have been publishing every two weeks since. We’ve really enjoyed using the newsletter to do a deep dive into different PR topics like editor and publication research, how to approach photography for media outreach, or how visual-first creative businesses can get the most out of their Instagram profile. It’s also a place where we share PR tips, useful links, and some of the great press our clients are getting.
We also recently put together a free 5-day Pitch the Media Mini Course to help people who are doing media outreach for the first time learn how to put a pitch together and make sure it's going to the right publication. PR can feel so overwhelming for small businesses and we wanted to create a straightforward guide that can help them get their first pitch out the door.
WHAT'S YOUR STYLE/PERSPECTIVE/TASTE? DO YOU HAVE A PROJECT THAT REPRESENTS THIS?
Nora: We’re big into tightening up all visual assets. Our blog is a broken record about how important good photos are for media outreach- we even created three (!) whole guides about photography for media outreach. They are super niche, focused on small, giftable products, larger pieces like furniture and art, and interior design and architecture photography.
If I were to boil it down into one statement it would be: “There isn’t an editor in the world that will print your product if you don’t have a good photo.”
WE ARE ALL SLASHIES WITH MULTIPLE SKILLS, WHICH ONE DO YOU WISH YOU COULD DO MORE OFTEN?
Kirsten: We’ve started partnering with organizations and other creators to put together PR-related workshops. Recently, we’ve done one about how to do your own PR and another about how to ‘tweak and edit’ your website and digital assets for maximum impact.
The workshops have been such an amazing way to connect with creatives from all over the world and we’ve loved collaborating with industry organizations like the Female Design Council. This is the type of thing we definitely want to do more of.
WHAT IS FRUSTRATING YOU RIGHT NOW?
Kirsten: Not being able to find time to write more. We have a long list of future blog post content that we’re so excited to put out into the world. But, since our client projects always come first this sometimes falls to the bottom of the list. We’ve been able to get to two new posts a month but would love to be at one a week.
Nora: There are also so many weird little tech moments like verifying your DNS settings, or an obscure thing about a pixel. We’re getting better every day, but it feels like we’ve taken a crash course in technical marketing!
IF YOU COULD HIRE SOMEONE FOR $20/HR, WHAT WOULD YOU HAVE THEM DO TO MAKE YOUR DAY EASIER?
Kirsten: We actually just did this in the Fall of 2020 and it’s been great. Having an extra person to do as little as eight hours a week of work has helped us so much. They’ve been- 1) managing our Instagram account, maintaining nearly daily content, and 2) helping us research other no-fluff service businesses for creatives that have great newsletters, Pinterest accounts, Instagram accounts, etc. We’ve been turning this research into ‘best of’ round-ups on our blog, which has been a great way to discover other great resources for our clients and find new partnerships!
LET'S BRING OUT THE TIME MACHINE. WHAT DO YOU WISH YOU COULD HAVE TOLD YOURSELF, WHEN, AND WHY?
Nora: I feel like in a way I did this because I’ve been running a PR firm (Wolf PR) for over a decade already! I took a lot of those learnings to help us avoid alllll the mistakes I already made my first time launching a company.
Some things that I wish I knew earlier are understanding what a story really is, versus what my client thinks it is. They are so *in it* that they fall in love with their point of view. They rely on me for a reality check about what will work for the media. This actually segways nicely into the second thing i wish I had known earlier which is knowing when to push back against your client. This is how I do my best work, but it takes a lot of bravery. Now I’m old hat at telling my clients no and they respect me for and get better results from it.
IF YOU COULD TALK TO AN EXPERT TO GAIN MORE INSIGHT ON SOMETHING, WHAT WOULD IT BE ABOUT?
Kirsten: Because we’ve worked exclusively with larger retainer clients in the past we’ve only needed 3-5 at a time to keep a small PR shop up and running. Now that we’ve set out to serve a much larger group of designers, makers, and creative entrepreneurs with à la carte PR services and products we have to build a much bigger audience. So, audience building is something we’re always learning more and more about.
WHAT KIND OF OPPORTUNITIES/PROJECTS ARE YOU LOOKING FOR?
Kirsten: We both have backgrounds in art and design and we love working with clients from these areas- architects and interior designers, industrial designers, technology companies, furniture makers, textile artists, jewelry designers, home goods brands...the list is long!
Nora: We’ve found that creatives have such a strong point of view and dedication to their craft and I love to help them understand how this feeds into storytelling that works for the media. That said, some of our favorite projects from our first year were with bigger companies and doing reporting for them, so we want to keep that going too! It’s very satisfying to look at a brand that already has all the dots and just needs some nudging to connect them.
DESCRIBE YOUR IDEAL JOB/CLIENT/COLLABORATION.
Nora: We feel really lucky that we’ve already been able to work with some ideal clients. We’re currently doing some extensive PR strategy work with level, a San Francisco-based female-led industrial design firm. They’ve truly been a joy to work with. Their dedication to developing sustainably-minded products and creating a diverse studio where people want to work inspires us. We also helped a brand transition from being a wallpaper company to becoming a pattern company and expanding into different product silos. We’re excited about getting in on the ground floor of a startup that is going to change the general contracting industry.
I’ve also worked with several really talented one-on-one clients this year, an enthusiastic jewelry designer, a badass lighting designer, an interior designer with a passion for using local fabricators, and the owner of a small textile company that works with indiginous weavers!
Sooooo we just want more of them! Is that you or your brand? Holllerrr!
HOW SHOULD SOMEONE APPROACH YOU ABOUT WORKING TOGETHER?
Kirsten: Please send an email to hello@wolf-craft.com. Be sure to include links to your website and social media. We always like to check these out so we can come prepared for our first call. If you want to expand a bit more you can tell us about your PR/media outreach goals, struggles, and/or past experiences.
HOW DO YOU STAY CREATIVE?
Kirsten: Learning ceramics. Spending time in nature.
Nora: Walking my sweet, small, scrappy dog.
This member profile was originally published in March 2021.