20+ Product Recommendations in The New York Times Wirecutter
How Wolf PR Helps Consumer Brands Earn One of Retail's Most Coveted Editorial Placements
The New York Times Wirecutter is one of the most valuable places to get your product featured. A Wirecutter feature can drive big sales, help with SEO, and put a product in front of shoppers who are actively looking for stuff to buy!
BUT, this is not an easy placement to get!
Wirecutter has an extremely thorough testing process. Depending on the product, editors may spend weeks or even months researching, testing, and comparing products before deciding what to recommend.
And sending in a product for testing doesn't mean it will be featured. It has to make it through their rigorous process before it can become a coveted Wirecutter pick.
So how does a brand get its product considered in the first place, and give it the best chance of making it through testing?
We have a method, and it may be laborious but it works! We spend a TON of time following individual Wirecutter editors to understand what they cover, so we know which of our clients’ products are worth pitching, who to pitch them to, and when. All this work and the relationships we’ve built with editors has paid off!
In the past two years alone, Wolf PR has helped our clients earn more than 20 editorial recommendations in Wirecutter, across furniture, home goods, accessories, gifts, and lifestyle products.
Those recommendations aren't coming from one client or one breakout product. They span multiple brands, dozens of products, and very different kinds of Wirecutter coverage, from round ups to full product reviews.
Some Highlights From Our Wirecutter Track Record
Verloop
13 editorial recommendations, including throw blankets, hostess gifts, gifts under $25, editor favorites, Mother's Day gifts, gifts for grandparents, retirement gifts, remote work essentials, and multiple recommendations for the brand's House Socks.Sabai
Three editorial recommendations, including the Essential Sofa, the Elevate Sofa in cactus leather, and the Essential Storage Bench.Jenny Lemons
Two editorial recommendations featuring the Strawberries & Flowers Hair Claw in Wirecutter's Easter Basket Guide and Best Gifts for 10-Year-Olds.Urban Natural
The American Leather Kaden Recliner featured in Wirecutter's guide to the best recliner chairs.
We were so thrilled when Wirecutter decided to test some of our pieces. Their review process is long and thorough and Wolf PR was a great partner in letting us know what to expect. Making it into the Wirecutter gift guides has been a definite boon to our business. We see a lot of referrals and the buyers tend to be repeat customers. We're so grateful to Wolf PR for making these introductions happen!
— Ella Lim, founder of Verloop
How We Work With Wirecutter
We've been working with Wirecutter editors for years, and over time, we've gotten a pretty good sense of what makes something a "Wirecutter product," which specific editors cover which categories, and what is worth putting in front of them.
That last part is important because Wirecutter editors get an enormous number of pitches! We don't send every product from every client; we’re thoughtful about how we spend time in editors’ inboxes.
We pay attention to what individual editors cover, what they've recommended before, and the kinds of products they're interested in testing. There are editors focused on specific product categories, editors who work on gift guides, and editors whose gift coverage tends to fall within their regular beat. We're also following their coverage throughout the year. A guide to the best recliners is a very different opportunity from Mother's Day gifts. Remote work essentials are different from gifts for grandparents.
Our job is to keep track of those opportunities, figure out which of our clients' products belong in them, and get those products in front of the right editor.
Sales Coverage Counts, Too
Editorial recommendations aren't the only way into Wirecutter. Wirecutter also covers deals, from its Daily Deals page to big seasonal sale roundups around the holidays and spring sales.
For Sabai, we worked directly with Wirecutter and Sabai to negotiate exclusive discount codes for Wirecutter readers. Those codes put Sabai's sofas in Daily Deals, in Wirecutter's holiday roundup of exclusive deals, in its spring sales coverage, and on the Wirecutter Deals X account.
It ended up being some of Sabai's most impactful Wirecutter coverage from a sales perspective.
Sometimes a Pitch Takes Time to Pay Off
14 + Wirecutter placements for Verloop in just one year!
Verloop is a good example.
We'd been introducing the brand and its products to one Wirecutter editor for years. Sometimes she responded. Sometimes she didn't. Sometimes she liked what we sent but there wasn't an immediate story for it.
We kept sending her products we thought she'd like.
Then she saw Verloop in person at Shoppe Object. Because of the ground work we laid, the connection between the products she'd been hearing about from us and what she was seeing in person came together beautifully. She reached out to us wanting to try a number of things.
Several of those products made it through Wirecutter's testing process and started appearing in gift guides. Because the products performed well in testing and the editor liked them, she continued recommending Verloop and sharing the brand with other Wirecutter editors.
Verloop has now earned 14 Wirecutter recommendations in just over one year!
That's also why we think long-term client relationships matter in PR. We might introduce an editor to a product in the first few months of working with a brand, but that doesn't mean the right story exists yet.
An editor may tell us, "This is really cool, but it's not a fit right now. Keep sending things my way." And so we do!
Relationships Are a Big Part of the Work
Over the years, we've built relationships with Wirecutter editors covering furniture, gifts, lifestyle products, home goods, and more.. We’re also constantly building new ones as our clients launch new products. And in a more surprising way, as editors introduce us to other editors on their team.
Sometimes an editor will tell us that a product isn't right for them. But, instead of leaving it at that, they’ll point us to the person who covers that category. Sometimes a pitch for one story gets passed along to an editor working on something completely different. And sometimes a relationship that started with one product or one story ends up opening the door to future opportunities we never would have known about otherwise.
TL;DR:
Sending the same product pitch to a list of Wirecutter email addresses= NO!!
Thoughtfully tailored and consistent outreach= YES!!
Why We Care So Much About Wirecutter
We work with plenty of publications that do excellent product reviews, but Wirecutter's testing process stands apart.
We've seen it firsthand. Editors ask detailed questions, put products through tests we wouldn't have even thought of, and will transparently tell us when something doesn't meet their standards.
Getting an editor interested is only the first step. Then they have to want to test the product. The product has to make it through testing. And after all of that, the editor still has to decide it's something they want to recommend to readers.
That's a big part of why we trust Wirecutter ourselves. If someone on our team is shopping for something, especially a tool, appliance, or tech product, there's a good chance someone will ask, "Did you check Wirecutter?"
Results
In just two years Wolf PR has secured more than 20 editorial recommendations in The New York Times Wirecutter for our clients across furniture, home, accessories, gifts, and lifestyle products.
Some came from a very targeted pitch to the right editor at the right time. Others started with conversations we'd been having for months or years. Some came after extensive product testing. And others grew out of previous placements, when an editor came back to a product or brand they already knew or passed it along to a colleague.
That's really what the 20+ recommendations show: we've learned how Wirecutter works, we've built relationships with the editors who make those recommendations, and we know how to keep finding new opportunities for very different kinds of clients and products.
To see one of our very first Wirecutter placements, click here.
We’re Looking for D2C and Design Brands
We are looking for amazing consumer focused/D2C and design brands to work with because, well, we’re really good at getting media placements for these kinds of companies. Our clients end up in top-tier titles, regularly.
If you know a brand that would benefit from our work we would love an introduction.