Career PR: How to Get Featured in Trade Publications & Build Real Hype
Why waiting to be discovered is costing you opportunities—and how to create visibility, build credibility, and generate momentum long before the industry decides you matter.
👋 Hey, I’m Christine. I’m an award-winning actress, industry consultant, and entertainment insider with decades of experience in global film, TV, and theater. My work has been featured by major networks like HBO, Disney, and Ubisoft, and I’ve built a career helping actors gain visibility, land roles, and position themselves for long-term success.
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I still remember the first time I saw my name printed in a newspaper.
I was a kid. Around ten or eleven. I had entered a drawing competition, won, and somehow, my name made it into print. It wasn’t a big feature. It wasn’t a full article. It was just my name… sitting there on the page.
My father came into my room holding a laminated newspaper clipping. He was so proud. I still remember him showing me my name in print, telling me how important visibility was and that we should save any newspaper clipping that mentioned our name.
At the time, I didn’t fully understand why. I was just a kid.
Years later, I would.
There’s a very specific feeling that happens when you see your name in print for the first time. It makes things feel real. Like you exist outside your own world. Like someone, somewhere, is paying attention.
The second time it happened was when I won second place at an Expo-science competition, competing against students from multiple schools. My name was published again, this time alongside my partner on the project. (Just for context, I competed in a lot of things as a child: singing competitions, modeling competitions, Expo-science competitions, swimming competitions—you name it. Heck, I even treated my auditions as competitions as a kid. I was extremely competitive growing up. Of course, I see things differently now. I don’t believe you’re competing against other people. You’re competing with yourself. The goal is simply to become better than you were yesterday.)
I didn’t know it at the time, but that moment quietly taught me something most actors only understand much later:
Visibility changes everything.
Not talent alone. Not hard work alone.
Visibility.
Looking back, it’s funny how careers unfold.
Winning that competition led to an audition for Les Débrouillards, one of Quebec’s most recognizable youth television shows at the time. The show introduced generations of young viewers to science through experiments, challenges, and educational adventures and later became a launching pad for several well-known performers, including Karine Vanasse and Yan England.
What I find fascinating is that more than two decades later, I found myself attending the Telefilm Canada Oscar Week Gala in Los Angeles, where Karine Vanasse was also a guest. This time, we weren’t connected through a youth television show. We were both there as professionals working in the industry, and we had the opportunity to meet and speak with one another.
At the time, I didn’t think much of it. But looking back, it’s one of those moments that reminds me how momentum works. A competition leads to an audition. An audition leads to another opportunity. One opportunity creates visibility. Visibility creates new connections. Years later, you find yourself crossing paths with people whose names once seemed far removed from your own journey.
That’s one of the biggest lessons I’ve learned throughout my career: you never know which opportunity will matter.
The article in the newspaper. The science competition. The audition. The interview. The film festival. The industry event. Most opportunities don’t reveal their value immediately. They reveal it years later when you can finally see how all the dots connected.
The importance of visibility revealed itself again in a completely different way when I began studying acting professionally.
As part of Dawson College’s theatre program, I was performing in a play when The Plant, the college’s student newspaper, came to review it. I didn’t know they would cover it. I didn’t know who they would focus on.
Then the article came out.
I was on the cover. They used two photos of me.
Not everyone in the cast was featured.
That stayed with me.
Because it showed me something very real about this industry: You can be in the same room as everyone else… and still not be the one people remember.
The full article appeared inside the newspaper. This became my earliest press feature as an actor and marked the beginning of my publicity journey. Also pictured alongside me are Vittorio Masecchia, who went on to become a professional makeup artist, Rena Hundert, now a stand-up comedian, and Tristan D. Lalla, who continues to work as a professional actor. Looking back, it’s fascinating to see how many of us remained in our chosen fields and built careers doing what we love.
The connections didn’t stop there. During theatre school, my fellow classmate, Tristan D. Lalla and I performed in plays together and worked on countless scenes throughout our training. At one point, he mentioned that Gregory Charles Smith from Les Débrouillards was his cousin. I remember being surprised when he told me.
When I think about it now, I find it fascinating how that one audition seemed to resurface throughout different chapters of my life. First through Tristan, then years later through meeting Karine Vanasse in Los Angeles. At the time, none of those moments seemed connected. Looking back, it’s hard not to notice the thread running through them.
At that point, I still believed something that a lot of actors believe in the beginning:
That publicity just happens to you.
That if you’re good enough, if the project is strong enough, people will come.
That’s not always how it works.