October to December means only one thing in the PR world – gift guide season!

With Christmas and Q4 being a key sales period for most brands, and consumers always looking for recommendations on the best thing to buy that tricky uncle or impress their mother-in-law, Christmas gift guides aren’t going anywhere and more and more brands are fighting for those coveted spots. They remain a staple part of the UK media landscape so here’s why we always suggest clients incorporate a Christmas media approach as part of their seasonal strategies and what you need to do in order to pin down those top spots.

Affiliates are the leader in the GG game

In 2024, the need for a good affiliate rate really took over. The media landscape is ever changing, and more and more publications are needing to find ways to bring in more revenue. At these key periods, brands will hike up their affiliate rates to stand out and compete against other brands. Some brands, which have a standard 12% rate all year round, will hike up their rates to 30% in order to beat off the competitors and secure their slot.

Gift guides have power

While the PR world is ever changing and influencers are more important than ever, don’t underestimate the value of traditional media in converting sales and encouraging brand loyalty. In today’s busy world, consumers are more time-poor than ever, so gift guides are an easy way to make your product discoverable, helping to inform purchasing decisions. A spot in The Telegraph, The Times or VOGUE’s gift guides are highly coveted, which means your product is the best of the best – and consumers trust these titles, so sales are inevitable.

Driving traffic

Online gift guide placement is undeniably valuable in generating traffic to a brand’s page, but it’s not just about driving sales, it’s about digital presence. Compared to other articles, gift guides on lifestyle websites are generally the biggest source of online traffic, and so they often start building them in August to help with natural SEO.

Long lasting media relations

Whilst gift guides are no doubt a pivotal part of the UK media landscape, we have to address the struggle publications are having in dwindling teams, decreasing budgets and journalists having to work across either various publications or various platforms. With this in mind, this year we’ve seen a lot of publications work up their print gift guides to be syndicated to online where they would have historically worked up additional separately. This makes affiliates, media relationships, hospitality and ongoing strategy all the more important. Christmas gift guides should form a part of a wider seasonal strategy, with tactics being implemented earlier in the season to take media on a journey in order to secure those Christmas spots. Hospitality plays a huge part in this by building concrete 1-1 relationships with media for the brand, highlighting key messaging and much more.

The final reason we encourage our clients compete in gift guide season? Because we’re pros!