Three Tips for Mastering Christmas PR

It’s July, rosé season is upon us. Everything we’re eating comes directly off a BBQ, and as a food and drink PR agency, we’re talking about… Christmas. Each year as summer is in full swing, PRs and journalists are discussing Christmas puddings, turkey tips, advent calendars and gifting ranges, getting into the festive spirit without a jingle bell or John Lewis Christmas advert in sight.

Christmas is an incredibly competitive time to achieve coverage. Here are Palm PR’s three tips to master your Christmas PR in 2023.

Planning Christmas editorial is no mean feat. Magazine pages are mapped out months in advance of being released, with the very best of brands’ Christmas ranges ready for consumers to read about on their glossy pages. A monthly magazine works to a three month lead time as standard. For Christmas, it starts in July, so having your brand’s Christmas offering ready for a summer launch is really important to securing coverage. This includes final descriptions, price point and imagery – the key pieces of information a journalist needs to include your product in their publication. Having a supply of samples to hand is a great way of securing slots with certain publications. Particularly, for taste tests, so consider having a set amount made up ready to share with journalists.

Something we work extensively on with our clients is aligning trending topics to products in order to help them achieve cut through. Remember that Christmas is a particularly competitive time for food and drink. How can we ensure your brand stands out? Is it positioning your gifting range as carbon neutral or highlighting your snack brand as having 100% natural ingredients? Make sure you pull out the important themes and round off the year with Christmas products that reflect what was really speaking to the consumer in the previous months.

Year on year we see increasing numbers of hamper round ups in the media. Don’t worry if your brand isn’t suitable for a hamper per se – is there a cool collaboration with a like minded brand you could execute? Maybe a limited edition product you could bring out especially for the festive season? Remember that there are loads of different gift guides – from luxury presents to sustainable offerings. The media love anything different or new they haven’t had a chance to try before. We can help discuss how your product and offering can be positioned to media to really make the most of it in the run up to Christmas.

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